THE JIHAD TO DESTROY BARNEY
                   AUTHOR'S GUIDE AND ROLEPLAYING SOURCEBOOK
                              (plaintext edition)

Line Editor & Lead Author: Sean "Malaclypse" Breen
Deputy Line Editor & Bad Guy Wrangler: Jim "Fireball" Yearnshaw

Historian: Katrina A. "Kat" Templeton
Wizard Management: Joe "Puppeteer" Schnieder
                   William J. "No Snappy Nickname" Keith
Mundane Contact: Amanda "Crystal Helix" Van Rhyn
Cover and interior illustrations: Kirk "Nemesis" Felton
Introduction by: Dragonfyre Jones
Playtested by: The Jihad To Destroy Barney the Dinosaur

This document was originally intended to be used with the Jihad to Destroy
Barney the Purple Dinosaur roleplaying group located at http://www.jihad.net on
the World Wide Web.  The document may be used elsewhere, but if you do please
let the JU2 Team know at mrfnord@amigo.net so we can keep track. Thank you.

Barneyฎ the Purple Dinosaur and related properties are property of and copyright
Lyons Partnership, L.P. All  use of the Barneyฎ name in this document falls
within "fair use" as provided by 17 USC 1 ง 107.   Any attempt to sue us would
be a waste of time, money and legal talent anyway, so don't bother, okay? 

The gaming material presented here is the original creation of the JU2 Project
Staff, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games.
(http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/) This material is not official and is not
endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

All contents are ฉ1999-2004 the respective authors and illustrators except where
indicated.

Offer void in Utah. Return unused portion to vendor for a full refund.

CONTENTS:
	0) Introduction: Really, This Isn't Bullshit by Dragonfyre Jones
	1) Chapter 1: Welcome To The Real World
	2) Chapter 2: Heroes Of The Day
	3) Chapter 3: Black Hats And Bastards
	4) Chapter 4: Aliens, Spies And Other Party Animals
	5) Chapter 5: Oblivious Spectators
	6) Chapter 6: Rules of Engagement
	7) Chapter 7: Marching Off to War, Hurrah
	8) Apologia: The Last Word by Sean Breen

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REALLY, THIS ISN'T BULLSHIT

	We work and slave twenty-four hours a day, spill blood, set spongies on
fire, chop them up into filet mignon, flatten their cities, destroy their
planets, what have you, all so you can lie in bed at night and think to
yourself, "Gee, I'm glad I'm not a mindless drone in the service of the Lord of
Purple Hell".  And don't you ever forget it.
	The concept of a Jihad Universe has existed since the beginning of the
Jihad, long before there was ever a written definition of it.  The High Prophet
(pbuh), and his Band of Merry Funsters, would take their mostly suburban
surroundings and on it play out a never-ending struggle between It of the One
Tooth (Barney) and the glorious forces devoted to his demise, that is, the Jihad
to Destroy Barney the Dinosaur.  These first few freeform years were peppered
with strange acronyms (CLITORIS, ORGASM, OSHIT), science fiction references
(Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Ringworld, and stuff even I've never heard
of), and a regular stream of stories, long and short, all taking place in this
nebulous reality spawned from the imaginations of those who posted to
alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die.
	The longest of these stories were known as Operations, and were
equivalent to military advances, or drawn-out battles.  While many Operations
are known to have existed, only the ones after Operation: WorldWalk have been
archived in much (indeed, any) detail.  For many years, there was no unifying
concept of a Jihad Universe, and humourous (and sometimes embarrassing)
discontinuities were commonplace.  The carrot-shooter comes to mind, and let's
just say that the laws of physics were given about as much respect as the law
that allows police officers in Paulding, Ohio, to bite a dog to quiet him.
	The authors of this wholly remarkable work have put a lot of blood,
sweat and caffeine into gathering together the best ideas of contemporary
Jihaddi writers to form a coherent picture of the Jihad's Universe.  Well,
that's what I assumed they meant, anyway.  They knocked on my door late one
winter evening, followed by a line of ornery chimpanzees who obviously hadn't
eaten in days, and asked me if I wanted to write an introduction for a document
whose details they began to foist under my gaze at a rate of knots.  It was all
printed on very nice paper, so I agreed.  The chimpanzees burned down my
kitchen.
	I have since received compensation, including a fetching new blender and
track lighting.  But I digress.  What you now see on your screen is a guide for
writing Operations, and now serves as a canon for writing any kind of fiction
based on the world of the Jihad to Destroy Barney the Dinosaur.  Be assured that
disregarding this frightfully important document will result in your being
strung up on the clothesline outside Headquarters and left to dry after we dunk
you in monkey urine and cover you with sprinkles.  Mmmm... sprinkles.

                                          2nd Consulate Brother DragonFyre Jones
                                           of the Church of St. Dino the Avenger


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 1: WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

For Those Who Came In Late...
	The Earth is under attack.
	The demon lord B'harne is waging an assault on the souls of everybody on
Earth. Under the benevolent guise of the children's television host Barney the
Dinosaur, B'harne seeks to destroy the minds of children and adults and bind
them to his will. Once he has made mindless slaves of humanity, B'harne will
rule the Earth with an iron talon.
	Though if B'harne's ally Charn'El, an alien sorcerer who's elevated
himself to the status of a god, has his say, B'harne will be the lord of a
charred and ruined Earth. Charn'El has seen the future, you see; he knows that
soon enough, humanity will rise up and destroy him and his people in a ruinous
war to the knife. He knows that if he wants his people to survive, he'll have to
strike humanity and destroy us before we have the opportunity to destroy him.
These two powerful creatures have joined forces and now stand against the human
race.
	But they don't stand unopposed. Out there in the shadows, there's a
group of special men and women who have dedicated their lives to fighting the
combined forces of B'harne and Charn'El. There are things that go 'bump' in the
night, and they are the ones who bump back. They're out there guarding the
planet from things that would drive you nuts just to glimpse. Aliens. Wizards.
Werewolves. Tentacled horrors that you couldn't see in horror movies. These
people sit out there on the ragged edge between civilization and the howling
void, armed to the teeth, in order to hold off Armageddon for one more day.
	They are the Jihad to Destroy Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

What's Really Going On Around Here
	The following is a transcript of a lecture given by official Jihad
historian Dr. Jason Carmichael to the incoming class of recruits at TRES Corps
Headquarters on April 12, 1999.

Who are we?
	At first glance, it seems like a dumb question.  We're the Jihad!  But,
if a thoughtful Jihaddi approaches the idea, they find it's not as simple as it
seems.  We are an organization made up of many different types of sentient
beings, recruited not only from the four corners of the world but of the
multiverse, and we have a healthy respect for differences.  With all this
tolerance for the eccentric, how do we manage to keep the Jihad together?
	It is simply thus:  B'harne must be destroyed, all else is irrelevant.
	This is the binding thought.  However, a thoughtful man would ask why
this is the binding thought.  For that answer, gentlemen, you need a bit of a
tour of Jihad history, and that is why I am here.  I hope at the end of this
tour you will have some idea of the nature of the Wyrm we oppose, why we — the
Jihad — came to be, and how we got here from there.  So with no further ado, let
us begin.
	We don't know a whole lot about the Beast we oppose.  We don't know
where he came from or even what he truly is.  There is speculation he is a demon
from the deepest pits of Hell or some truly malevolent spirit.  We really don't
understand his nature, or why he chooses to fight the way he does.  Any attempt
to answer any of these questions or even approach the Wyrm himself has one of
three consequences:  Either the Wyrm is slain temporarily, or the one
approaching the Wyrm has ended up either dead or spongified.  We can surmise
from the above fact that B'harne must be a very private whatever he is.
	But some conjecture and piecing together what we do know, we find that
first of all he is probably not of this Earth.  Second, he has some kind of
alliance with the Lyrans — although the details of the alliance are unknown to
us.  We also happen to know that the Lyrans hate and fear humanity to the point
they wish to destroy us, but we aren't quite sure why. Third, B'harne cannot be
killed permanently with any weapon we have short of Lord Owsen's Barney Slayer —
and even that is ambiguous as we've never really had a chance to test it.
Fourth, he has two associates that are similar to what he is — B'haby B'hop and
B'heeJ'hay.  It isn't really a lot.  But most importantly, we know the effects
B'harne has on humanity — and if you haven't seen it, I hate to tell you that it
isn't pretty.  Luckily for us, he wasn't as much of an issue in the past as he
is today...or human history may have taken a different and more unpleasant
course.
	Perhaps he didn't really get a chance to destroy this world as he so
desperately wished because there was no simple way to destroy the world in those
days.  Communication between parties was slow and painful, and even the dual
inventions of the telegraph and the radio still didn't change the fact that it
was difficult to get a message out to a lot of people in a way that didn't
involve them thinking about what they had just read or heard.
	Ah...but then television came into the mix.  You've heard all the
derogatory names for it, I have no need to go into those.  For the first time in
human history, we had a medium that instead of encouraging thought, encouraged
people to sit and look at the images until their brains turned to pablum.  And
it's really no surprise that we see the rise of B'harne in conjunction with the
maturing of this technology.
	Now, before we get into a debate over the merits of television, I want
to point out that it is not completely an evil.  It does serve a purpose for
entertainment and education.  However, in the form it has now, there is not much
use for the imagination or the intellect.  And that is the weapon that the Beast
counts on...to be able to invade the brain and take over without his victim even
realizing what is going on.
	It's hopeless, right?  I mean, there's no way we're going to convince
the Mundanes to give up their television sets and go back to reading and
listening to the radio.  In fact, if you tried such a campaign in Mundania, you
would be laughed out of your seat.  And revealing the true nature of the Beast
is an impossibility as well.  I mean, c'mon, a children's television character
is out to destroy humanity as we know it?  Even if you did get past the
absurdity of your postulate, the panic that would ensue would play right into
the Beast's hands.
	So the war must be secret.  But who can be trusted with that secret, and
be willing to be the good guys, doing a job that must be done with absolutely no
recognition?

Enter the Jihad
	Unfortunately for students of history, there isn't much in the way of
actual tangible history left from the early days of the Jihad.  While I was
present for a large portion of it, even my carefully kept notes were lost in an
accident, and I only have the memories of myself and others to rely on.  The
problem with memory, especially in a literate culture, is that it tends to
become myth rather easily, and the distortions from mythologizing something make
it harder to make out what the original truth was.
	But two facts seem most important in the lead up to the Jihad. First,
the Wyrm seems to have decided that the best way to bring about his Purple
Kingdom was to reveal himself to the world — not as the slobbering form of evil
incarnate that we know him to be, but a sugary-sweet children's television show
character.  In some ways, this choice of guise turned out to be lucky for us,
because it has helped us keep our War out of sight of the mundanes, but on the
other hand, it also turned out to be unlucky because the primary audience for a
children's television show is the young and impressionable minds of children.
	Soon after B'harne's show went on the air, sometime in the mid to late
eighties, a man whom we Jihaddi would come to know as the High Prophet (Pez be
unto him), but who at the time was nothing more than your ordinary construction
worker, would begin to have the first in a sequence of dreams and visions about
some evil loose on the world that would destroy humanity if it wasn't checked.
At first, he wasn't sure about these visions — would you have been if you were
living a perfectly ordinary mundane life and you started getting odd visions
about a kid's television show character being the incarnation of pure evil?
	Luckily for the Jihad and the fate of humanity, the High Prophet was
willing to put up with these visions, and as they continued unabated, he began
searching out others who might be having these same visions.  It was made easier
by the fact that his visions seemed to want him to search out these others. 
Over the course of a couple years, he found them all — a priest, a soldier, a
doctor, a teacher, a physics Ph.D student, and an airline pilot, and from that
humble Seven came the organization that you are all a part of today.
	In 1990, after several meetings with those others who shared his
visions, the High Prophet uttered what we know today as the Three-fold Truth,
which included the statement I gave you at the beginning of this speech.  With
the arrival of the Truth, he was finally able to call forth that most noble
undertaking.  He called a Jihad — a Jihad against the Evil that had come to
torment Earth.  The War began at this point, the same War you and I are fighting
today.
	The early days were a pretty heady time to be part of the Jihad. 
Missions were taken on solo and in pairs.  None of the structure that the
current Jihad relies on to be able to function existed at that point, and people
were pretty much cast to the wind, doing simply what had to be done in those
days.  Granted, the opposition forces weren't very well organized at that point
either, which was probably the one saving grace for the nascent Jihad.

The Studio Four
	In late 1991, an event happened that nearly broke the cover of the young
Jihad, which would have destroyed the Cause.  I mean, before, crimes were up as
Jihaddi would take on minions of B'harne in less than subtle places and
fashions, but this event was different because of the scale of the crime. Four
young recruits to the Jihad decided that it was time to take the War to the
enemy's lair.  They decided that they would break into the studios in which
B'harne's show was filmed and find some way to make it impossible for B'harne to
continue to tape the show.
	Unfortunately for them, the cops showed up at the studio halfway through
this rampage and the four people there were busted for breaking and entering and
malicious vandalism.  This would not have been so bad for the Jihad if one of
the people responsible for the job hadn't broken down and confessed exactly why
and what he was doing there.
	This event was, as you can imagine, front page news.  Especially when it
at first seemed as if the young man who had said this was turning out to be
perfectly sane in all ways other than his rather interesting delusion.  The
other thing is that he knew a few names, and there was some pressure coming down
from the other side to book these four away, as well as anybody else who might
have been associated with the studio ransacking.
	The very first Jihad cleanup crews were used on this mess.  Some of us
took spots as reporters to swing the reporting of this mess, and even one daring
Jihaddi somehow managed to get himself put on the psychiatric team evaluating
the Studio Four, as they became known.
	There was lots of debate among Jihaddi in those days about what to do
with these four young men, as it looked like charges were going to be filed by
our Opposition, hoping to strike a blow for their side against us.  Finally, it
was decided that we unfortunately had to abandon these people for the greater
sake of keeping the War going.  We also had to make it so that in the future,
when the Wyrm and his minions tried to accuse us of existing, that it would make
them look insane.
	To accomplish this, we added notes to the file of the one that told
everything that he was known to have schizophrenic breaks with reality, and we
let the others know that if they so chose to join their friend in his testimony
that we would do the same thing to them.  The other three thankfully chose to be
sentenced rather than make things any harder for the rest of the Jihad, and the
crisis of exposure was over.
	But it became clear that the ad hoc structure that we had formed to run
the Jihad was quickly being outpaced by the membership growth, and a couple of
our founders had expressed an interest in returning to a so-called 'normal'
life. It was decided that even though the High Prophet had done much good for
the world by uttering the three-fold truth and calling a Jihad, it was time for
a different way of organizing ourselves.
	Before any of this work in rearranging could be done, though, the High
Prophet and several of his closest associates turned up missing and could not be
found anywhere.  What exactly happened, we still do not know.  Some of the more
religious members thought that the High Prophet and the other missing had
ascended for their role in bringing about the Jihad, some of the more pragmatic
thought that they were simply tired of inter-Jihad politics in the wake of the
Studio Four and thus had simply wandered back into Mundane life without telling
anybody, and some of the more conspiracy minded held that the Wyrm and his
allies had captured them in a ploy to destroy the Jihad once and for all.
	If it truly was the latter, it didn't work.  From the original Seven, we
still had Lord Owsen and the Mystic Mongoose around. While neither of them
wanted to be the man in charge — they had seen the stress on their old friend
during the bleak winter when it looked like we were about to lose everything —
they did an admirable job holding the Jihad together until somebody else could
be found to lead it.

The Rise of the Jihad Autonomous Organization
	To explain how the Jihad moved to this next stage, I have to step back a
little and tell you of the rise of the proto-JAO.  In the wake of the Studio
Four incident, some Jihaddi thought it was wise to band together in groups and
work towards the destruction of the Wyrm in that fashion.  A group of people had
access to more resources than a single person.  Also, the Jihad had learned the
value of cleaning up after itself, and it was easier to be able to plan missions
knowing that you both had a cleanup crew in place and that the cleanup crew was
friendly. It also allowed for some flexibility for passing orders from the top
to the bottom.
	A lot of these organizations were set up around a similar geographical
area, most notorious being the band clustered in and around Texas A&M
University, which produced a number of well-known Jihaddi, and another band
clustered around the upper Midwest that later became known as MAUL.
	But a couple of these proto-JAOs took a slightly different approach to
maintaining a membership base.  First of all, they allowed anybody to become
part of their organization, and made it less tied to geography.  Second, they
picked somewhat of an overarching theme for their membership to consider
themselves part of.  These two proto-JAOs called themselves, respectively, the
Dobermans and the Resurgent Templar, and are the forerunners of today's Doberman
Empire and TRES Corps.
	It should be noted that some of this ability to transcend geography was
in part due to the introduction of the JihadLinker.  Before, when one had to
rely on ordinary methods of communication, there was less ability to coordinate
what was going on with your fellow members when you had to rely on the plain old
telephone service.  But even at the basic stage, where 'Linkers acted as
glorified pagers, there was a tremendous freeing of resources, and it allowed
for the non-geographically linked proto-JAO to come into ascendance.
	All of this leads to the leadership race which Owsen and Mongoose were
overseeing, since neither of them wanted the job.  And although they looked at
the geographically based proto-JAOs, they took a longer and harder look at the
two that were managing to transcend geography.  Of the two, the Dobermans were
both older and larger, and their leader, Fleet Commander Serbeus, seemed the
wisest choice to lead the entire Jihad.
	Thus Owsen and Mongoose named Serbeus the new leader of the Jihad. 
Serbeus, besides leading the Dobermans, was also somewhat a student of classics,
and his first act was to rename his office to the Office of the Praetor, perhaps
to confer upon the Jihad the majesty of the Romans.  Soon after he was named
Praetor, Serbeus would add the appellate "Empire" onto the name of his
organization. It is pretty much from the addition of this appellate that we
declare the first fully fledged Jihad Autonomous Organization, the Glorious
Doberman Empire.
	The entire period I refer to here is now referred to as the Golden Age,
though as a member throughout most of the period in question, I fail to see what
is so Golden about it.  It was most definitely not as idyllic as later Jihaddi
would make it out to be.  This is probably partially due to the tendency of
memory to make myth, and the Golden Age is a time that has fled into myth.  We
have a little better idea of what was going on in the next period of history — a
point in time that a current Jihaddi might actually recognize what's going on, a
time of the first JAOs and the first attempts at working globally.
	We have already discussed somewhat the rise of the Doberman Empire, so
let us concentrate on what other major JAOs existed about this point.  Those
are, in no special order, TRES Corps, the Midwesterners Against Ugly Lizards
(MAUL), the Blood Jihad, and the Legion of Doom.  Also, at about this time we
had the rise of a couple small R&D shops and the emergence of the Maenads, both
of which had an interesting effect on the Jihad as we know it.

Going Global
	As I mentioned, this is the first period where we were able to work
beyond the borders of the United States in any coherent way, which is good
because the Wyrm was starting to eye territory elsewhere.  One of our first
missions out of country was the Montreal Incursion in 1992, which is important
for two reasons — it was one of our first missions outside the boundaries of the
United States and it was the first time we met a certain sponge minion by the
name of Mikey Crawford.
	However, in late 1993 and early 1994, not only was the Jihad starting to
attract recruits from other continents (most notably Europe and Australia), but
we began having the manpower to stage skirmishes in those countries. 
Unfortunately for us, our Adversary had found his way to England and Australia
before us, and got somewhat of a head start in working his evils on those
populations.  Thus, we had to make up for lost time.  Probably our worst blow
came in 1994 when the Wyrm announced that he would be translating all his shows
into Spanish, French, German and Portuguese which meant that his influence would
be spread that much further.  With this threat, some of the JAOs tried to boost
their capabilities to respond into Europe and Latin America, the two biggest
targets for the Wyrm.
	The Secret War had grown from something ran out of a few American cities
into this worldwide response team in just under four years.  Divine interference
or manifest destiny aside, this accomplishment is something for which the Jihad
should be proud.  The Doberman Empire was conducting operations in Australia,
Europe, Brazil, the United States and Canada simultaneously in the Spring of
1994.  The Doberman Empire was definitively the best equipped and largest
fighting force the Jihad had ever fielded, and they were very good at their job.
We'll come back to this thought in a second.
	TRES Corps, which had emerged under the leadership of Lord Owsen from
the struggling band of the Resurgent Templar, was less able to be involved in
world straddling missions of great importance, so they decided to concentrate
instead on being able to respond quickly to any threat in North America, and
having good intelligence in place to be able to respond to those threats.  When
the DE picked up a formerly independent R&D shop known as WEDJEE, then headed by
a man known simply as Captain Midnight, but who would later become Fleet
Commander Samhain of the DE, TRES responded by starting their own in house R&D
group that would gain the appellation of Zeta.
	The Blood Jihad, from its very founding by a couple of the oddest people
to ever grace the Jihad's presence — a pair known as Arsenal the Lone Warrior
and Uplink — had an interest in both space and R&D, and soon became known as the
place in the Jihad to go if you had an interest in the mix of those two
subjects.  We are still not entirely sure how they managed to get their stuff in
orbit, or just how they managed to establish a moon base without anybody
noticing, but somehow they did.  There are guesses that there were deals made
with Russia, who, for cold hard American greenbacks, was willing to pass off
Blood Jihad launches as their launches, but this is a subject upon which the
Blood Jihad High Command kept utmost silence.
	The Legion of Doom prided themselves on their special operations skills. 
They also prided themselves on being one of the more extensively cross-trained
troops in the Jihad.  If you needed somebody who had an obscure skill-set,
chances were that they called the Legion home.  The Legion also excelled at
despongification techniques, being one of the first groups to establish a
division specifically devoted to studying ways to clean Barney's influence out
of people's heads. They worked in small groups, and were masters of striking
hard and fast — and were also among the first JAOs to really excel in cleaning
up after themselves.
	Lastly, there were the Midwesterners Against Ugly Lizards, or MAUL.  The
thing to keep in mind about MAUL is that they were the only JAO to survive from
the time in the Jihad when people banded together because of their geography. 
Thus, they had a very strong association that the Midwestern United States was
theirs to protect.  The other interesting thing about MAUL is that they refuse
to use anything better than current technology in the mundane world — they
really like their tanks — and they don't have much clue in the meaning of the
word 'subtle'.  Thankfully for the Jihad, the few times MAUL has gotten on the
wrong side of the cameras, they've been mistaken for the United States military.
	And that is a brief look at how the Jihad stood going into the summer of
1994, unafraid of the world, taking on the HellWyrm wherever he might strike,
and thinking that nothing could seriously harm them.  They had managed to avoid
the news cameras for years, and perhaps it was hubris that caused the next big
crisis of exposure.  It started with a lost prototype JihadLinker.

Mr. Crawford's Linker
	A Canadian member of the Doberman Empire was doing some normal work in
Montreal when he put the prototype JihadLinker he was entrusted with in his bag
and then failed to zip the pouch he had put his Linker in.  Of course, as he was
wandering through Montreal, the Linker fell out of his bag.
	Normally, this wouldn't have been a big problem, since Linkers were
arcane things to use back in the day, but this was a new prototype with the
simple to use interface and the bright shiny green Send button.  It was simple
enough that a Spongie could figure out how to work it, and I suppose you can
guess what happened.
	Yes, the prototype JihadLinker ended up in the hands of Mikey Crawford. 
Now Mikey was already starting to gain a reputation among both Jihaddi and his
fellow spongies as a fellow who always walked away from Jihad operations, ever
since his first appearance in the Montreal Incursion a few years back.  Mikey
typed out something along the lines of "hI al yu evul juhadee" and punched the
shiny green send button.  Little did any of us know at the time that this one
action of Mikey's (somehow sent to the 'entire Jihad' distribution list) would
very nearly lead to the end of the Jihad.
	Mikey's message triggered a flurry of activity as to where a spongie had
gotten ahold of a JihadLinker, and how a spongie would have been able to figure
out the arcane interface.  Within a day, the Dobermensch who had lost the linker
realized what had happened and pulled out his old one, only to find a flurry of
activity over a sponge minion on the link.  Wisely, or maybe not so wisely, he
kept quiet for a few more days before he reported the prototype missing.
	One mystery was solved when the prototype was reported missing — the
question of just how a Sponge Minion figured out how to use a Linker.  The
prototype was much easier to use.  However, there was the bad news that it was a
prototype and thus contained the latest encryption schemes and other gadgetry
that we didn't really want in the hands of the enemy.  Thus, the Doberman
Command decided that they would do an all-out raid on the McGill campus (which
is where the signal from the Linker was pretty consistently coming from — Mikey
had decided that talking to Jihaddi was a pretty fun activity and was pretty
consistently sending messages extolling the virtues of the Wyrm) and take the
Linker back from the spongie who had it by force.
	Unfortunately, there were a lot of Dobermensch who wanted to participate
in this raid since they were rather angry at the Sponge Minion who was polluting
their link.  Serbeus probably both invited too many soldiers along and assigned
the wrong type of mission.  This was definitely a case where a snatch and grab
carried out by a small team would have been best, but Serbeus decided that Mikey
was probably hiding in a Purple Forces safe house, which would mean rather a lot
of manpower to take out.
	Thus a large contingent of heavily armed Dobermensch were ordered around
the McGill campus one sunny June morning and ordered not to fall back until the
Purple Forces base was found and cleaned out, and especially not to return until
the prototype was back in their hands.  Not only did the mission fail as Mikey
Crawford was not where we expected him to be at that time, but two Dobermensch
were less careful than they probably should have been as to whose face they
waved their weapons into.  The civilian couple they mistook for spongies were
actually undercover RCMP officers who didn't really appreciate having illegal
weaponry waved in their faces.
	To be fair to the two Dobermensch who were not exactly as careful as
they should have been, most of the invading force weren't exactly careful as to
who they were frightening — enough so that several Canadian papers were
screaming about the attack on McGill, even the Albertan ones.  But the two
Dobermensch caught by the RCMP were in a lot more trouble than their buddies,
and the trouble doubled when the RCMP discovered that both of the terrorists
they arrested carried American passports.
	This fact, as you can probably imagine, caused quite an international
uproar. Canada was not pleased with the prospect of terrorists slipping over the
border to conduct operations against Canadian citizens, and there was some
diplomatic tension between Ottawa and Washington over the whole matter.
	Inside the Jihad, things were even more tense than they were in the
relationship between the United States and Canada.  There were two reasons for
this — first, if either of the two that were caught in Canada decided to speak
about what exactly they were up to, the entirety of the War would be put at
risk.  Plus, there was a lot of finger pointing going on over whether MAUL (who
had explicitly refused to jump in when the Dobermans realized they were in some
trouble, stating a lack of jurisdiction) and TRES (who came up with some
intelligence that Mikey may not be where the Doberman Empire expected him to be,
but couldn't get anybody in Doberman High Command to listen) should have tried
harder to stop the events that lead to crisis.
	As the summer drug on, we found that Canada was willing to drop the book
on the two caught Dobermensch, which rather worried many of the higher ups in
the Jihad, for all it would take is one person spilling the beans.  Luckily, the
two had learned something from earlier history, and they knew to keep their
mouths shut as to why exactly they had been at McGill with heavy arms.  Nobody,
by some freak miracle, had been killed at McGill, nor had anybody been shot. 
After some negotiation with liaisons in State, we managed to get the two a very
good lawyer, and they were summarily found guilty, given a suspended sentence,
and escorted out of the country with word that they were no longer welcome in
Canada.
	While the diplomatic crisis between the US and Canada was resolved upon
the return of the two Dobermensch to the United States, the internal
repercussions of this raid would resonate through the Jihad for months to come. 
The biggest of course, was Serbeus' retirement from both the Doberman Empire and
from the Office of the Praetor.  As his replacement in both, he named Commander
Augustus, the one man in the DE high command that had recommended not going
after Mikey Crawford in Montreal.
	Augustus' first move was to start an inquiry into how the McGill raid
could have occurred and suggestions as for how to keep it from happening again. 
His second was to court martial the two Dobermensch who had been unlucky enough
to get caught, but to make the point very clear, he also court martialed their
commander.  Augustus was quoted at the time that "I want it to be known that
this war is first and foremost a secret, and officers within the Jihad are to
conduct themselves with that thought above all others."
	The task force on how to prevent this sort of incident from happening
again came up with a few very good solutions.  Unfortunately, they also came up
with one solution that would cause problems down the line.  Among the good
solutions they had is that we need to strengthen the Liason program, which was
working well in the US, to other countries in which there is a large chance the
Jihad would conduct major operations — and first and foremost on that list is
Canada.
	Second, it was recommended that there be spin teams in place to clean up
after these sorts of messes.  While every Jihaddi I've talked to hates spin
duty, most of them acknowledge the importance of the job in keeping the world
ignorant of their war.  They know quite well that while they would love to
expose their Enemy for who he is, this is impossible, and that it takes just one
piece of stupidity for their own cover to be blown.
	Third, there was a few hints that the disaster at McGill could have been
prevented if either TRES Intel had been able to get their findings to the DE or
if MAUL had gone ahead and provided the backup requested. Thus, Augustus thought
it might be all well and good to weaken the 'autonomous' part of the acronym
'Jihad Autonomous Organization'.  It seemed like a good solution to stop a
McGill crisis from occurring again, but the ramifications of this would soon
play out for the Jihad.  We'll come back to this in a minute.

Rising Stars
	I had meant to talk to you about two groups that would play an important
part in the Jihad — the rise of the small R&D shop and the Maenads of the Holy
Albino. Both reach their heyday in the period between the Second Great Exposure
and the rise of Serp, so it is instructive to talk about them.
	I have previously mentioned WEDJEE, the incorporation of which into the
Doberman Empire gave Fleet Commander Samhain his original DE rank.  I have also
mentioned TRES Corps' Zeta Squadron, their own in-house group.  The Blood Jihad
also had their own R&D crew, known as the Skunk Works.  The last of the
independent R&D shops, a small operation known as the Evil Geniuses for a Better
Tomorrow, was started by my esteemed colleague, Professor Malaclypse.
	The independent and JAO-based R&D shops play an important part in the
rise of the Jihad.  It dates roughly between the beginning of 1993, when WEDJEE
was first formed to Operation WorldWalk in March of 1996, a good three years,
and those three years are best summed up by Professor Malaclypse when he once
characterized them as 'The Age of Amuck Scientists'.
	It was, from what I understand not being a techie-type myself, a
wonderful time to have been a Jihad scientist or technician, for ideas were
springing forth from all corners.  Sometimes their inventions were useful —
these were the folks who originated your JihadLinkers, among other things.  But
sometimes, they were just silly — Admiral Keith's Mathattackius gun is probably
the example you're most familiar with, but there were other atrocities against
science committed in this period.
	Of course, the most vibrant period for the techies is the Fall of 1994
to Worldwalk, in which thousands of oddities were produced randomly for the
Jihad, some as desponge tools, some as sheer 'what the hell were you thinking?'
curiosities.  It should be noted that the brilliant minds most associated with
their respective JAOs R&D shop — Admiral Svartalf of TRES, Professor Malaclypse
of VR, and Centurion Ceberus and Fleet Commander Samhain of the DE — all got
their starts during this time period.
	As our opponent has no appreciable R&D shop whatsoever, but amazing
adaptability to take on whatever we throw at them — or in the case of the
Lyrans, to sometimes transcend it — our R&D shops have been one of the things
that have kept us in the war for nearly as long as we have been fighting it. 
Even if they do have the occasional flight of fancy that leads to some atrocity
against science.
	Oddly enough, the other group that came to the forefront in the halcyon
days of 1994 were the Maenads of the Holy Albino, a group that is nearly as
diametrically opposite the pursuit of Science as you can get and still be in the
Jihad.  I say this with some tongue in cheek, of course, as some of our best R&D
minds are also Maenads, but the mysticism of the Maenads seems to collide in
interesting fashions with the focus on science to fight the HellWyrm that the
Jihad seems to have.
	Thus, it is interesting to note that at the same time the High Prophet
was beginning to have his first inklings of visions, so was the Chosen of the
Holy Albino, as the story goes.  For six years, they hunted the Wyrm and the
Lyrans on their own terms, but as time progressed, they found themselves running
into more and more Jihaddi.  As there were few in the Maenads, they realized an
alliance would be beneficial and Windigo the Feral, aka now-Commander Inagei of
the DE, led the Maenads in making themselves known to the Jihad.
	Since then, they've been violent but effective warriors for the Jihad,
and whether their mysticism is correct and they are selected by the Holy Albino,
or if the skeptics are correct and they are simply picked by Windigo, it is
mostly considered an honour to be invited to join the Maenads.

The Rise and Fall of Serp the Feral
	Part of the reason I bring this up is that the Maenads play an important
part in the next big event of the Jihad, which is the rise and fall of Praetor
Serp. Serp was his Maenad name; his full DE rank and title was Centurion Anhur
Spartacus Hades.  He was, at the time of his induction into the DE in December
1993, one of the Jihad's brightest young stars.  He had served a good proportion
of time as a mercenary, hopping between African bush wars before finding out
about and joining up with the Jihad.
	Once he was in, he demonstrated his knowledge of tactics to Fleet
Commander Serbeus, and so impressed the Fleet Commander with his knowledge that
Serbeus gave him one of the fastest promotions to Warrior that we have on record
in the DE.  He performed ably in all the missions he was assigned, and managed
to bring back all his men from every mission.  His biggest coup was during the
Second Great Exposure, when his command was the only one to even somewhat
succeed on the mission. They surrounded the safe house, entered, found it empty,
and retreated.  While this was technically in violation of his orders, it
impressed both Serbeus and Augustus at his responsibility in a situation where
everybody was losing their head, and his promotion to Centurion was both the
last act by Serbeus in the DE, and confirmed as the first DE act of Augustus.
	He continued serving as Augustus' tactician through the fall and winter
of 1994 and doing a very good job at it.  His promotion to Commander seemed all
but assured once a spot was opened for him, as his only real competition he had
was fellow-DE Centurion Manticore, and Serp was sure that his tactics and
strategy would win him the position over an R&D geek.  Besides, that very same
winter, he had been inducted into the Maenads, something which Centurion
Manticore had not managed to do.
	While he was biding his time, waiting for the promotion he knew that he
so richly deserved, his tactics skills were often requested for use by other
JAOs, and so he would often go to help them do mission planning.  Remember, the
task force studying the McGill Incident had recommended that JAOs be a little
less autonomous, and part of that was involving high ranking officers of other
JAOs in your battle planning.  Thus, Serp found himself well-recognized
throughout the entire Jihad.
	In May of 1995, Augustus, proud of the work he had done for the Jihad,
decided that it was time that he stepped down and went into a well-earned
retirement. But before he did that, he announced that there would be a
Jihad-wide election for the Praetor position in June, after he stepped down. 
The second thing he did was name a new Doberman Empire Fleet Commander.  Much to
the shock of Serp, his bitter rival, Centurion Manticore, was named Fleet
Commander Samhain.
	Worse, when Serp angrily brought up the unfairness of it all to
Augustus, Augustus told Serp the reasons he had picked Manticore over him —
mainly that Manticore was much more competent at the two tasks of dealing with
lower-ranked officers and having a head for details that was important to the
position of Fleet Commander.  Augustus also made a point of telling him that if
one of the two Commander slots had opened up, that he would have been the man,
but that Augustus honestly believed that he wouldn't make a very good Fleet
Commander.
	Serp thought for a while about everything Augustus had said, and then
decided that he would get the one position that could tell even the Fleet
Commander of the Doberman Empire what to do — Praetor of the Jihad.
	We now know that if Augustus had kept Serbeus' tradition of naming his
successor, we probably would have never had Praetor Serp in the first place, as
Augustus probably would have named either Samhain or TRES Admiral J. Foxglov to
the position.  But Augustus had a quiet love for democracy, and he honestly
believed it was truly the best way for the Jihad to pick its leaders.
Unfortunately, the problem with democracy is that everybody gets to pick, and
people often end up with exactly the government that they deserve.  Such was the
case here, as Serp was well known to the lower ranks in other JAOs, and they
went overwhelmingly for him, despite the DE not really voting for him at all.
Perhaps this should have been a warning sign to the rest of us that Serp may not
have been the wisest choice.  However, we were pleased that we made it through
an election and we had our first elected Praetor, and Serp looked as if he would
mend fences with his commanding officer as he named Samhain his adjunct.
	And at first all seemed well with Serp.  He was genuinely liked by the
lower ranks, and he started a number of projects to make inroads on the
HellWyrm. Some of these were massive multi-JAO projects, and the practice in
collaborating would come in handy sooner than anybody imagined possible.  The
assault had the HellWyrm retreating.  For the first time it felt as if the Jihad
had the upper hand against their Opposition, by what seemed to be their daring
Praetor's doing.
	Serp had a few good ideas as well.  He was the first to think of the
monetary aspects of running a huge war, and the International Jihad Treasury,
the bane of Jihaddi everywhere, was one of his innovations.  He was consistently
looking for ways to make money for the Jihad as well as fighting the Wyrm, and
given his background, he hit upon the obvious solution — sending Jihaddi as
mercenaries into the wars he had once fought in.
	Unfortunately for Serp, an angry and violent reaction to this plan came
from his commanding officer, the man he thought he could control by becoming
Praetor of the Jihad.  Samhain was so angry with Serp that he resigned his
position as adjunct right then and there and blistered Serp's ears with
invective that none had ever heard from Samhain before or since.  Instead of
taking no for an answer, Serp got the bright idea to try to oust his old rival
from the Fleet Commander's chair in the DE so that he could take the job.  The
month of December was spent in a Jihad version of chicken — both Serp and
Samhain trying to see who would blink first.
	As the rest of the Jihad began to understand why Serp and Samhain were
in this bitter feud, it was obvious which side they began to side with.  None of
them thought that sending their JAO's soldiers to fight in wars that didn't even
have to do with the HellWyrm, whether it was for money or whatever else they
could get in trade, was a very good idea.  One by one, all the other leaders
sided with Samhain.  Serp, of course, tried to excommunicate all of them, but
before he could name replacements, Windigo asked for him to come to her office
for them to talk.
	Serp walked into the office with Windigo, the door closed, there was the
sound of raised voices, and then the door opened and Windigo was the only one to
walk out.  An inspection of the office behind her showed nobody in the room and
no signs of the Praetor.  The only comment anybody could get out of Windigo was,
"Offended me, he did," and to this day we have no idea what happened to Serp
except that he was gone.
	It was January 1st, 1996. In a few days, the high command of all the
JAOs got together and decided that they would first not repeat Augustus' failed
experiment in democracy, and they unanimously named Admiral J. Foxglov of TRES
Corps their new Praetor.  That was the beginning of the year that seriously got
Weird.

Operation Worldwalk
	Why was it weird?  Well, in March of that year, the HellWyrm decided he
was tired of this tickytack war of attrition with us and decided to bring it all
to an end by collapsing all the known universes into one that he figured would
be more favorable to him and not to us.  He planned to accomplish this by the
means of a device that would do this collapsing of timelines.  Our attempt to
stop this fiendish plot is recorded in Jihad archives as Operation WorldWalk.
	I will warn you, before I head into this section, that some of the stuff
I am about to describe may not make much sense, but I assure you that the events
I will attempt to relate to you really happened, and wasn't the result of the
entire Jihad taking a hit of LSD all at the same time — even if that's what it
felt like at the time.
	It was a sunny day in mid-March when things went haywire suddenly and
without warning.  I know most of you have probably seen the Matrix, when Neo
experiences his bout of deja-vu, and that is how the first few permutations
felt, as if we'd seen this before.  But not realizing what we were up against
yet, the Jihad dismissed these odd cases of deja-vu as nothing more than deja-vu
and continued in our normal routines, which turned out to be the dumbest thing
we could have done.
	Since the whole episode is difficult to describe in any meaningful way
in the third person, let me tell you what I was up to, since I found myself drug
into this war.  At the time, I was a young professor at Indiana University in
Bloomington, and I had agreed to spend my spring break at the Doberman Empire
headquarters so that I could talk to their young recruits in much the fashion
I'm speaking to you all now.  I had started out early in the morning and made
good time, and arrived at DE HQ about two hours before the first queasy feelings
of deja-vu were reported.
	I consider myself one of the lucky ones.  DE HQ, along with several of
the other Jihad bases had, in the age of Amuck Scientists, installed some
equipment that nobody was really sure was going to work exactly as predicted.  I
suppose there's something to be said for preparedness, as the gadgets worked
exactly as they were supposed, isolating Jihad bases in the storm the Wyrm had
cooked up.
	What was that storm?  Well, none of us had a clue what was going on
except for the odd senses of deja-vu until suppertime.  I recall having just sat
down with Fleet Commander Samhain and the rest of the DE command staff when a
young Dobermensch came running into the room with the news that they were
getting a transmission from the Wyrm.  We were eating in a private dining room,
so I was privileged to watch said transmission.  It was typical Wyrm
insipidness, but the plans he detailed silenced the entire command staff of a
JAO for five whole minutes.
	What did he say?  Well, he told us about his shiny new machine, that he
had buried in New Mexico, and he told us that he was in the process of getting
us out of his hair for the last time, because his shiny new machine was in the
process of compacting the multiverse into something that would be more tractable
to him than this one was.  And he very specifically mentioned that there was
nothing we could do to stop the Jihad from becoming obsolete and if we were to
try, it would do no good, so we shouldn't even bother to stop him, and we might
as well live our last few days in peace.
	It was hubris at its finest, but as I said, the statement stunned the
entire command staff of the DE, and I'm sure it had the same effect on other
command staffs throughout the Jihad.  A frantic teleconference was arranged by
the Praetor, and the entire high commands of all the JAOs was frantically called
together.  It was a relief to see so many of the highest-ranking Jihaddi still
around, but worse news was to follow when a couple folks reported that they
hadn't heard from folks who had been sent out on missions over the last few days
and hadn't been under cover when the Wyrm flipped his machine on.
	You see, when the Wyrm announced his plans to contract the entire
multiverse into one universe that was much more favorable to him, he released a
string of reality quakes.  The first few were subtle, hence those odd sensations
of deja-vu folks had been reporting all afternoon, but they were about to grow
in both number and magnitude.  Somehow, by sheer luck and mad geniuses doing the
science, the majority of the Jihad's bases had been equipped with dampeners that
reduced the effect of these reality quakes on the folks inside.  We didn't
really know what would happen when we sent folks out into it, but of course we
had to give it a try.
	The boys in both TRES and Doberman Intelligence placed the signal around
Carlsbad, New Mexico, probably somewhere in the massive cave systems nearby.  So
now the Jihad had an agonizing decision to make.  Did they send people out in
that time storm knowing that they might not be able to make it through, or did
they hope the collapse of timelines would play out in their favor?  The Jihad,
being who we are, chose to go with the slight glimmer of hope, and organized a
quick inter-JAO exploratory team to meet up near Carlsbad and spelunk into the
caverns from there.  Warrior Ashur Galand (now Centurion Ceberus) was chosen to
head this last ditch effort at stopping the Wyrm's evil plans, and they were
sent out into the time stream with the hopes of the entire Jihad behind them.
	Those who fought in this force tell me it was quite the experience, as
they moved across country trying to get to where they belonged, with scenery
changing in odd fashions and even their very transportation and clothing
changing depending on which quake was rattling through.  The scariest part, some
of them told me, was when people would change or disappear in front of their
eyes, as one time stream made it more likely that one person would be there
instead of another.  Somehow they fought through the geography and the quakes
and what appeared to them as quite the acid trip and somehow made it in one
piece.  One battle later, in which the opponents kept changing along with
everything else, they were filing into the system of caves which is Carlsbad
Caverns, desperately searching for the machine that was doing this all.
	Now the thing was, as they had been making their way to Carlsbad, the
machine had been speeding up as it had less and less universes to incorporate
into the flattening, so the rest of us were seeing things outside as careening
from universe to universe to universe in a rather quick fashion, almost like
flipping through a TV set with millions of channels.  Only it was the universe,
and we had no control over the rate of channel-flipping.
	The exploratory team found the Wyrm in the deepest cavern at Carlsbad,
watching his machine near the end of its task, and gleefully celebrating that
the Jihad would not pull a rabbit out of its hat this time and stop his
nefarious plans. Unfortunately for the Wyrm, Galand and his company stepped out
of the shadows just as he finished gloating to whoever could hear.
	In the fiercest battle the Jihad had ever fought to that time, the
machine was destroyed just before it could finish crushing the universes into
one, and B'harne found himself temporarily inconvenienced.  One of the more
interesting unsubstantiated pieces of this battle was the conviction of some of
the Jihaddi present that the Wyrm had killed Warrior Galand, but that Galand had
somehow come back to life and returned the favor to the Wyrm.  Reports like
these were dismissed as the remnants of the acid trip like nature of the
expedition, but it gives you an idea of the oddity of both WorldWalk and the
Jihad.
	When Galand destroyed the machine, it unleashed one last massive reality
quake that put things mostly back the way they were as the timeline tried to
heal itself from the damage the Wyrm had done.  It wasn't perfect, though, as
TRES Corps immediately reported in surprise that they had a small space fleet
and Space Station Ithaca, and the Blood Jihad reported that Luna Base had
somehow gotten larger.
	Plus, there were many Jihaddi who had been in the world when the quakes
had occurred and hadn't been heard from since.  Occasionally, you'll find some
older Jihaddi recognizing a friend who had battled next to him prior to
WorldWalk only to go missing in the chaos that was WorldWalk, only to later show
up rejoining the Jihad but not remembering their prior Jihad career, which
causes a lot of awkwardness on both sides. Thus, if you get recognized by an
old-timer, be kind to him or her, for you might be their long lost friend — even
if you don't remember it.
	After the psychedelic mess that was Operation WorldWalk came the
aftermath. Most folks were fairly sure it the Wyrm's attempt to find a more
tractable universe, just as he said when he was gloating to the Jihad's various
commanders, but some of the more conspiracy-minded among the Jihad suggested it
was the Lyrans attempting to make an end run around humanity.  The collapse of
the timelines might have simply caused us no longer to exist, and since the
Lyrans want to see us dead, this would have worked just as well as killing us
off.
	It was time for a break from the Wyrm and it felt nice to know that
Galand had iced him for us so that we could concern ourselves with preparing for
the next war.  For some reason, the Legion of Doom decided that they had to get
in space now, and threw all their resources into creating a space fleet.  The
rest of the Jihad went on training and drilling, proud of how well they'd come
out of WorldWalk, and thinking there would be absolutely no way the Wyrm could
top what he'd done.
	So we went through the spring and summer of 1996, blissfully content
that we could take anything the HellWyrm could throw at us.  Thus, it came as a
horrible surprise when we found ourselves under attack once again in mid-August
— and this time the HellWyrm had found allies.  On top of it, the Wyrm, with
help from the Lyrans, had put some sort of mystical spell on the top dozen of
our leaders at the time that made it nearly impossible for them to hide.

Operation Phoenix
	For the second time in the year, we were taken by surprise by the enemy. 
When the Wyrm returned to earth with his new allies — an alien race known simply
as the X'hirjq — we were nearly sunk in the war before we started.  The X'hirjq
seemed impossible to beat because they were more technologically inclined and
they were stronger, faster, and more adept than the humans they were fighting.
And to make things worse, they had joined up with the Wyrm of their own free
will, which meant that they had lost none of their faculties to spongification.
Plus, at the time, we didn't know that the Wyrm had cast his tracking spell, so
they kept popping up around the most important Jihaddi.  It is a surprise that
as many of them survived Phoenix as did, given the focused attention upon them.
	It has been said that Jihaddi do not know the meaning of the word
'quit'.  At the worst, when it looked as if many had been killed in their
attempts to fight the X'hirjq, the Jihad still picked up and continued to fight
ever onward. However, the losses racked up all over — in Scotland, in Atlanta,
in Louisville, in Iowa, in San Juan, in space, all over the place, the Jihad was
losing and losing bad.  It was a bad time to be on the home team.  Somehow,
despite all this, the Jihad kept fighting, sacrificing everything it could in a
desperate attempt to make the impossible happen.
	One of the most notable sacrifices made in the War Against the X'hirjq
was that of Admiral Michael Davis and Captain Patrick Stewart of the Blood
Jihad, and all the crew of their ships Lexington and Defiance.  In the middle of
the war, when it looked as if all hope were lost, the two ordered their fighters
to do as much damage to the X'hirjq mothership as possible.  Then, when it
looked like they were about to be swatted, the two proceeded to make a kamikaze
run on the mothership with their own ships, killing everybody aboard both the
Lexington and the Defiance.  It had about as much effect in the long run as a
gnat colliding with an elephant, but for them even to attempt it showed the
bravery of these two men and the crew of their ships.
	The turning point for the Jihad, however, was probably the battle for
the new TRES Corps headquarters starting September 10th, 1996.  It started much
as many of the other battles had — very badly for the Jihad — and got much worse
before it was all over.  The X'hirjq smartly sabotaged our communications medium
before they started the attack in earnest.  To make things even worse for the
Jihad, the weather, which had been sufficiently odd since the start of
WorldWalk, delivered a surprise blizzard to Colorado the same night the X'hirjq
and the HellWyrm decided to bear down and take out TRES HQ.
	The morning of the tenth dawned overcast and cold, with heaps of snow on
the ground from the prior night's blizzard. It also looked like more snow was on
the way. The fighting started out on the highway, but the Jihaddi fighting were
pushed back towards the headquarters.  It did not look good for the Jihad, and
if the X'hirjq and the Wyrm were allowed to take TRES, the war would be over.
Surprisingly, then-Commodore Marburger showed his courage under fire by trying
his best to keep the Jihad fighting and just not fleeing against an overwhelming
show of strength by the opponent.  The day progressed with the blizzard dumping
more snow on the heads of those fighting, and the fight wore on.
	About sundown, the Jihad managed to briefly turn things its way when it
unleashed the artillery it had on the B'harnate heavy infantry on the field and
a contingent of Dobermensch showed up to help spell the weary TRES soldiers who
had been battling all day, and this combined force finally finished off all
B'harnate troops on the field.  But the battle was still far from over.  The
next morning, the morning of September 11th, the X'hirjq took their spots and
fiercely began attacking the TRES and Doberman soldiers on the battlefield.  But
in a miracle, the blizzard broke, and the sun shined through on all the snow and
ice that had accumulated on the battlefield, and the X'hirjq put off their
attack plans until nightfall because they were blinded from the reflection of
the sun off the snow and ice.
	The night of September eleventh, and the morning of September twelfth,
the Jihad contingent at TRES HQ fought as hard as they could, but there wasn't
much they could do against the tactical and numerical superiority of the
X'hirjq. Finally, the Jihaddi retreated back to the base itself, hoping that it
could hold against the mighty force advancing against them.  But the force
overpowered the Jihaddi even at the gates of the headquarters, the power blew,
and all was lost for the Jihad.
	Except that the power had only flickered and not died, and when the
power came back up, the Jihad guns at the gates were able to finish off the last
of the X'hirjq.  The sun rose on the morning of September twelfth with the Jihad
in possession of the battle that turned the tide.  The battle for TRES HQ had
carried a costly price for even the victors, as a large contingent of Jihaddi
had perished trying to deliver a victory.  This battle still remains to this day
the costliest in Jihad history in the number of Jihaddi killed or injured in the
fighting.  It was, in all senses of the phrase, a Pyrrhic victory for the Jihad.
	Strangely enough, three days later, many of the Jihad higher ups would
fight perhaps the oddest battle they'd ever fought.  They ended up fighting
against B'harnate friendly copies of themselves, and after our guys defeated
them to a man, we discovered that the X'hirjq had been conning both us and
B'harne.  We discovered that the X'hirjq weren't here to destroy us, but that
they were here to test us.  They had only joined in an alliance with the Wyrm as
a way to get here and pull off this test because humanity meant something
special in the X'hirjq belief system.  So the bloodiest war the Jihad had ever
fought was pretty much for nothing.  Let me repeat that, nothing.  All the
sacrifice, all the bloodshed, all the fighting was for nothing more than a
stupid test.  If that doesn't make you angry...
	In the end, the final toll was thousands of Jihaddi dead, thousands more
wounded, the Legion of Doom all but destroyed, the Blood Jihad nearly without a
command staff, the DE lost most of its worldwide bases, and TRES was forced to
rebuild a headquarters mostly leveled to the ground.  To make things even more
interesting, the X'hirjq had oh-so-helpfully blasted humanity with an
industrial-sized psychic blast, so that it would not remember the events of
Phoenix, which was good for us in one fashion because it meant that the War
would stay a secret, but combined with the events of Operation WorldWalk, it
meant quite a mess in terms of the psyches of the mundane world.
	Given a disaster of this scale, one would expect that the Jihad would
take a large amount of downtime in order to rebuild, right?  Nothing is ever
that simple in the Jihad.

Operation Pacifica
	In mid-October, roughly a month after the X'hirjq invasion, a young
lieutenant in TRES Corps who was helping get JihadNet back on its feet noticed
an odd anomaly out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Anomaly seemed the best
word, because sometimes the structure would be there and sometimes it wouldn't,
and this seemed awfully odd.  So, he reported it to Admiral FoxGlov, who took an
interest in the anomaly.
	After closer investigation, it was confirmed that there was an island
out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that was not connected to the Earth in
any significant fashion.  Not only that, but it was full of sponge minions and
Lyrans — and in another shock, life signs that matched up with a Jihaddi who was
missing in action in Phoenix.
	But before Admiral FoxGlov could report this to his higher ups — Admiral
Marburger and Grand Admiral Owsen — Owsen went missing in a fight with the Hell
Wyrm that Marburger witnessed.  Before Owsen was taken, he handed over the
Slayer and his pistols to Marburger, which meant that the one weapon that might
just be able to kill the Wyrm stayed in Jihad hands.  Shaken by this, Admiral
Marburger assumed the Grand Admiral's chair in TRES Corps — only the second
Grand Admiral in that JAO ever — and as his first action determined that TRES
would send an expeditionary force to the island.
	However, since TRES didn't have a navy, he had to call in a favor. 
Luckily for the Jihad, the Doberman Empire maintained a small navy, and the
Pacific branch of the DE Navy, based in San Francisco, had seen very little
damage from the X'hirjq Invasion.  Nobody was really quite able to explain how
San Francisco had been rendered exempt from X'hirjq attacks, but explaining it
took a back seat to just being thankful that there was a naval fleet to
transport them in the first place.
	So the Jihad descended upon Doberman Naval Base San Francisco for the
long trip out to Pacifica, which is what the island had been dubbed.  A large
portion of Jihad higher-ups felt some obligation to make this trip, and it was
probably the closest thing we have had to an all-star cast heading out to battle
the HellWyrm.  This is probably the dumbest mistake the Jihad has ever made, and
the Jihad has made quite a few mistakes over the years.
	Of course, the war started out well.  While there was some resistance,
the trip out was relatively quiet, and the spongies in the city provided no
challenge to Jihad troops.  To make things more interesting, the Hell Wyrm was
culled from the battlefield early by an angry young TRES Corps officer, Lt.
Geier.  It was the first time the Jihad found itself with the upper hand early
in a battle.  Of course, the Jihad would quickly learn that early successes made
the fall all that much harder.
	You see, we found out too late that Pacifica was a trap set up by the
Lyrans to lure Jihaddi to a place where they could be captured and destroyed —
using MIA Jihaddi from the X'hirjq invasion as the bait in the trap.  And we
gave them a very large chunk of the command staff of all the remaining JAOs.  To
give our commanding officers the benefit of the doubt, it should be pointed out
that they weren't going to leave MIA officers to rot, as that's never been the
way the Jihad has operated when given a choice.
	Given the mission objective — that is, find out if there were any of the
Jihad's missing in action on Pacifica and if so, to rescue them — we were
relatively successful in achieving those goals.  Pacifica turned out to be much
less of a disaster than Phoenix had been, and we were able to find out more
about the Lyrans, that shadowy race that seems to be associated with B'harne.
	The reason we're aware that it was a trap is that the Maenads, bolstered
by the addition of four more to their ranks — Grand Admiral Marburger, Fleet
Commander Samhain (which is ironic considering the role Maenadship played in the
story of Serp), Admiral J-Rock of TRES, and then-Captain Felton, also of TRES —
fought their way to the Citadel, where they took on Charn'El, the High Mage of
Lyra.
	The people who were present are notoriously reluctant to talk about it,
given the death of their comrade, Lord Tilden Owsen, at that battle. However,
despite Owsen's demise, we were able to recover the Barney Slayer, and it is
being held in a safe location for when it might be needed again.  The Maenads
also, somehow, managed to banish Charn'El from this plane. Unfortunately,
without Charn'El's power to hold up the island of Pacifica, it began collapsing
into the sea, and the Maenads were barely able to escape with the Slayer and
some Lyran books and artifacts.
	In the end, Pacifica occupies an odd position in Jihad history.  It
wasn't a victory per se, but it wasn't a defeat either.  In the end, I suppose
stalemate would be the best word.  We lost some of our best in the fighting, but
managed to deal a blow to the HellWyrm and the Lyrans, and for good or for
worse, Pacifica is the start of what we can now safely call the 'modern Jihad'.

The Triumverate and the Beginnings of the Modern Jihad
	After the events of Pacifica, Praetor Foxglov was tired.  He was tired
of fighting pointless wars, tired of losing people, and the Praetor was probably
reeling from the loss of Owsen on top of everything.  He resigned from the Jihad
which left the office of the Praetorship open again.  A hastily convened
conference of Jihad higher-ups decided that the office was too much for one
person, and decided to dissolve the Praetorship and replace it with a
Triumvirate.  After a bit more deliberation, they decided the first Triumvir
Praetors, the official title of those holding seats, would be Grand Admiral
Marburger of TRES, Windigo, and Shardik the Feral (also known as Warrior
Hephaestus of the DE).
	The Triumvirate was a bold new direction for Jihad leadership, and it
was one that was probably needed, because the Jihad had grown much more complex
than it had been in the days when Owsen and Mongoose had chosen Serbeus for the
job. There were more demands on their time, and although JAOs had winged back to
being slightly more autonomous than they had been in Serp's time, people still
looked to the Triumvirs for many things involving funding and general direction.
	And the Triumvirate was needed pretty much right away when Blood Jihad
Commander Theodore Brock (aka Arsenal the Lone Warrior) went, as best we can
tell, absolutely and totally nuts.  To understand this, you have to understand
that it had been a very bad year for Arsenal.  He had a reputation for being
secretive at the best of times, and Admiral Davis had privately reported some
concern about the mental state of his commanding officer after the events of
WorldWalk.
	A total break with reality didn't occur until after the kamikaze run of
Admiral Davis and Captain Stewart in Phoenix.  In the same battle, the ship that
Arsenal had been commanding had been disabled and left for dead by the X'hirjq.
By the time Arsenal and the people on his ship were able to bring the systems up
and running again, the war with the X'hirjq was over.  The combined guilt of
being unable to help his officers fight the X'hirjq combined with the mental
state that Admiral Davis had been concerned about led to a full blown psychotic
break, and while the rest of the Jihad was out cavorting around Pacifica and,
later, working on cleaning up from the mess of the X'hirjq invasion, Arsenal
started making plans to, in his eventual words, 'get help'.
	There was many odd requisitions for some types of experimental gear,
which were somehow gotten without comment.  This probably happened because there
was so much going on in the Jihad that nobody really had much time to pay
attention to what Arsenal was doing, and probably, in all honesty, nobody much
cared.  The Blood Jihad had become a broken shell of its former glory, and the
fact that it was hanging on at all was somewhat of a minor miracle.  The only
reason anybody had any thought of the Blood Jihad at all is that the Andromeda
remained our only significant space presence after Pacifica and there were more
important things to worry about.
	So, on January 18th, 1997, Arsenal went to the Andromeda to make what he
called 'a surprise inspection visit'.  Within the hour, TRES Ithaca reported
that the Andromeda's engines had fired up and she had left Earth orbit.  They
also noted that they had tried to hail the starship and got no response.  Given
this strangeness, and fearing the ship had been taken by enemies, they launched
interceptors.  The Andromeda wouldn't let the interceptors get too close, and
repelled any that did with non-lethal force, and so the TRES craft dropped into
escort to watch what the Andromeda did.
	After a few hours of escort duty, the Andromeda suddenly and without
warning opened a portal in front of itself and dove in.  It was all the TRES
pilots could do in their surprise to take the readings, and in debrief, seemed
as if they were almost unsure of what they had seen.
	At four PM Eastern time, Lt. Colonel Ariana Mahtash, ranking Blood Jihad
officer, who had been left in charge of Base One while Arsenal made his
inspection trip, received a delayed message from Arsenal.  It was in this
message that he stated that he had gone to find help, and that she was to serve
as ranking officer of the Blood Jihad until such time as he could return.  She
contacted the Triumvirate and was told to wait for a few days to see if Arsenal
returned, and if not, then she was by all rights the commanding officer.  The
days passed, and on January 23, 1997, Ariana Mahtash, who had been a Jihaddi for
maybe eight months at that point, became the new commanding officer of the Blood
Jihad.

Verthandi Ascendant
	Things were in chaos.  Mahtash knew that she needed some help.  The base
systems were in a mess, and she needed somebody with a head for detail.  Luckily
for her, she knew somebody who might be able to do the job, and her first act as
the commanding officer of the Blood Jihad was to ask Grand Admiral Marburger to
reassign her friend, Lieutenant Katze Brenner, to the Blood Jihad.  Brenner, who
had taken leave for two weeks to get established in the semester, had already
headed for Base One to see what she could get done unofficially, but the two
friends were glad when Marburger acquiesced to this request.
	The other piece was, when Mahtash and Brenner were trying to find out
who was left in the Blood Jihad (the records at Base One were in a shambles
after Phoenix), they were presented with the sudden surprise that Professor
Malaclypse not only still had a Blood Jihad  commission, but that he wanted to
help them get the organization back off the ground.  For their parts, Mahtash
and Brenner were glad to have him around as they both were relatively new to the
Jihad and didn't always know what was useful and what wasn't.
	While Brenner, Mahtash, and Malaclypse were putting in all this effort
to upgrade and reform a JAO which sorely needed it, the Lone Warrior's close
friend and former Blood Jihad R&D chief Uplink showed up, which surprised all
parties because it had been assumed that he had gone with Arsenal.  After some
questioning, it was ascertained that he had been in South America investigating
a slight rise in spongification rates in Rio de Janeiro, and the only way he
could think of fixing the problem was to, in the words made famous in Vietnam,
"destroy the village to save it."  He was shouted down by both Mahtash and
Malaclypse, but decided that the Blood Jihad was legitimately his command, and
thus attempted to put his plan in action.
	Luckily for the entire Jihad, Mahtash and Brenner had been working
overtime to reform the Blood Jihad's requisition system, and the second Uplink's
attempt to requisition the material and troops he would need to pull off his Rio
scheme crossed the system, the new Blood Jihad command knew about it.  When
confronted with the evidence, Uplink still talked about the rightness of his
crusade and how this would strike a victory against the Wyrm.  Enraged,
Malaclypse invited Uplink to "settle this in private."  What exactly happened in
that meeting is unknown except to the parties involved — Uplink has not been
seen since and Malaclypse refuses to discuss it — but it is believed that the
Professor dispensed proper justice for Uplink's crime.
	In the wake of the Uplink incident, it was decided unanimously by
Brenner, Mahtash, and Malaclypse that the Blood Jihad was better off being left
in the past, and decided to merge its functions with Professor Malaclypse's
independent R&D shop, the Evil Geniuses.  The Triumvirate, never overly fond of
the old Blood Jihad in the first place, agreed to this change and the Verthandic
Rangers came in existence, with Brenner, Mahtash, and Malaclypse leading in a
structure very similar to the Triumvirate.  They became known as the High
Council, and Brenner and Mahtash both took the title 'Councilor'.  (Malaclypse
preferred — still prefers — the title 'Professor' and was known to berate
recruits who use the title 'Councilor'.)
	The Rangers, as they became known around the Jihad, quickly established
that they were, along with TRES Zeta and WEDJEE, home to some of the best R&D
minds in the Jihad, and the Explorations staff became known as one of the
quickest response teams in the Jihad despite their overly casual attitude
towards command structure.  The other thing they added to the Jihad was an
ability to strike across dimensions, given Professor Malaclypse's research
interests.  All of these pieces would come in handy in a few months.

Changing of the Guard
	The time between early February, when the Rangers threw off all the old
trappings of their Blood Jihad days and July, when things heated up again, was
relatively quiet for the Jihad.  The only interesting thing that happened during
that time span was that in May the first Triumvirate stepped down, saying they
were proof of concept only, and it was time for more permanent members to serve.
The first trium suggested Professor Malaclypse of VR, Captain Rens Houben of
TRES Zeta, and Commander Shahrazad of TRES to serve as the new Triumvirate, and
the heads of all the JAOs agreed to that.  The three respectively named
Commander Aris Merquoni of VR, Councilor Brenner of VR, and Captain Jones of
TRES to serve as their respective adjuncts.
	This brings us to July, in which excitement happened.  Granted, the
summer of 1997 wasn't as exciting as the entirety of 1996, which had brought us
Worldwalk, Phoenix and Pacifica all in one year, but it was the summer of 1997
which brought the events of Marraketh and Homefront to our attention.
	The events of Marraketh are less important than that of Homefront, but
chronologically it comes first, so let's touch upon it briefly.  When I was
interviewing the principals in this event for their take on it, Councilor
Brenner laughed a bit and said, "You have to ask about the most embarrassing
event in my life, don't you?"
	And Councilor Brenner is right, since the events of Marraketh begin with
her indulging her curiosity and being kidnapped back to her homeland — the
aforementioned Marraketh.  The problem is, at the time of this event, Marraketh
had been under the influence of the Wyrm for nearly twenty years of our time. So
VR scrambled a team together and went into Marraketh after their Councilor. Of
course, the team also happened to be Professor Malaclypse's first beta of his
machine, and the machine acted predictably under the circumstances, scattering
the Rangers across Marraketh and the next country over.
	However, everybody managed to get themselves to Rhye, where Malaclypse
had scouted ahead, and things ended up turning out for the best for all
concerned. They rescued Councilor Brenner (indeed, in the reports, it seems as
if Brenner came through the ordeal rather well, which is probably why she can
laugh at the whole thing now) and liberated Marraketh from the Wyrm's thrall. 
Not bad for a few days' work.

Operation Homefront
	Compared to Marraketh, Homefront turned out to be a much more difficult
problem. For the first time in the Jihad's history, we were confronted not with
the Wyrm himself, or the Lyrans, or any real metaphysical threat at all.  This
time, we found ourselves dealing with one of B'harne's elite Wyrm Minions — a
group known as the Liasons (which are not to be confused with our Liasons). 
This particular Liason was named Rhyn, and the guy was a technical genius.  Yes,
there are geniuses working for the other side, as surprising as it might seem to
you.
	In fact, one of the ironies of Homefront is that for a brief time the
Jihad and the Lyrans were on the same side — at least in the goal of shutting
down Rhyn's operation.  The Lyrans were even less amused at the idea of some
ingenious human coming up with a way to pacify the whole planet without using
any magic whatsoever than the Jihad was at the idea of the whole planet being
spongified. Thus, both wanted to do whatever they could to stop Rhyn's plan.
	Of course, the question is, what was Rhyn's plan?  It was really rather
ingenious despite being overly complicated — technological solutions to create
what is basically a psychological effect tend to be these days.  He planned to
spongify the world with technology.  He stuck these devices that were like
crystal radios all over the world, and what these devices would do is pick up a
signal broadcast from their main base in Kansas and relay it to the next
station.  They would also amplify the signal over the local area, so that
everybody within range would become spongified, thus achieving the goals of his
Lord, and letting him be in a position to rule the world.
	The Jihad made it a priority to take out as many of these array devices
as possible when they discovered that the Lyrans were doing the same thing, and
they discovered they were up against a time constraint.  That and there were
simply too many array devices to stop.  To kill this thing, they had to descend
upon Rhyn's base in Kansas and destroy the generator.
	The leaders of this expedition were then-Commander William Keith (now
Admiral) of TRES and Warrior Persephone (now Centurion Selene) of the Doberman
Empire. These two were the first to scout out the problem, both did some
individual work on taking out elements, and then both of them lead a team of
mostly young and inexperienced Jihaddi into Rhyn's base and managed to take out
both the generator and Rhyn.
	While it didn't have the sheer total-war elements of Phoenix, Homefront
goes down as one of the more ingenious plans the Wyrm or those allied with him
have ever pulled off, and it has made us more interested in the Liasons and what
exactly they do.  This is one of the more interesting things going on in Jihad
intelligence at the moment, and it's something that I strongly urge you to
pursue if you find that you have any interest in that sort of thing.

He Walked Around the Horses...
	There was a month of relative quiet after the events of Homefront before
the Jihad was confronted with yet another crisis. This was a smaller crisis than
any of the operations, but any time a head of a JAO goes missing, it is a small
crisis for that JAO.  TRES Corps, by this time, had become the biggest JAO in
the Jihad, taking the mantle from a struggling Doberman Empire still attempting
to recover from its blow in Phoenix and Pacifica.  And when the biggest JAO in
the Jihad somehow comes up with a missing leader, the entire Jihad is somewhat
affected.
	We don't exactly know what happened, which seems to be a common tale to
all these disappearances.  All we know is that Grand Admiral Marburger had gone
off to vacation in San Francisco, one of his favorite spots.  When TRES needed
to reach him on some matter of relative importance, and couldn't hail him on a
linker, they sent one of the local TRES officers into San Francisco after him.
	The TRES officer reported back that Grand Admiral Marburger was nowhere
to be found, but that he'd left a trail of sponge minions on the way to wherever
he went.  It could have very easily been another mess of exposure except that
the officer was very quick on her feet in coming up with a cover story on the
spur of the moment, and she had some help in the form of a Jihad Liason who
worked in the San Francisco Coroner's office.  The disappearance is still filed
as an unsolved mystery with the San Francisco Police Department, and we duly
hope it stays that way.
	Soon after these events, Captain Shahrazad would resign from her
Triumvirate position and Captain Jones declined to replace her and stepped down
from his own adjunct seat.  In another near-unanimous decision (with one
abstention, seeing as how she was the subject of the vote), the respective JAO
heads named Grand Admiral Davies to the Triumvirate, and Davies named Commander
Nolan of TRES her adjunct.

Mystical Underpinnings
	Now, I've talked a lot about Jihad technology in this speech and not as
much about magic, despite the Jihad being involved in fighting something that is
pretty much a mystical war.  While many Jihaddi over the ages have been mages,
and some of them have been pretty adept at the magical arts, the study of magic
has lagged behind.  With the chief allies of the Wyrm being the Lyrans, a race
of magic-users, you would have thought this lack of proper study would have
become apparent to Jihad leaders early in the battle.
	Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to point out the obvious, though, and that
is exactly the case that lead to the forming of the Jihad Praxeum Veneficus (or
the Prax, as it is often referred to by its members.)  It took a new Jihaddi in
TRES Corps, one Lieutenant Joe Schneider, to make the point that what the Jihad
really needed was a place for the mages of the Jihad to learn and gather
information.
	Lieutenant Schneider took his idea to Grand Admiral Davies, and Davies
was delighted at the thought, and brought it over to the Triumvirate. Davies,
Houben, and Malaclypse all agreed that a 'college of magic' such as Lieutenant
Schneider was proposing was a good idea, and a vote was taken for Schneider's
proposal.  It passed easily, and the JPV became the newest organization in the
Jihad, with Schneider bearing the title of Archchancellor and Admiral Keith of
TRES Corps and Operative Lorin of VR as the two second in commands.
	While the JPV has existed for about a year, they have already made a
huge contribution to the magic knowledge of the Jihad in much the same way that
the research and development folks made a huge contribution before WorldWalk. 
While we hope there will be no 'Age of Amuck Mages' to go with the 'Age of Amuck
Scientists', the mages of the Jihad have benefited hugely by being able to work
with each other, and the Jihad has benefited from having its top magical minds
working together, just as they had by letting its top technological minds loose.
And JPV scored quite the coup when the Triumvirate decided that the Barney
Slayer should be with the mages so that the mages could attempt to figure out
how exactly it works.
	In January of 1999, just after the new headquarters was finished, the
Triumvirate called Archchancellor Schneider and told him to get an honour guard
together from JPV to escort a package from the airport.  The honour guard did
the job it had been called there to do, and the package turned out to be the
Slayer, moved under secrecy to the new JPV base. The Slayer has been there
since, in a heavily guarded room.

Changes Upon Changes
	During the summer that JPV was building their campus and expanding the
horizons of thaumaturgy in the Jihad, Grand Admiral Davies grew tired of
commanding the Jihad's largest JAO, and wanted to have the freedom to do other
things.  She talked with Admiral Felton, her second in command, and the two
agreed to swap spaces. Felton became Grand Admiral Felton, only the fourth in
Corps history.
	In the fall of 1998, Professor Malaclypse also decided that it was time
that he spent more time on his research, and he resigned all his Jihad
commissions. However, it turns out that the best place in the world for him to
work on his research interests is his old JAO, so you can often still find him
around VRHQ. For the first time since the Triumvirate had been formed, the
adjunct agreed to take the vacated seat, and Commander Merquoni joined the
Triumvirate.  She named Grand Admiral Felton as her adjunct.  At the same time,
Davies named Archchancellor Schneider as her adjunct, as Nolan had resigned his
adjunct position.
	That brings us to the here and now.  What history I will be talking
about next year is the history that will be made by each and every one of you. 
Remember that relatively new folks to the Jihad, such as Grand Admiral Felton,
Councilor Mahtash, Rear Admiral Brenner, Admiral Keith and Archchancellor
Schneider have made huge contributions to the Cause, and while those five might
seem rather imposing to all of you now, I once remember all five of them — all
of them TRES Corps recruits — sitting where you are now, listening to me tell
them about the past of an organization of which they would contribute the
future.  And their future became the past I now tell all of you about.
	The future is yours.  Make the Jihad proud.
	Thank you.

--/SIDEBAR: Wait a minute, when did this happen?!

	Breaking kayfabe for a minute... at this point, if you're a well-heeled
Jihaddi or have been reading through the fiction archives on jihad.net, you'll
have notice that a lot of the stuff related in this potted history of the Jihad
doesn't have a lot of evidence to back up that it actually happened. There's a
reason for that.
	You see, most - by which I mean 99 percent or more - of the original
Jihad fiction that was written before Operation Phoenix has been lost thanks to
a combination of poor archiving, authors getting bored and wandering off, and
the vagaries of Usenet. Most of us have vague memories of  the storyline for
Operation Worldwalk, but nothing of the actual content of the story has survived
to this day. This has led us to pretty much just recreating the entire backstory
for the Jihad ex nihilo and in a manner consistent with the revisions originally
planned for the Jihad Universe 2.0 project.
	So, if you see something in here that doesn't jibe 100% with the story
archives, that's why. The effect is probably most noticable in Phoenix, and a
little bit in Pacifica. And if you have a complete or even a semi-complete
archive of Worldwalk or older Jihad operations, please please please contact us
at mrfnord@amigo.net and share the bounty.

/--END SIDEBAR

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 2: HEROES OF THE DAY

	The Jihad to Destroy Barney the Purple Dinosaur is the central
protagonist in our little comedy of errors. The Jihad has taken on the task of
defeating the forces and influence of B'harne, known in the mundane world as
Barney the Dinosaur. The soldiers of the Jihad are equipped with beyond
state-of-the-art weapons, powerful magical artifacts, and a ferocious will to
win.
	The Jihad's fight is governed by the ThreeFold Truth, which comprises
the central moral/philosophical axioms of the entire war:
	I. Barney is the demonic incarnation of all hell on Earth.
	II. Barney seeks to make the world his Purple Kingdom, and does so by
corrupting the innocent and weak into Sponge Minions
	III. Barney must be destroyed, all else is irrelevant!
	To that end, the Jihad has accumulated some of the greatest warriors
under its wing, all of whom are dedicated to the goal of the ThreeFold Truth.
For the last decade, the Jihad has fought in a hidden war against B'harne and
its minions.

The Jihad In Detail
	The Jihad is organized in a decentralized fashion: Separate Jihad
Autonomous Organizations (JAOs) perform their duties more-or-less-independently
of the others.  Overall, authority in the Jihad is vested in the hands of the
Triumvirate Council.
	The JAOs are the heart and soul of the Jihad.  Each one has some sort of
specialized function (as described below) that contributes in some significant
way to the progression of the Hidden War.  Most JAOs have a military component
(which makes sense, considering that the Jihad is very much a military group at
its core), usually equipped with cutting-edge — or beyond — weaponry.  A handful
of JAOs (and a number of Jihaddi) use occult powers in their battle.
	Since Barney is a creature of the occult, magic is a very useful weapon
against him and his allies.  The strongest countermagic to B'harne, however,
remains the sword Barney-Slayer.

The Barney-Slayer
	Forged in the distant mists of antiquity, the sword resembles a
traditional European short (or one-handed) sword of the late 12th century
Christian Era.  The metal in the blade (called Owsenite after the original owner
of the sword, Tilden Alexander, Lord Owsen) is a mana-active alloy of unknown
composition, capable of cutting through nearly any material known to mundane or
Jihad science.  The sword also has an animistic spirit bound to the large
amethyst in the hilt.  The spirit is capable of communicating with whomever is
handling the sword, and often "speaks" telepathically (with a Irish Gaelic
accent, no less!) to the owner.  It is quite temperamental, and tends not like
most of the people it comes into contact with.  However, it doesn't have any
control whatsoever over the blade or the wielder, so all it can really do in
such circumstances is grumble.
	However, that is not the sword's most impressive ability.  The blade has
been enchanted to act as a kind of magical sponge, absorbing magical energy from
the surrounding area and using it to strengthen the blade.  More importantly,
the enchantment is "attuned," for a lack of a better word, to the life-force of
B'harne itself.  Therefore, whenever the sword is exposed to B'harne's physical
form, it literally sucks his life energy away.  This power is, to the best
knowledge of the Jihad, the only thing that B'harne truly fears, and he will do
anything to put as much distance between himself and the Barney-Slayer.
	Recently, during the Pacifica rescue mission, the Barney-Slayer was
broken into two fragments during a duel between Lord Owsen and Lyran High Mage
Charn'El.  The Jihad recovered most of the Slayer's blade, while the whereabouts
of the hilt (and of Owsen, who was presumably killed in the duel) are unknown. 
So far as Jihad intelligence has been able to determine to date, the hilt is
trapped inside the dimensional bubble where the High Mage was imprisoned at the
end of the Pacifica mission.  Whether or not the hilt is still there is unknown.
	The blade is currently being kept in a vault at TRES Corps headquarters,
where it is apparently regenerating the missing half of the sword.  The method
of regeneration continues to baffle Jihaddi scientists.  Praxeum mages assume
that the missing hilt is regenerating as well, possibly being altered by its
proximity to Charn'El.  What this means for the Jihad as a whole has yet to be
determined.

All Over The World
	The Jihad's mission often takes it around the world and back in order to
fight the good fight. While most of the fighting takes place where B'harne is
strongest, the Jihad maintains watch over much of the rest of the world, as well
as providing boltholes for Jihaddi caught out in the cold after a mission draws
unwanted attention.

North America
	North America is where the Hidden War started, and remains the Jihad's
major stronghold. All the primary bases of the Jihad's autonomous branches are
located inside the United States. The Jihad keeps a close watch over Canada as
well, with monitoring stations in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Calgary and
Vancouver, and safehouses scattered in cities across the provinces.
	Mexico is watched with much the same amount of scrutiny, with monitoring
stations in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Ciudad Juarez, and Veracruz. Safehouses
are placed mostly along the Mexico-US border, with a few hiding places secreted
in the forests of the Yucatan.
	Central America is not as intensely monitored or protected by the Jihad.
Safehouses can be located in the capitols of the Central American nations, and
these are mostly only lightly staffed.

Europe
	The center of European operations is located in London - by a strange
coincidence, not far from the headquarters of MI6. Anything Jihad-related will
end up relayed through the London office, and so it tends to absorb the bulk of
the resources and personnel sent to Europe. As a result, the monitoring stations
in continental Europe (located in Paris, Bonn, Barcelona, Warsaw and Bucharest)
tend to be very lightly staffed - the Bonn station being almost totally
automated. Safehouses, of course, are found in most of the major population
centers in both Western and Eastern Europe.

Asia and Oceania
	The Asian and Pacific Rim operations center is located in Sydney,
Australia, a long-time source of Jihad recruits. Much like its counterpart in
London, the Sydney office tends to draw most of the allocated resources to
itself, leaving the other Asian stations fairly lightly staffed.
	However, the Mundane political landscape requires that at least some of
the main stations keep a full staff handy. The East Asia monitoring stations in
Tokyo, Manila and Beijing have been required to keep a full staff, if only to
maintain counterintelligence operations to keep the Mundanes off track. As a
consequence, the monitor stations in India and Central Asia have been cut down
to almost purely automated setups. Safehouses are available for Jihaddi on the
run in the major East Asian cities and in Indian population centers, but Jihaddi
are advised that several Central Asian safehouses have been compromised by
Mundane forces, primarily in Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics.

South America
	South American operations are run out of the Ecuadorian capitol of
Quito. Unlike the European and Asian operations centers, the Quito office has
not managed to divert all of the primary resources to itself, meaning the fully
staffed monitoring stations can be found in La Paz, Caracas, Rio de Janeiro (a
popular choice for assignment) and Buenos Aires. Safehouses can be found in
areas ranging along the Amazon River and stringing along the coastline.
	Of particular interest is the Jihad's combined staging base at Punta
Arenas, Argentina. This base is meant to serve as the Antarctic operations
center, and frequently sends out expeditions to watch the Ross Ice Shelf for
signs of spongification. The Punta Arenas base is possibly the least desired
posting in the entire Jihad, and Jihaddi have a traditional fear of crossing the
wrong superior and getting travel orders for Argentina cut.

Africa
	Africa is probably the least-watched part of the world by the Jihad, due
to the near-total lack of inroads made by B'harne into that continent.
Regardless, the Jihad maintains lightly-staffed monitoring stations in Cairo,
Nariobi and Pretoria just on the principle that "it never hurts to be cautious."

Above the Sky
	The Jihad, for all its overtechnology has only a few limited ventures
into space operations. The single major space asset the Jihad holds currently is
the TRES Corps space station Ithaca. Ithaca is the home of Zeta Squad, and even
with them in residence the station is still mostly half-empty. No other JAOs
have functional operations in space.
	Before the X'hirjq Invasion, the Blood Jihad had constructed and
maintained a mining and manufacturing operation on the lunar surface. Luna Base,
as it was so (predictably) named, was totally destroyed during the Invasion,
when the X'hirjq vaporized most of the surface facilities, killing the entire
staff. After the Invasion, the ruins of Luna Base stood empty. The Blood Jihad's
successor organization VRDET decided that rebuilding would be a waste of limited
resources, and left the base as a monument to the terrible force of the
Invasion.

The Triumverate
	After the collapse of Serp the Feral's coup attempt (see p. 16) and the
rigors of the X'hirjq Invasion and the Pacifica rescue mission, the JAO
leadership rearranged the central-command structure, removing total control from
a single Praetor (as it was determined that no single person could provide
proper leadership for the entire Jihad) and handing it over to a council of
three ranking Jihaddi officers, calling the new central command the Triumvirate
in classic Roman fashion.
	The three Triumvirs are supported by three Adjuncts, one to a Triumvir. 
The Adjuncts act in the age-old tradition of vice-presidents and second bananas
everywhere: providing a backup in case a Triumvir is incapable of attending a
meeting.
	The entire Triumvirate meets every three months to take care of the
rubber-stamping at an undisclosed location, although they'll meet during a
crisis when their leadership is needed.
	The Office of the Triumvirate is responsible for co-ordinating inter-JAO
operations, maintaining the JihadLink communications network, taking in money
from Jihad dummy companies and keeping the vast majority of the Jihad a secret
from the mundanes.
	The current Triumvirate consists of Admiral Davies of TRES Corps, 
Commander Aris Merquoni of VRDET, and Captain Shadur T'Kharn of TRES Corps.  The
Adjuncts are Rear Admiral Katze Brenner of TRES Corps, Grand Admiral Kirk Felton
of TRES Corps, and Archchancellor Joseph Schneider of the JPV.

	Overall, the Jihad has roughly 25,000 people involved in the cause in
some fashion.  About half of these are men-at-arms; the rest work as
technicians, researchers, teachers and liaisons between the Jihad and the
mundane world.

Jihad Autonomous Organizations
	The Jihad has been composed of many different groups in the decade since
it's creation.  Most of these groups spontaneously formed and just as
spontaneously dissolved back into the void.  The most spectacular case of this
happened in 1997, when the venerable Blood Jihad group simply... collapsed,
leaving behind entire truckloads of equipment and a very confused subordinate
staff (the leadership having just up and vanished within the space of 24 hours). 
Some JAOs, however, manage to find a particular niche and cling to it, no matter
what the odds.

TRES Corps
	The largest of the functional JAOs, TRES Corps stands as the de facto
"leader" of the JAOs (And of the Jihad, as a majority of the Triumvirate is
composed of TRES members).  TRES was formed as the military wing of a more
esoteric group in 1993, as a supposed successor to the Knights Templar.  The
original TRES group dissolved within eighteen months, leaving only the TRES
Corps as a remnant.  From this beginning, TRES has grown rapidly, from a small
group to the single largest military contingent in the Jihad today.
	TRES Corps is divided into a number of separate Squadrons, each Squadron
being semi-autonomous.  Omega Squadron is commanded by the TRES CinC, and the
other Squadrons are commanded by other Admirals.  Zeta Squadron, the fifth
active sub-group, is the Corps research and development division, responsible
for most of TRES' overtechnology.
	The Corps is commanded by Grand Admiral Kirk Felton, a veteran of the
assault on the Pacifica POW camp, former electronics technician and member in
good standing of the Maenads. Admiral Felton took command after former Grand
Admiral Melanie Davies went on an extended sabbatical in Tibet (or just hasn't
returned yet from a pub crawl in the north of England, according to latrine
rumor).
	TRES Corps' central headquarters is a high-tech compound built in the
Colorado Rockies, deep inside ski resort territory.  The ski town of Winter
Park, and the resort, lies to the south, while Corps HQ is accessible from a
nearby private road.

Doberman Empire
	The oldest JAO still functioning, the Doberman Empire has doggedly (if
you'll excuse the pun) hacked out its niche in the Jihad over the years.  The
Empire was the first military JAO to use large numbers of soldiers and weaponry
in their battle plans (before the Empire was formed, the Jihad consisted mostly
of small commando-style groups, acting in a much more covert fashion).  The
Empire's devotion to large-scale combat caused a temporary fracture in the
Jihad's command structure, which eventually led to the formation of the Office
of the Praetor (now the Triumvirate Office) and the semi-autonomous nature of
the modern Jihad.
	For most of its existence, the Doberman Empire had been the preeminent
JAO in the Jihad.  However, a series of devastating setbacks during the X'hirjq
Invasion (losing several key global bases, as well as heavier casualties than
any other JAO) caused the Empire to cede its leadership position to TRES Corps
at the end of 1996.  Although it is still recovering from the damage it took
during the Invasion, the Empire still maintains a formidable military presence,
second only to TRES in size and equipment.
	The Empire's commanding officer is Fleet Commander Aurelius Invid
Manticore Samhain, one of the few active Jihaddi who was recruited during the
reign of the High Prophet and the Seven.  One of the most decorated Jihaddi
ever, Samhain is the reason that the Empire didn't dissolve in the aftermath of
the Invasion.
	The Doberman Empire's headquarters is Base Delta, an underground base
located somewhere in the southeastern United States, supposedly near the Ozark
Mountains.

M.A.U.L.
	Specialists in mundane mayhem and advanced tactics, this JAO has one of
the best combat success rates on record, as well as the highest amounts of
collateral damage on record.
	Despite the Jihad's accepted policy of "try not to shoot where the
mundanes can see you," MAUL always seems to end up on the wrong side of the news
cameras every time they go out to fight the Hellwyrm. MAUL's Mobile Heavy
Infantry does most of the damage, as it consists mainly of top-of-the-line U.S.
Army infantry and armor equipment.  This is a blessing in disguise, actually, as
it allows the various liaisons and other friends the Jihad has in the mundane
world to pass off MAUL MHI actions as military maneuvers, or surprise raids on
militia groups, or something that won't pass as too unusual in the average
mundane mind.
	Aggressive battle skills aside, MAUL's biggest claim to fame is the MAUL
War College.  The War College is a school devoted to the study of advanced
military strategy and tactics, especially those tactics that can be put to use
in the Hidden War.  The War College has achieved a reputation for creating
brilliant field tacticians, and many JAO officers have taken courses from there.
	MAUL is commanded by General Most Holy (obviously a pseudonym — he won't
tell us his real name), a long-term veteran Jihaddi and a respected commando
force leader.  He supervised the creation of the MHI and the War College, and is
considered a major force in the modern Jihad.
	MAUL's headquarters is located near the town of Peoria, Illinois. God
only knows why.

VRDET (Verthandic Rangers)
	VRDET occupies an unique place in the Jihad.  While the larger JAOs
focus primarily on infantry or armored combat, the Verthandic Rangers
concentrate on scout and special forces commando operations.
	The Rangers were formed from the ruins of an earlier JAO, the Blood
Jihad.  The Blood Jihad was a "traditional" infantry/armor military JAO, until
the core leadership vanished one bright Feburary morning.  This disappearance
caused the JAO to collapse overnight, leaving the second-string officers with a
huge mess to clean up.  During the cleanup process, the Blood Jihad merged with
a small R&D group called Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow.  With the pooled
resources of the two groups, the Verthandic Rangers were formed.
	VRDET's biggest claim to fame is their interdimensional strike range. 
Rangers can literally go anywhere in any universe they choose to.  In order to
keep their forces close to the action, however, the VRDET high command chooses
to restrict interdimensional travel to simple Earth-based teleportation.
	The Rangers are divided into Explorations and Research divisons,
controlled overall by Operations Director Nexxus Kline. Director Kline was the
second-string command officer left behind when the Blood Jihad collapsed.  She
is a competent, if somewhat eccentric administrator and an established combat
veteran.  The Explorations Division is run by Director Katze Brenner, a relative
newcomer to the Jihad but still respected as an administrator and leader. Katze
is also a powerful telekine and mage, talents that have helped her in several of
her adventures with the Jihad. Research is commanded by Director Damocles, again
a relative newcomer to the Jihad, but he has established himself as a steady
administrator — something the frequently out-of-control VR Research Division
needs badly.
	Although not currently in control of anything related to VRDET,
Professor Malaclypse is a formidable presence within the halls of VRDET. The
Professor is the former director of the Evil Geniuses, an elder Jihaddi, a
veteran of the X'hirjq Invasion and the mind behind VRDET's interdimensional
technology. While nominally retired from active duty in the Jihad, the Professor
remains in place as a senior advisor and "damned nuisance."
	VRDET's headquarters is located under a mountain in the Sangre de
Christo range in southern Colorado, near the town of Alamosa.

Church of St. Dino the Avenger
	The CoStDtA holds that Dino (of Flintstones fame) is the definitive
purple dinosaur and that Barney has attempted to usurp this position using his
powers of spongification to subvert peoples' minds.  Because of this, St. Dino
has vowed to see Barney overthrown and have his rightful place restored in the
hearts of the masses, thus, St. Dino the Avenger.  Of equal standing in the
Church's pantheon and friend of St. Dino is St. Rubble the Liberator (Barney,
also of Flintstones fame), whose name has also been usurped and in addition to
sharing St. Dino's vow to overthrow the Nagenta Demon and reclaim his name has
also sworn to liberate those who have fallen under its evil thrall.
	The Church is primarily dedicated to philosophical thought as opposed to
military action to overthrow Barney, but they do support the military actions of
their fellow Jihaddi in the more militaristically oriented JAOs.  This support
includes medical services, and the JAO's members are trained in both physical
and magical methods of healing.  Also, because of their focus on philosophical,
nonviolent, life-preserving methods of action, members of the CoStDtA are
sometimes sought by the Triumvirate and other JAOs as council for advice in the
proper uses of their power.
	The CoStDtA is a semi-public JAO, as they will welcome and help any who
come to them for aid.  Their existence is known publicly, although not widely
because they tend not to evangelize.  The full nature of their activities to
fight Barney, however, is not.  To those who know of them, they're probably
thought of as sort of a commune-like group, a harmless if a slightly odd bunch
who live on the lake and tend to keep to themselves.  They have no official
uniform, members wear whatever is usual for them; the only outward symbol of
membership is a small pewter pin, their logo of St. Dino and St. Rubble with the
motto "resvrgam" underneath; a consulate's pin is backed by a nine-pointed
starburst while an acolyte's is plain.  When not at the Church's headquarters in
Battle Creek, Michigan (the term church is used merely as a description of a
group of people with a certain faith, beyond the headquarters which serves as a
meeting place and living quarters there is no official church building or any
similar thing) Members are likely very scattered, either at other JAO
headquarters (as some members belong to other JAOs) or simply travelling off on
their own; they do have a fondness for amusement parks and ice cream though. 
Also, the Church, being in general a very relaxed and open-minded group of
people is, to use another's term, "the medicinal herb supplier for Jihaddi with
a loose grip on reality," though they tend to prefer the more simple "We get
weed for the rest of the Jihad."  Whether the Church grows this product
themselves or has an outside connection is not known; the Triumvirate has
decided not to question such things.

Jihad Praxeum Venificus
	The only existing college of magic in the world, the Praxeum is also the
newest JAO to be created.  Dedicated to the study and use of pure magic, the
Praxeum was formed in early 1998 to give Jihaddi mages training that they often
sorely lacked — magic being mostly unknown in the mundane world, and mage-born
Jihaddi not having any real chance to learn their limitations before being
thrust into combat.
	While still a young organization, the Praxeum has gathered the senior
Jihad mages as instructors, and has created a curriculum that allows even the
most ignorant mage to learn more about his or her powers.  In addition, the
Praxeum boasts one of the largest collections of intelligence data on the
Hellwyrm and his minions in the Jihad.
	The Praxeum is run by Arch-Chancellor Joseph Schneider, a skilled mage
and scholar, although a relative newcomer to the Jihad.  The Praxeum is still
operating out of the basements of various other JAO headquarters, but is
expected to have finished their campus in eastern Pennsylvania by the end of the
year.

Subgroups:
	In addition to the above JAOs, the Jihad also has a number of smaller
organizations operating within the larger orgs.

	Maenads of the Holy Albino: The Maenads are the super-elite warriors of
the Jihad, hand-picked by the supernatural entity Feral Jackson to go forth and
eliminate all Lyrans.  Maenads (named after the ancient worshippers of Dionysius
— and no, we don't know why) have traditionally been chosen from the upper ranks
of the Jihad, especially officers with strong combat records.  There have never
been more than eight active Maenads at any given time.
	All Maenads, regardless of origin, are given a transformational ability
when chosen.  This ability, called "warp-spasm," allows the Maenad to become a
werewolf-like creature with retractable metal claws; the metal being of the same
composition as that of the Barney-Slayer, but without the sword's special
enchantments.  Maenads are also given a "holy mission" to seek out and destroy
any Lyrans that cross their path (as Lyrans are very tough customers, this is
one reason as to why Maenads are scarce).
	The Maenads are a highly informal group, having no fixed meeting place. 
The nominal leader of the group is Slider the Feral, also known as Admiral
J-Rock of TRES Corps.

	WEDJEE: Originally a separate JAO, WEDJEE was absorbed by the Doberman
Empire early in it's career and now functions as the research arm of the Empire. 
WEDJEE is the oldest of the Jihad's R&D operations, and is responsible for much
of the Jihad's current overtechnology, including the JihadLinker network.
	WEDJEE maintains its primary offices at Doberman Base Delta, with
smaller labs and such scattered through the American South, primarily in Texas.

	Church of Grimace: The Church, a religious order composed mostly of
Doberman Empire and TRES officers, worships Grimace, the big purple thingie in
the McDonald's commercials.  It is the Church's belief that Grimace is actually
the Anti-Barney, and as such can tap into his power through prayer and study. 
While many of the more secular Jihaddi figure that the Church members have
simply gone through too many combat missions, they must be doing something
right, since the higher-ups in the Church have made reputations for themselves
as warriors and healers.
	The Church maintains chapels at both TRES and Doberman headquarters,
while only initiates know where the central temple is located.

Inter-JAO Cooperation:
	Despite the decentralized nature of most Jihaddi operations, there are
certain things that require the JAOs to work together as a unit.  These joint
operations are often run by a designated group of officers from each involved
JAO, who form the command staff and pass orders onto the troops from their JAOs. 
This is usually how short-term military operations are organized.  Long-term
operations, such as maintaining the JihadLink™ network, are put under the
management of the Triumvirate Office, who then delegates authority as needed.

--/SIDEBAR: The SS Explain Star

	The SS Explain Star occupies an... unique niche in the history of the
Jihad.  The ship itself is a modified VRDET interdimensional scout craft, crewed
mainly by rankings from TRES Corps and brethren of the Church of St. Dino the
Avenger, and operates totally independent from all three JAOs.
	The Explain Star was designed and built by VRDET R&D director Malaclypse
the Seeker, under circumstances that remain fairly hazy (Mal is on record saying
about the Explain Star "remember kids, don't drink heavily and operate a CAD/CAM
autofactory.").  The ship fell under the command of a Commander LoS of TRES
Corps, also under hazy circumstances that probably involved alcohol as well. 
Somewhere along the line, CosDtA wrangled co-jurisdiction of the crew, and
things finally came to a head when LoS declared his ship "the last warship of
the Bwahahahahaharian Empire" and refused to answer calls demanding that he
return the ship to the proper authorities.
	As the only truly independent spacecraft operating in the Jihad today,
the Explain Star wanders on patrol between Earth and Mars, watching for
B'harnate or allied attack ships approaching from the Void, and blowing up the
occasional stray rock.

/--END SIDEBAR

Jihaddi Gear
Communications
The JihadLinker
	The JihadLinker is the primary communications device used by the Jihaddi
on the street.  Every Jihaddi, no matter how low ranking, is issued a Linker
when first recruited, and the Linkers become heavily personalized as time
progresses.
	The standard-issue Linker is roughly the size of a modern TL7 personal
digital assistant; a plastic case (actually high-tech Kevlar composite) about
six inches across by four inches wide by two inches deep.  The case unfolds to
reveal a small keyboard and what looks like an LCD screen.
	There the resemblance between a Linker and a PDA ends.  The Linker is
actually a Complexity 2 miniaturized communications platform, capable of
connecting Jihaddi with voice, video, and e-mail, with minimal data loss. 
Linkers connect directly to the Jihad's private intranet (hooked up globally by
a satellite communications network), from which they can access the mundane
internet, send mail on the intranet, or call other Jihaddi.  Calls can be either
straight voice or video, although full video puts a strain on the Linker's power
cell.  The Linker can also be used as a remote terminal to various computer
systems (it comes with the proper cabling, and emulator software is available on
JihadNet.  Interestingly enough, the most popular software download is the Sony
Playstation emulator. Go figure).
	Linkers, once assigned, are keyed to work only for their designated
operators (usually through fingerprint/voiceprint or bioelectric scan locks). 
Built-in security features make sure that if a Linker is activated by somebody
other than the designated user, it will self-destruct so the device can't be
salvaged.

Weapons
X-Rifle
	When first formed, the Jihad was armed with a collection of traditional
TL7 slugthrowers and a number of exotic, unique energy weapons. While the
slugthrowers remain the sidearm of choice for most of the Jihad, a slow movement
has been gaining momentum to replace the TL7 guns with a more advanced energy
weapon.
	The X-Rifle prototype, as developed by WEDJEE in 1994, was less a rifle
than a heavy infantry cannon, powered by a mid-size fusion reactor and capable
of generating plasma shots using regular air. The design, while powerful, was
extremely unwieldy, which proved to be a severe liability during the X'hrijq
Invasion.
	Responding to the call from TRES Corps for a more portable version of
the plasma gun, WEDJEE technicians stripped the reactor and heavy
intake/compression equipment from the gun, instead using a series of capacitors
and high-frequency radio generators to excite a charge of gaseous hydrogen into
a plasma state. The resulting weapon, still called the X-Rifle (and more worthy
of the name than the original prototype) was paired with a four-round 40mm
grenade launcher.
	TRES Corps responded very favorably to the X-Rifle, and has since used
it as their standard infantry weapon. Jihaddi from the other high-tech JAOs have
also been using the X-Rifle, as the high magazine capacity and low maintenance
requirements make it an ideal gun for field service.

Vehicles
The Van In Black
	The Jihad, as a covert military force, is often unable to field the kind
of large combat vehicles that make up modern fighting forces (MAUL being the
major exception to the rule). As such, while tanks, fighters and other such and
sundry hardware are kept in reserve, the Jihad relies on smaller disguised
vehicles for basic troop movement and urban assault missions.
	The basic Covert Action Assault Vehicle — better known by field
operators as the Van in Black (ViB) — is based on the frame and body paneling of
an average Ford van, the kind used by cable installers, plumbers, and other
service personnel worldwide. The interior of the ViB however is very different.
	A basic ViB runs on a specialized TL8 high-powered gas turbine engine,
tuned to sound similar to a normal gasoline motor — and gives the ViB the raw
power necessary to outrun anything found on the Mundane roads. The turbine
powers an electric motor which turns the wheels. All of the major systems in the
ViB run on the turbine. The frame and body panels are constructed out of carbon
composite sandwiched between layers of Kevlar and titanium mesh for armoring.
The interior is designed to be as modular as possible, with room for 8 Jihaddi
in combat gear for transport missions, doors for weapons ports, and power
outlets designed to take surveilance and communications equipment.
	As the name suggests, the ViB is usually painted a glossy black, with
smoked glass windows to prevent easy identification of the driver and passengers
from a distance. When appropriate, logos of Mundane companies can be applied to
the ViB. For example, surveilance or "spin team" ViBs sometimes will be painted
with the logo of a local TV or radio news station, especially if the equipment
involves using large antennae on the roof of the van.
	Recently there has been a move to refit other Mundane vehicles in a
similar fashion. To date, prototypes of covert action vehicles including a
Toyota Echo, a full-sized semi with trailer, several species of SUV (the SUViB?
Only time will tell...) and a Learjet have been built.

Computers
WEDJEE lapframe
	In order to provide high-powered computers to Jihaddi in the field, the
boffins at WEDJEE developed their CRAIT lapframe, a TL9 Complexity 4 portable
computer with the equivalent computing power of a TL7 supercomputer. The
lapframe is essentially the same size and outward design as a traditional
Mundane laptop, and frequently ‘frames are given fake brand labels in order to
keep outsiders from suspecting anything is out of the ordinary.
	Inside, the lapframe is very similar to the JihadLinker, the major
difference being the ‘frame is designed as a general-purpose computer as opposed
to the dedicated communications systems inside a Linker. Lapframes are used
primarily by science-minded Jihaddi to investigate enemy-related phenomenon,
although they can prove useful in hacking Mundane computers. Dedicated lapframe
processors are often used to run automated tasks in R&D facilities or inside
specially-modified buildings.
	
The Stuff Mad Scientists' Dreams Are Made Of - Jihad Ubertechnology
Artificial Intelligence (TL11+)
	With all the advances in computer technology available to the Jihad, it
is not terribly surprising that artificial intelligences have been developed. In
fact, it is probably more surprising that AIs are not nearly as common in the
Jihad as they are!
	Jihaddi AIs are traditionally the realm of WEDJEE, the original R&D
group and fount for most of the common devices in use the in the current Jihad.
The WEDJEE AI code was developed by DE Fleet Commander Samhain (at the time
calling himself Captain Midnight), as a way to provide for autonomous vehicles.
The code itself is still highly classified, and nobody outside of WEDJEE knows
how or even why it works. All that is really known about the WEDJEE AI code is
that it is capable of generating sentient programs with unique personalities.
Most of the AIs created by WEDJEE act as sysadmins for Doberman Empire bases or
vehicles.
	Non-WEDJEE AIs are found scattered through the Jihad, usually they are 
coded by senior research staff using a variety of programming techniques. Most
follow the path of their WEDJEE brethren, becoming sysadmins or majordomos for
Jihad bases.
	The most interesting exception to this rule is TRES officer Cdr. Daniel
Wood. Cdr. Wood is an artificial intelligence, but he is not the creation of any
Jihaddi. While the story is unclear and at times outright contradictory, it
appears that Cdr. Wood was the accidental creation of a group of Mundane
cybernetics researchers that escaped into the Internet and eventually found
refuge in a TRES database. Cdr. Wood currently serves as both Zeta Squad
majordomo and (with the help of a modified combat mecha) infantry officer.

The Gateway (TL16)
	Buried deep in the heart of the VRDET command center Mt. Blanca lies the
ultimate expression of Jihaddi ubertechnology and the unbridled creativity of
the human mind.
	Inside a large chamber sits the world's only functional interdimensional
wormhole generator — known simply as the Gateway. The Gateway takes up most of
the chamber, leaving a stage in the center for people to access the wormhole.
Mission control for the Gateway is in a nearby room with windows to look into
the main chamber. From here the wormhole can be generated, connected to any
known point (or lock on to a strong beacon signal) and monitored for signs of
collapse. All this requires incredible amounts of power, so the Gateway is
connected to the base's four fusion reactors, and even then can cause temporary
brownouts through the rest of the base.
	The Gateway is the brainchild of Professor Malaclypse (VRDET, ret.), who
developed the initial theory for interdimensional travel while still working
with the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow. Construction of the Gateway was
delayed several times due to the X'hirjq Invasion and subsequent reorganization
of the Evil Geniuses into VRDET. However, once the Gateway was completed, it
became the backbone of the Rangers, giving them unprecedented mobility, far
above that of the other JAOs.
	Since inception, the Gateway has been brought to full power only a few
times, the most notable of which being the rescue of VR Councilor Katze Brenner
from the alternate-medieval nation of Marraketh. Beyond that, the Gateway has
been used to map alternate universes in search of the Jihad's number-one
potential target: The home realm of the Hellwyrm B'harne.

Character Types	
 Soldier 		
75 points
	The soldier is the backbone of the Jihad.  Since the Jihad is a military
crusade first and foremost, a great deal of care is put into selecting members
of the rank-and-file. Most of the Jihad's soldiers have had some background with
the mundane military — usually as volunteers out of high school.  Some are
retired Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force, and work as teachers for the new recruits
(see Instructors).  Many, however, are adventurers who've stumbled upon the
Jihad through random happenstance, and are asked to join the fight.
	Soldiers, obviously, outnumber the rest of the types of Jihaddi hands
down.  Every single man at arms is different — magic, psionics, odd combat
styles, and other things never found in a "normal" military unit are very
abundant in the Jihad's standing army.  Surprisingly enough, this... diverse
group of people manages to work well as a single, cohesive group under combat
conditions, despite all the differences they have when not working.
	PC soldiers are, obviously, already standing members of a JAO, and use
that JAO's ranking system.  NPC soldiers are generally ranked using basic US
Army non-commissioned ranks (Private 1st Class to Sgt. Major), on the
presumption that PC characters are automatically "commissioned officers" in
their JAO.  Soldiers of either type wear the basic duty uniform of their JAO,
and are equipped with the latest in overtechnology combat gear.

Attribtues: ST: 12 [20]  DX: 12 [20]  IQ: 11 [10]  HT: 12 [20].
Advantages: Ally Group / (The Jihad) [40 points], and 30 points from any of the
following: Acute Hearing [2], Acute Vision [2], Alertness [5/level], Ambidextery
[10], Combat Reflexes [15]. Common Sense [10], Damage Resistance [3/level],
Danger Sense [15], Fit [5], Luck [15/30], Unfazeable [15], Very Fit [15], Voice
[10], and Zeroed [10].
Disadvantages:  Duty / (to JAO) [-15], Enemy / (Barney & Friends) [-30], Secret
/ (Member of the Jihad) [-20], and -30 points from Bad Temper [-10], Berserk
[-15], Bloodlust [-10], Code of Honor [-5 to -15], Fanaticism [-15], Glory Hound
[-15], Obsession [-5 to -15], Paranoia [-10], Post-Combat Shakes [-5], and
Unluckiness [-10]
Primary Skills: Beam Weapons (X-Rifle) DX+3 [4]-15; Leadership (M/A) IQ [2]-11;
Savoir-Faire(Military) IQ [1]-11; Tactics IQ-1 [2]-10.
Secondary Skills: Guns (Pistols) DX+2 [2]-14, Knife DX+1 [2 points]-13; and 10
points* from Armoury (Rifles and handguns), Aviation, Camouflage, Demolition,
Electronics Operation (Sensors), Electronics Operation (Communications),
Engineer (Combat), Forward Observer, Guns (Automatics), Gunner (Machine Gun),
Gunner (Rocket Launcher), Hiking, Mechanic, Orienteering, Parachuting, Piloting
(Helicopter, High-Performance Airplane or Light Airplane), Stealth, more points
in Tactics, and Throwing.
Background Skills: Driving (Autmobile) (P/A) DX-1 [1]-11; First Aid IQ [1
point]-11; and a total of 5 points in Brawling, Guns (Any), Jumping, Knife,
Swimming (P/A); Boating, Climbing, Diving, Short Sword (Any) (P/A); Judo (P/A);
Karate (P/H); Survival (Any) (M/A); Strategy (M/A); or additional points in
speciality skills.
	*The general idea is to build a logical skill set, not a combat monster.

Researchers:
 93 points
	As the war progresses, the Jihad needs to keep itself current with the
enemy.  To accomplish this end, each JAO has a sizable staff of researchers,
devoted to creating new weapons, collecting and sorting through intelligence
reports, and generally ensuring that the Jihad can defeat the worst that the
Hellwyrm and it's comrades can throw at them.
	(NPC) Researchers are often recruited at occult gatherings,
science-fiction conventions, or other places where large numbers of educated and
intelligent people with an interest in unusual phenomenon gather.  Often, the
recruit will have learned of the Jihad through his own studies and interest, and
be asked to join.
	The average PC researcher often has a combat role as well (since most
PCs usually end up in the middle of a battle), and, as usual, is ranked
accordingly with the command structure of the JAO they belong to.  NPC
researchers are often unranked (as non-combat personnel, they have more of a
"civilian" feel to them) and are involved in laboratory or library research into
new technologies or the occult background of the enemy.

Attributes: ST: 10 [0] DX: 11 [10]  IQ: 13 [30]  HT: 11 [10]             
Advantages: Ally Group (The Jihad) [40 points], and 30 additional points from
Alertness [5/level], Ambidexterity [10], Composed [5], Intuition [15], Intuitive
Mathematician [25], Language Talent [2/level], Lightning Calculator [5],
Unfazeable [15] and Voice [10].
Disadvantages: Duty / (to JAO) [-15], Enemy / (Barney & Fiends) [-30], and -30
additional points from Absent-Mindedness [-15], Age (years over 50) [3/level],
Bad Sight [-10], Curious [-3/level], Hard of Hearing [-10], Honesty [-10],
Oblivious [-3], Obsession (The subject of research) [-5 to -15], Reputation
(Bookworms & geeks.) [-5], Unfit [-5], Unluckiness [-10] and Weirdness Magnet
[-15].
Primary Skills: Computer Operation IQ+1 [2]-14; Research IQ+4 [6]-17; Writing
IQ+3 [8]-17.
Secondary Skills: Choose 8 points worth of skill* in any three of the following: 
Alchemy, Anthropology, Archaeology, Artifical Intelligence, Biochemistry,
Chemistry, Computer Hacking, Computer Programming, Cryptanalysis, Cryptology,
Diagnosis, Electronics, Engineer, Forensics, Genetics, History, Literature,
Mathematics, Metallurgy, Nuclear Physics, Occultism, Paleontology, Philosophy,
Physics, Psychology, Physician, Science!, Surgery, Theology, Weird Science,
Xenobiology (Lyran or Hellwyrm) and Zoology.
Background Skills: Driving (Automobile) (P/A) DX-1 [1]-10; First Aid IQ [1]-13;
Guns (Pistol) DX+2 [1]-13 and 5 points from Beam Weapons (X-Rifle), Guns (Any),
Knife, Short Sword (Any) (P/A); Judo (P/A); Survival (Any) (M/A); Tactics (M/H);
or additional points in specialty skills.
	*This will give you IQ+3 for (M/A) skills, IQ+2 for (M/H) skills, and IQ
for (M/VH) skills. Also note that some of these skills have prerequisites

Technicians:
87 points
	When the research staffs develop a new way to blow up an enemy conclave,
somebody has to build it.  The Jihad's technical staff is small, but consists of
some of the most skilled people on the planet today.  Techs are recruited from
many of the same places as the researchers are, but are put to the task of
turning theories into workable hardware.
	Again, as with the researchers, PC techs usually have combat skills as
well as technical skills, and, again, are ranked within the command structure of
their parent JAO.  NPC techs, again, are much like NPC researchers, save for the
fact that the techs build the stuff that the researchers design.

Attributes: ST: 10 [0]  DX: 12 [20]  IQ: 13 [30]  HT: 11 [10]
 Advantages: Ally Group / (The Jihad) [40]; Gizmo [5]; and 30 additional points
from Acute Hearing [2/level], Acute Vision [2/level], Alertness [5/level],
Breath-Holding (inventions sometimes start to smoke) [2/level], Combat Reflexes
[15], Damage Resistance [3/level], Danger Sense [15], Fit [5], Intuitive
Mathematician [25], Lightning Calculator [15], Luck [15/30], Rapid Healing [5],
Unfazeable [15] and Voice [10].
Disadvantages:  Duty (to their JAO) [-15]; Enemy (Barney & Fiends) [-30], and
-35 additional points from Absent-Mindedness [-15], Attentive [-1], Bad Sight
[-10], Brontophobia (fear of loud noses) [-10], Curious [-5 to -15], Hard of
Hearing [-10], Impulsiveness [-10] Oblivious [-3], Odious Personal Habit ("Never
stops talking about latest invention.") [-5], Reputation (Dangerous Mad
Scientist) [-5] and Unluckiness [-10].
Primary Skills: Computer Operation (M/E) IQ+2 [4]-15; Electronics Operation
(Any) (M/A) IQ [2]-13; Engineer (M/H) IQ [4]-13.
Secondary Skills:  Choose 8 points worth of skill in any three of the following
skills: Armoury, Aviation, Battlesuit, Computer Hacking, Computer Programming,
Driving (Jihad Special Vehicle), Electronics, Exoskeleton, Hyperspace Physics,
Mathematics, Mechanic, Metallurgy, Nuclear Physics, Physics, Piloting
(High-Performance Aircraft), Research, Science!, Shipbuilding (Starship),
Temporal Physics, and Weird Science.
Background Skills: Driving (Automobile) (P/A) DX-1 [1]-10; First Aid IQ [1]-13;
Guns (Pistol) DX+2 [1]-14 and 5 points from Beam Weapons (X-Rifle), Guns (Any),
Knife, Short Sword (Any) (P/A); Judo (P/A); Survival (Any) (M/A); Tactics (M/H);
or additional points in specialty skills.
	*This will give you IQ+3 for (M/A) skills, IQ+2 for (M/H) skills, and IQ
for (M/VH) skills. Also note that some of these skills have prerequisites.

Instructors: 
98 points
	Often, new Jihaddi are young and very inexperienced.  In combat, this
can be an incredibly dangerous situation — for themselves and the people around
them.  So, to cut down on the number of rookies getting themselves killed on
their first mission, each JAO has a group of experienced officers (usually
retired Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force) whose job it is to train the younger
recruits in the ancient arts of killing other living things.
	At the same time, research and technical staffs have teachers as well*. 
In addition to getting the new people up to speed with the Jihad's existing
technology (which is, on average, around a century ahead of current
state-of-the-art, with few exceptions), the research/tech instructors hold
frequent seminars to allow the entire staff to stay current structure of
whichever NPC field they're involved in (Soldier, Researcher, or Technician),
usually as middle-ranked or high-ranked members.

Attributes: ST: 12 [20]  IQ: 12 [20]  DX: 11 [10]  HT: 11 [10]
 Advantages: Ally Group / (The Jihad) [40]; Voice [10], and 25 additional points
from Acute Hearing [2/level], Acute Vision [2/level], Alcohol Tolerance [5],
Ambidexterity [10], Charisma [5/level], Combat Reflexes [15], Composed [5],
Fearlessness [2/level], Fit [5], Imperturbable [10], Intuition [15], Strong Will
[4/level], Very Fit [15], and Unfazeable [15].
Disadvantages: Bad Temper [-10], Duty / (to their JAO) [-15], Enemy / (Barney &
Friends) [-30], and -30 additional points from Appearance (Unattractive) [-5],
Bully [-10], Fanaticism [-15], Hidebound [-5], Odious Personal Habit (NEVER!
STOPS! SHOUTING!) [-10] and Sense of Duty ("Train the fresh meat right or they
get killed.") [-10],
Primary Skills: Bard IQ [2]-12; Guns (Any) DX+2 [1]-13; Leadership IQ [2]-12;
Savoir-Faire (Military) IQ+1 [2]-13; Tactics IQ [4]-12; Teaching IQ [2]-12.
Secondary Skills: Choose a total of 24 points in the following skills: Acting,
Beam Weapons (X-Rifle), Body Language, Boxing, Camouflage, Climbing, Demolition,
Escape, Fast-Draw (Pistol), Fencing, Forward Observer, Gunner (Machine Gun),
Gunner (Rocket Launcher), Guns (Pistol), Guns (Rifle), Hiking, Holdout,
Intimidation, Judo, Jumping, Karate, Knife, Knife Throwing, Parachuting,
Scrounging, Shadowing, Short Sword, Staff, Stealth, Style Analysis, Survival
(Any), Swimming, Throwing, Tracking, Traps, Underwater Demolition and Wrestling,
Background Skills: Computer Operation IQ [1]-12; Driving (Automobile) (P/A) DX
[2]-13; First Aid IQ+1 [2]-13; and 6 additional points, in Area Knowledge
(Urban), Mechanic, Motorcycle, Running, Scuba, Skiing or additional ponts in
specialty skills.
	* Research and technical Instructors use the same template as a normal
Researcher or Technician, but add the skills Bard, Leadership, and Teaching at
IQ+1.

Liaisons:
 109 points
	The Liaison (not to be confused with the Lyran Liaisons) walks a very
fine (and oftentimes dangerous) line between the Jihad and the rest of the
world.  Liaisons are Jihaddi who operate safehouses and dummy corporations, or
work as members of a mundane organization (such as the police or local
government).  The liaison's main job is to keep the Jihad's operations safely
undercover, protect any Jihaddi who're dumb enough to get caught out in the
open, and spread enough misinformation about the Jihad that nobody in the
mundane world knows the truth.
	Liaisons are usually people who still have families outside the Jihad,
or some other obligation that prevents them from going completely underground. 
This makes the liaison something of a security risk, since should the enemy find
out about a liaison and his/her loved ones, it could make life very dangerous
for that liaison.

Attributes: ST: 10 [0]  DX: 12 [20]  IQ: 13 [30]  HT: 12 [20]
Advantages: Ally Group / (The Jihad) [15], Charisma+2 [10], Danger Sense [15],
Language Talent+2 [4], Strong Will [4]
Disadvantages: Duty (to the Jihad) [-10], Enemy (Barney & Friends) [-20], Secret
(member of underground terrorist org; i.e. the Jihad) [-20].
Primary Skills: Acting IQ+1 [4]-14; Area Knowledge (wherever the Liaison happens
to be stationed) IQ+1 [2]-17; Diplomacy IQ [4]-13, Fast-Talk IQ+1 [4]-14;
Savoir-Faire IQ+1 [2]-14.
Secondary Skills: A total of 16 points from: Boxing, Brawling, Carousing,
Computer Hacking, Computer Operation, Detect Lies, Disguise, Electronics
Operation (Any), Erotic Art, Escape, Fast-Draw, Forgery, Fortune-Telling,
Intelligence Analysis, Interrogation, Intimidation, Judo, Karate, Law,
Lip-Reading, Lockpicking, Performance, Pickpocket, Politics, Scrounging, Sex
Appeal, Scrounging, Shadowing, Sleight of Hand, Streetwise, Stealth, Traps,
Ventroliquism and Video Production.
Background Skills: Driving (Automobile) (P/A) DX-1 [1]-10; First Aid IQ [1]-13;
Guns (Pistol) DX+2 [1]-14, and six points in any of the following: Forward
Observer, Mechanic, Orienteering, Piloting (Light Aircraft), Powerboat,
Strategy, Survival (Any), Tactics, or additional points in specialty skills.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 3: BLACK HATS AND BASTARDS

B'harne
	B'harne, somewhat unsurprisingly,  is the Jihad to Destroy B'harne the
Purple Dinosaur's  primary adversary. 
	There are various magical, philosophical, and  religious theories within
the Jihad about what B'harne really is.  Some say he's a particularly powerful
demon, some call him a minion of Satan or similar religious figure, and some say
he's a manifestation of evil itself, but his exact nature remains unknown beyond
those various theories.  This is because he has been slightly different every
time he's appeared to directly face the Jihad; if once he is vanquished with a
sword the next time powerful magic may be required to defeat him, or something
completely unanticipated.
	B'harne started as a nameless, formless, adversarial entity.  This
entity was given form and name when, after a vision that humans would cause his
destruction, the Lyran High Mage Charn'El, attempted to summon a demon to help
him  destroy humanity.  The demon Charn'El had selected resisted  its summoning,
and rather than be refused he forced it, when the beast finally emerged it was
mangled, deformed, and a little too ripped up to suit the High Mage's purposes. 
Something about this failed summoning attracted the entity, and before Charn'El
could close his portal it forced its way through, giving itself the name and
form of B'harne.  Charn'El, an opportunist if nothing else, struck a deal with
B'harne and thus gained an ally in the quest to destroy or enslave humanity
despite the failed summoning.  Though he appears physically quite often, there
must be some part of B'harne's formless nature that does not incorporate itself
into his various manifestations, because he is always able to appear again if a
particular manifestation is struck down.  Eventually, B'harne will be somehow
forced to draw even that remaining formless part of himself into a physical
manifestation and while the resulting manifestation would be quite powerful, it
would also enable the B'harne Slayer to destroy him completely.
	Most prominent and most used among B'harne's abilities are
mesmerization, or spongification as the Jihad calls it.  B'harne's ability to
mesmerize and stupefy humans is very strong, both through direct contact or
intermediaries such as toys and television.  This power is strong enough that a
completely mesmerized/spongified human, a sponge-minion, will not only fight for
B'harne but sometimes will completely forget whatever personality he or she
might've had before.  How he does this is not understood, it is some combination
tone of voice, movement, and what he says; though there is also likely something
intangible and possibly magical that helps him sway the will of human beings. 
As magic is part of his being rather than a force he draws from around him,
B'harne is also quite adept in using many forms of magic, with spells that
spongify among them. And though he is likely quite physically strong, he prefers
to use sponge minions or other servants or allies in direct, physical 
confrontations.

BJ and Baby Bop
	B'hee J'hay and B'haby B'hop, as they are alternatively known, are
B'harne's chief lieutenants.  Subordinate manifestations of the same adversarial
force from which B'harne draws his corporeal form and power, their existence and
power are an extension of his will.  Their functions are many: they have skills
in magic and mesmerization similar to B'harne's (but of lesser strength, they
have been known to oversee important operations or lead troops for B'harne both
individually and together, and working in conjunction they can greatly magnify
B'harne's ability to mesmerize and spongify a large group of people.  Because
their entire existence is subject to B'harne's will, neither BJ nor Baby Bop can
be truly destroyed until B'harne himself is; they can be struck down (and have
been many times) with conventional or magical weapons, but will eventually
return if B'harne still exists.  When B'harne is finally and completely
destroyed, BJ and Baby Bop will either disappear along with the power that
sustains them or, 	more likely, their power will be greatly diminished and
they will be easily defeated.

The Minion Horde

Sponge Minions
	Sponge minions are humans who have become so enraptured with B'harne via
his powers of mesmerization that they have lost a majority of cognitive ability;
they're called sponge minions because of a longstanding Jihad joke about their
brains eventually turning into sponge.  The average sponge minion has very
little reasoning capacity beyond "B'harne is my friend," and for that reason
they appear most often doing very simplistic jobs.  Foot soldiers, disseminators
of propaganda, cannon fodder or a distraction against a Jihad military force, or
sometimes simply just there.  B'harne doesn't necessarily spongify for a
specific reason, it's the primary means by which he intends to dominate
humanity.  Sometimes, if caught early enough, spongification can be cured and a
sponge minion can be returned to complete functionality as a human being.  There
are many methods of despongification as the Jihad calls it, the vast majority of
which involving completely isolating a sponge from B'harne's influence then
inundating it with sensations that run contrary to B'harne's teachings; Jolt
Cola, junk food, and loud music are very prevalent among the various
despongification methods.  Because it seeks to save humanity and not just blow
up selective bits of it, the Jihad expends considerable efforts toward
despongification.

--/SIDEBAR: Spongification

	Spongification is the proccess through which Barney enslaves his minions
and keeps them otherwise under his direct control. This is usually accomplished
through repeated viewings of the Barney TV show, along with singing the theme
song over and over until the subject's brain begins to ooze out of his ears. It
can also be done through magic, psionics, or a direct encounter with the
Hellwyrm itself.
	When under the gun of active spongification attempts (as opposed to a
minion idly humming the theme song under his breath or something; this has to be
an actual attempt to spongify somebody), make a Will roll every 2d minutes that 
you're in the area or the spongifying material is active. Each failure erodes
your Will by 1. When your Will is 5 points below your IQ, you become Spongified
(see page 84) and require either rescuing or a quick death. A critical success
on any Will roll during this contest means that the attack has failed. A
critical failure means that the attack has succeeded.

/--END SIDEBAR

Wyrm Minions
	Wyrm minions are humans who have discovered the truth about B'harne's
nature and, rather than go insane, become spongified, or fight him have decided
to join him for money, power, ego, or simply out of sadism.  They are far more
dangerous than sponge minions as they have all their mental capacity, and the
type of person who becomes a wyrm minion is often rather devious and at least
somewhat lacking in compassion.  Wyrm minions are given a large variety of jobs
in B'harne's organization: many just perform functions they did in Mundania,
others are used as officers to lead sponge minions, some help to oversee the
Lyons Group or other special projects for B'harne, and a very select few are
chosen for their intelligence, ruthlessness, dedication, command ability, and
long-term service to be Liaisons.  Liaison is the highest post a human can
achieve in B'harne's organization; they often operate rather independently
within the organization as there is no direct chain of command for them, but all
know who they are and that an order from a Liaison is to be obeyed immediately
or the consequences will be dire.  Because of the extraordinary standards
B'harne holds for one to wield such power for him, the number of wyrm minions
even with the potential to be a Liaison is very small, and the number who
actually hold the post smaller.

The Liaisons
	Each commands an important unit of the Purple Forces.  There are other
humans of almost equal standing, but not quite as skilled as these.  To be a
"Liaison to Command for the Division of ___(whatever)__" indicates command
ability, long-term service, and exceptional talent in the necessary skills.
	They are the rank where the simple, centralized chain-of-command of
sponge- and Wyrm- Minion forces ceases.  Above them are only
non-humans(primarily Lyrans) or humans who are so  devoted to B'harnii(with,
e.g., ritual oaths and such) that they have lost a substantive part of their
humanity.  Collectively referred to as "the Brass," these individuals work
closely with the ultimate leaders of the Purple Forces and keep the Forces
coordinated and under control.  Despite having no clear chain of command(that
humans would understand), Liaisons know that any order from them is to be obeyed
explicitly and immediately, as it will not be contradicted by another unless
conditions change... in which case the latest order is now to be obeyed
absolutely.

Current Liaisons:
	Kajj:  A very traditional battlefield captain.  Tall, slightly tanned,
and bald as an egg but extremely tough.  Foregoes most technological equipment
in favor of hand weapons(bows, swords) and troops.  He is skilled at commanding
spongin troops and has a very high rate of success with them.
	Arill:  Arill cares nothing for command or wealth, beyond the
necessities of a life of hedonism once B'harne is successful in subjugating
humanity.  He heads the R&D department, since he has a supremely nasty
imagination that's impressed some Lyrans once or twice.  Put a sword or other
weapon in his hand though, and he's just as likely to injure himself as anything
else.
	Gherin:  Unlike his fellow Liaisons, Gherin only possesses average
intelligence.  It is his proficiency on the battlefield that earned him his
post, as well as his ability to train others nearly to that level of
proficiency.  His men are a tightly-trained, strong group of almost entirely
wyrm minion soldiers as he despises sponges and uses them only in a last resort. 
Continued demonstrations of his ability and success of his ability as a strike
leader maintain his standing as a Liaison.
	Linna:  The only current female Liaison, Linna's warm smile and
down-home, motherly style only hide a warped and completely round-the-bend
insane mind.  She administers and maintains spongification measures like music,
food, and other influences.
	Winston:  An actual public figure, and probably the most frustrating of
the Liaisons to the Jihad due to his squeaky clean public image despite the
amount of legal manipulation and maneuvering he uses to keep B'harne and Friends
on the air.
	Serevan:  An organizer and paper pusher of extraordinary talent, Serevan
can take control of any situation and reduce it to numbers and procedures.  His
orderliness is held up by the Brass as an example to the troops and to wyrm
minions alike.  Machinelike lack of care or empathy of any kind contribute to
his cold, distant, ruthless, and quite accurate reputation.

Former Liaisons:
	Rhyn:  A technological genius of incredible deviousness.  Manipulative
and arrogant in the extreme, it was Rhyn who primarily orchestrated the events
of Operation Home Front; his arrogance also lead to his ultimate failure and
death in that operation.
	Faide:  A misandrist female whose small taste for command lead her to
subtle jobs working behind the scenes in Intelligence or other support roles,
which in her opinion were far more valuable and requiring of greater
intelligence than some of the roles her colleagues played.  Though the exact
circumstances of her death during Operation Home Front are unknown to the Jihad,
it is suspected she was executed by Lyrans.
	Painter:  A code name and the only one known.  His true name and job are
unknown to the Jihad, it is believed he was possibly an internal spy of some
sort.  As a result of his betrayal of traitorous allies to his superiors during
Home Front he has been promoted from his Liaison position and transformed into
an empowered disembodied spirit linked directly to B'harne; the reason for the
promotion and the nature of his transformation are also unknown to the Jihad.

Weaponry and tactics
	It has already been said that B'harne's primary method of conquering and
dominating humanity lies in using his innate powers to very thoroughly
brainwash/spongify people and eliminate resistance that way. B'harne by his very
nature is entirely magical, before he existed on this plane he was formless in
his own, and when he did manifest a corporeal form he was able to do so because
he was attracted by great expenditures of magical power and used his own ability
to manipulate magical energies to force his way here.  So  technology and
technological solutions to problems are foreign to B'harne, and would never be
considered the primary means to achieve a goal of his.  B'harne has no standing
armies or navies or space fleets or any formal military force of any kind.  In
fact, though he wields a vast amount of power and control over huge numbers of
people and things, there are few any real meeting or congregation places for
them. Most of his tangible centers of power are perfectly visible places of
business and factories and other bits of Mundania that his various minions run. 
Whatever military B'harne has is used not as a means of dominance but purely in
opposition to the Jihad, if for no other reason than that's the way they
generally expect to be opposed; if the Jihad is fighting his minions and
concentrating its might into forces which can only destroy those minions then it
is not concentrating its might against him directly.
	Such an oppositional force is assembled as needed from sponge and wyrm
minions and/or allies and if it uses any technology beyond the most basic that
would already be on hand that technology is assembled specifically for that
force.

Character templates
Spongin: 25 to 100 points
	Spongin are the most common element in B'harne's forces, and all are
simplistic in the extreme.  Even a "smart" sponge minion would only be capable
of operating extremely simple machines, and most can merely simple  follow
orders.  "Are you my friend?" and various things about B'harne being good
constitutes most of what sponge minions would say; there is little character
template for them because they have little character.

Mercenaries of the Wyrm: 100+ points, as needed
	These are far more varied, as they serve B'harne either temporarily or
on a long-term basis for personal gain rather than because they've been
spongified.  Wyrm minions mostly, they can be scientists, engineers, soldiers,
businessmen, lawyers, occasionally one malevolent alien race or another, and
some of the really nasty ones are even politicians.  As the term implies,
mercenaries working for B'harne are doing so for personal gain.  A wyrm minion
might join B'harne's cause for power, out of greed or maybe cruelty, general
hatred for the rest of humanity, or even arrogance and the knowledge they're
part of something most people don't know about.  Depending on motivation and
personality, they would give anywhere from superficial acknowledgement of
B'harne's cause to extreme devotion.  More independent mercenaries would have
simpler motivations, most often money or possibly powerful technology or magic.
They would have little to no real allegiance to B'harne or his cause, and 
humans of this sort are far more infrequent than wyrm minions. Various alien
species, however, would more commonly be more independent mercenaries or even
allies.

Lyrans
	The Lyrans are a race of magic users originating from a planet called,
of all things, Lyra, who are allied with B'harne.  They have been ruled for many
millennia by the High Mage Charn'El, who is immortal and possibly the most
powerful wizard in the known universe.
	Sometime between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago, Charn'El had a startling
vision during what was otherwise a routine meditation.  Charn'El saw in this
vision that Lyra and its inhabitants would eventually be defeated and destroyed
by humans, a relatively primitive and until then totally ignored race from a
planet in an obscure and relatively unpopulated arm of a seemingly insignificant
spiral galaxy.  Startled by the vision and its content as he was, Charn'El was
unwilling to completely ignore it.  After careful consideration, Charn'El,
showing the typical Lyran desire to not become personally involved in conflict,
decided to summon a demon to destroy the race of primitives who somehow the
universe thought were fated to destroy his people.  After finally selecting a
being he deemed to be of sufficient power, Charn'El went about gathering his
power to summon the beast.  In its latter stages, the summoning went awry, the
demon resisted and was eventually mangled and killed when Charn'El refused to
accept the beast's resistance and expended great energy in forcing it. 
Attracted by that expenditure of energy, the entity that would soon call itself
B'harne took over and redirected the portal Charn'El had opened into a plane of
existence much like B'harne's own, and used it to force his way into this plane. 
Never one to pass up any sort of opportunity, Charn'El disregarded the failed
summoning and soon struck a bargain with the new and far more powerful creature
to enslave humanity.
	It was not long after that time, no more than a few centuries, that the
Lyrans in one of their investigations of Earth first met and battled with the
ancestors of the beings that would eventually call themselves the Maenads of the
Holy Albino.  Thus the mutual hatred between the Maenads and the Lyrans long
predates the Jihad and is now ingrained in the psyche of each group.
	Very recently, 1947 on Earth's Christian calendar according to the
Maenads, the Lyrans opened a magical gateway between their world and Earth to
supplant their normal methods of transportation; the Maenads call this gateway
The Babylon Road.  It is at that point that B'harne began to more directly
influence humanity in  preparation for its eventual subjugation and also a time
when Lyrans began to assist of influence B'harne's campaign in greater numbers. 
At that time though, the Lyran presence on Earth was relatively small due both
to its rare nature (Lyrans rarely directly involve themselves, previous visits
had always been brief and only to gather information) and because the true
significance of Earth and its population had only been divulged to a small
percentage of Lyrans.

Weaponry and tactics
	A Lyran's only weapon is his (or hers, not much way to tell behind the
masks and robes) ability with magic.  Lyrans are born with an innate magical
ability, the very few who aren't are shunned outcasts and not even thought of as
true Lyrans by their fellows.  They consider technology beneath them, something
used only by slaves and the other inferior life forms those slaves are sent to
kill.  If Lyrans need some sort of tool to do something for them or to aid them
in doing something they find a life form which is suitable to the task and warp
and mutate it to fit their specific needs, which invariably means the complete
destruction of any culture the subject species might have had and continued
existence only in mindless servitude to Lyra; for a higher-ranking mage, even a
simple staff or mask is a living creature.  Even their ability to mutate
organisms on genetic, psychological, and spiritual levels has its roots in
magic.
	The most spectacular example of this sort of manipulation and mutation
of other life forms to suit Lyran needs is what most perceive to be a Lyran
space fleet.  Lyrans have no space ships or fleet the way most would imagine it,
they are not use to directly oppose other spacecraft or dominate space in any
way, but transportation and quarters and as a magical tool.  Long, long ago the
Lyrans encountered an entire race of huge spacefaring beings with an innate
ability to travel through space without technology and saw tremendous potential
and opportunity in them.  After defeating and enslaving them the Lyrans began to
gradually change what they were, they were grown larger and given the ability to
hold and transport Lyrans within themselves, all conscious ability was removed
so that one would not be able to do anything without a Lyran mind to control it,
their innate abilities were fine tuned, and, most  significantly, their ability
to store and focus certain magical energies was greatly enhanced.  These living
vessels are now used by groups of Lyrans to combine magical ability and focus it
into a vessel's innate ability for an extremely efficient method of magical
travel.  Groups of Lyrans (or for the rare eighth circle mage or Charn'El
himself, single mages) can use them to travel vast distances with only having
expended a fraction of the magical energy a more conventional teleportation
spells and in far less time.

Character template

164 points
Attributes: ST 9 [-10]; DX 11 [10]; IQ 11 [10]; HT 10 [0]
Advantages: Animal Empathy [5]; Appearance - Attractive [5]; Combat Reflexes
[15]; Magery+3 [35]; Unaging [15].
Disadvantages: Code of Honor (serve the High Mage and the Lyran race to the best
of my abilities, do not allow myself to look weak to my inferiors) [-10]; Duty
(to the High Mage, almost all the time)[-20]; Intolerance (humans) [-5];
Paranoia [-10]; Vow (to destroy humanity) [-15]; Weakness (Owsenite-2, very
rare, 1d per minute) [-10].
Skills: Alchemy-11 [8]; Body Sense-10 [2]; Breath Control-12 [12]; Flight-11
[2]; Illusion Art-12 [6]; Language  (Lyran, M/VH)-15 [24]; Meditation-12 [12];
Occultism-13 [6]; Ritual Magic (Lyran)-11 [8]; Rune-Lore (Lyran)-11 [8];
Sacrifice-12 [6]; Spell Throwing-12 [2]; Symbol Drawing-12 [6]; Thaumatology-11
[1]; Theology-12 [6].

Spells: The stats above list a Lyran without his grimoire. The amount and number
of spells a Lyran knows is determined by his circle:
	1st Circle: 40 points in basic spells from the Animal, Plant, Air,
Earth, Fire, Water and Protection colleges.
	2nd Circle: 40 additional points in more advanced spells from the 1st
Circle colleges, plus an additional 20 points on 1st Circle spells.
	3rd Circle: 40 points in spells from Body Control,
Communication/Empathy, Enchantment, Healing, Illusion, and/or Knowledge, plus
another 20 points on 2nd Circle spells and 10 points on 1st Circle spells.
	4th Circle: 40 points in spells from Light, Meta, Mind Control,
Necromancy, plus another 30 points in spells for the pervious circle spells.
	5th Circle: All spells from previous circles should be IQ+2 at a
minimum.
	6th Circle: All spells from previous circles should be IQ+2, plus
player-determined specialization in college (anything but Tech college) at IQ+3.
	7th Circle: All spells from previous circles at IQ+3 minimum, plus
specializations at IQ+4.
	8th Circle: All spells from previous circles at IQ+4, plus advanced
spells in their specialization at IQ+5.

	The High Mage: Charn'El isn't so much an active character as he is, like
B'harne, a force of nature. You can assume that he has all the spells in every
college (except Tech) at an effective skill of 30. So far, all attempts to
calculate Charn'El's actual point cost have broken our character creation
software.

	Lyrans are nasty, mean bastards for the most part.  They are complex
beings with multifaceted personalities and much diversity and individuality
between them, but cruelty, manipulativeness, arrogance, and extreme
tenaciousness are in the very foundations of Lyran culture, and most Lyrans will
display these traits almost to a fault.  It is their unwavering belief that the
Lyran race is the universe's most superior lifeform, often citing the
immortality and power of their undisputed ruler as the only proof needed of
their superiority.  In accomplishing their goals, which they regard not only as
supreme but generally as the only which have any importance at all, they very
rarely personally involve themselves, preferring to use allies or other beings
they have enslaved and mutated to fit their needs.  Though tenacious to a point
most would consider obsessive, Lyrans are also quite patient, and would think
nothing of waiting years for a plan to develop or for a goal to be achieved,
especially if it meant keeping themselves from becoming directly involved in a
conflict.  As a result they will almost invariably be background characters in a
story, mysterious wizards always in the shadows plotting and manipulating events
and sending enslaved life forms and allies to do their bidding.

--/SIDEBAR: Charn'El and the Barney-Slayer After Pacifica

	The Barney Slayer was broken in a battle between Lord Owsen and Charn'El
at the conclusion of Operation Pacifica.  When the battle finally ended, the
Maenads succeeded in magically sealing Charn'El in some sort of dimensional
pocket, but were unable to recover all pieces of the Barney Slayer.  Because of
their observations that the recovered pieces of the Barney Slayer are very
slowly regenerating what has been lost, senior Jihaddi mages and scientists
believe that the lost part is regenerating as well and, more significantly, that
it is likely that that other piece was drawn into the dimensional pocket with
Charn'El as the portal there closed itself.
        The effect such an environment would have along with the presence of the
Lyran High Mage on the blade and what it will regenerate into is unknown, but
the JPV believes that a mage of Charn'El's power could not only greatly speed up
its regeneration but remake it into a powerful magical tool for his own use, a
"dark" Barney Slayer, for those of a more melodramatic bent.  The full extent of
what Charn'El could do with such a weapon can only be guessed at by even the
JPV's most experienced magic users, one of the most probable guesses though is
that it would enable him to far more easily escape from his interdimensional
prison.

/--END SIDEBAR

Bestiary
Loved Ones
	The Loved Ones are unusual creatures, bipedal lizards with mottled
purple and pink skin and vaugely humanoid facial features. They apparently have
some sort of direct connection to B'harne, but the nature of the connection
isn't as yet understood. Loved Ones have most often been found in the darkest
parts of enemy strongholds, usually guarding or serving spongin colonies.
Although they seem to understand human languages, they don't actually speak
them, instead communicating in a series of sharp clicks, grunts and squeaking
sounds. A Loved One will defend itself and any spongin in sight to the death -
and the creatures do not surrender at all - with a variety of bladed weapons
(for some reason they're not fond of guns).

Jello Beasts
	Jello beasts, as the Jihad calls them for lack of any other name, are a
race of creatures allied with B'harne for their own reasons, which are unknown. 
They're shapeshifters with large, gelatinous bodies (from which their names are
derived) that vary in color and can, given time, assume the texture of nearly
anything around them.  They have surprising strength for a species whose bodies
contain no rigid structural material whatsoever, and also can have anywhere
mid-range to very powerful psionic abilities, can generate energy blasts of
varying strengths  with their bodies, and have the ability to rather quickly
bend the mental and physical capacity of captured humans to their will.

Saethrians 
	Saethrians are twelve to fifteen foot long winged and tentacled
serpentine creatures.  Long ago they were a very powerful race of warriors who
fought against the Lyrans, eventually lost, and suffered the fate of most races
that war with Lyra and lose (which to the Jihad's knowledge constitutes all of
them thus far): they were enslaved and manipulated down to a genetic level to
suit the needs and whims of the Lyrans.  Independent intelligence and magic
resistance bred out of them, they are now shock troops and commandos for the
Lyrans; mindless but clever soldiers whose only ability and purpose is to kill
with single-minded abandon at the command of a Lyran.

Barney Bots 
	Heavily armed and armored mechanized units created in B'harne's image
most likely by wyrm minion engineers.  Massive things, they are crewed by three
humans and in addition to a very formidable arsenal of offensive weaponry, they
carry large and powerful speakers that are used to broadcast B'harne's war chant
on the battlefield.  They are both communications centers for spongin troops and
used to lead other mechanized forces on a battlefield.

Notes for creating critters
        The vast majority of random (hostile) creatures in the Jihad Universe
fall into one of the four categories demonstrated above: beings which have been
dominated and spongified by B'harne, an independent race or group which has
allied with B'harne for their own reasons, those that have been defeated and
thus enslaved and mutated by Lyrans, and the technological creations of human
wyrm minions. Choose which of those is best for the story the prospective
whatever will appear in, define the abilities it needs for its role in the story
and the Jihad Universe in general, and depending on its significance the story
and the JU create a supporting background for it.  Something that's going to be
either a McGuffin or will play a close supporting role will need at least as
extensive a background and development as a PC character, while something that
only has a brief appearance and is largely insignificant to the plot as a whole
will just need a minimal explanation and documentation of its existence.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 4: ALIENS, SPIES AND OTHER PARTY ANIMALS

In the previous sections, we covered the primary antagonists in the Hidden War —
the Jihad and Barney's Purple Forces. We also took a quick look at the world
outside the War, where the mundanes manage to remain oblivious to the world
around them. Between these sections, we've covered the majority of people
involved in the Jihad Universe.
However, there are a few groups that live in the shadows and on the edges of
Mundane civilization. These people are not active participants in the War,
preferring to sit on the sidelines and wait for a clear victor to emerge. Their
goals are not the same as the Jihad's, but sometimes they intersect favorably...

The Illuminati

"The Jihad is a distraction from the real work. No, that's perhaps somewhat
uncharitable. The Slayer is important. The Praxeum is important, the duck is
important, as are the research divisions of your Jihad. The soldiers, the guns
and the bombs and the rest of it are illusions; sound and fury intended to
distract the Ancient Enemy. We know that people are dying, and we regret it. But
it must happen, and it must continue to happen. It is cliche to say that
humanity's future depends on it, but sadly life often likes to emulate cliches."

Introduction
	The oldest and most important of these groups has gone by many names
over the course of human civilization, but the name that has stuck in current
times is Illuminati. The Illuminati is not totally unlike the secret cabal of
Mundane conspiracy theories. While their direct control is not as extensive as
the theorists would like to believe (extending only to a few select groups, such
as the Freemasons, the Federal Reserve and the Science Fiction Writers of
America), they have a great deal of indirect influence over the physical,
mental, and spiritual development of the Mundane population.
	The Illuminati has existed, in one form or another, since the fall of
Atlantis over 25,000 years ago. While the Illuminati's documents are rather
sketchy about the actual founding of the group, it appears that the original
Illuminati was formed in order to preserve the (rather advanced) knowledge of
the Atlanteans. Over the years, the Illuminati has refined and added to their
store of Atlantean knowledge, and used the subsequent product to guide the
Mundanes toward a specific goal. This guidance is called the Project by the
higher levels of the Illuminati, and the final goal is known only to the
absolute highest levels of the group, the five Illuminatus Prima.
	Along the course of the Project, the Illuminati have picked up
connections into the Mundane world — after all, guidance would be difficult at
best without any contact with that which you're supposed to guide. As stated
above, these connections are tenuous at best, mostly involving having certain
people in the right office at the right time to rubberstamp some bit of paper.
Only where direct control is beneficial to the Project or the continued survival
of the Illuminati will a takeover occur (It is an exercise for the student to
figure out what the Illuminati is doing controlling the SFWA, for example).
	However, the Illuminati does like to maintain the appearance of having a
great deal more direct control than they actually do — especially in places
where they have little to no control to begin with. This is mostly done for the
purposes of defense. Misdirection is one of the strongest weapons in the
Illuminati arsenal; after all, they've managed to keep themselves out of the
public spotlight for the last 25,000 years. By throwing their enemies into
watching or taking action against a group that isn't controlled or even
affiliated with the Illuminati, the Prima can keep them harmlessly occupied for
as long as necessary. It also comes in handy when recruiting new blood, as the
sheer number of organizations "controlled" by the All-Seeing Eye certainly gives
the recruit an ego boost for joining. Of course, it's always a letdown to learn
the truth of the matter later.

Relations with the Jihad & Barney
	To understand the Illuminati's relationship with the Jihad, we must
first take a look at the Illuminati's stance on Barney's forces. According to
certain Atlantean documents still in the Illuminati's possession, a being not
totally unlike Barney was present within several years of the final destruction
of Atlantis. This creature was called "The Enemy" by the Atlantean documents,
and has hence been amended by the modern Illuminati to "The Ancient Enemy."
	To the modern Illuminati scholars, there is enough of a resemblance
between the Ancient Enemy and Barney to suggest that they are related, if not
the same entity. This information, combined with the sudden presence of a large
number of Lyran magi on Earth in the last half-century, has led the Prima to
conclude that history is soon to loop back in on itself, and the Ancient Enemy
has returned to undo all that the Illuminati has strove to accomplish in the
past 25,000 years. This, it must be noted, is not terribly far from the truth
behind Barney's goals. As such, the Prima have authorized an acceleration to the
Project, in an attempt to reach the goal-point before Barney's minions have
gained enough strength to destroy Mundane civilization.
	Here is where the Jihad comes in. The Prima, in their attempt to
complete the Project, have more-or-less authorized the existence of the Jihad,
as a source of new data for the Project, as a future recruitment base, but most
importantly as a delaying tactic.
	In other circumstances (i.e. if the War was not as serious a threat),
the Illuminati would not tolerate the existence of a heavily-armed paramilitary
society like the Jihad. The Illuminati has had difficulties with similar groups
in the past (the most recent large conflict being with a group of German
necromancers during World War II), and if the Jihad had shown itself to be a
serious threat to the Project, it would have been eliminated, quickly and
without mercy.
	As it is, the Jihad has proven itself a worthy foe of the Ancient Enemy,
and until the Project is completed, the Illuminati can use the Jihad to keep
Barney occupied until such time that they are ready to confront Barney directly.
By placing a small number of agents within the Jihad (into high-ranking
positions, no less), the Prima have assured themselves that even if the Jihad
succeeds before the Project is complete, the Jihad will not become a threat — it
may even become a subordinate member of the Illuminati.
	Of course, the average Jihaddi doesn't know any of this; it would cause
as much panic inside the Jihad as the Jihad's existence would create in the
Mundane population. Only the few select agents of the Illuminati know anything
about the Jihad's role in the scheme of things, and not all of them know the
whole story.

Character template
	The Illuminati agent can be the quintessential Man in Black, or he could
be the guy sitting across from you in the computer lab. The Illuminati recruits
from all walks of life, looking for potential ability as opposed to current
wealth or power. Agents, regardless of looks, have connections that nobody else
is supposed to have, and can arrange things quite handily if they feel the need.
The Illuminati agent is the ultimate NPC, lurking in the background and offering
to help a party of Jihaddi in distress — for a small price, of course. PC Agents
are either outsiders, acting the role of the Mundane unless things get sticky
and force a team-up with the Jihaddi party, or they're undercover agents inside
the Jihad, the guidelines for writing such are in the sidebar.

--/SIDEBAR: Writing Illuminati Agents Inside the Jihad

	First of all, there are only a handful of Illuminati agents currently
working inside the Jihad. Agents act as normal Jihaddi for all intents and
purposes, unless asked to report or otherwise act by their superior in the
Illuminati. They would have limited access to Illuminati resources and
connections (mostly for emergencies).
	The agent's most important role is as an information gatherer. The
Illuminati has a great deal of interest in the research divisions of the Jihad,
and much of the information passed on is of an R&D nature. The agent in this
case will have some form of connection to the research labs, which will allow
him to siphon information to the Illuminati on a regular basis.
	On rare occasions, the agent may be called upon to do something a little
less passive than data gathering. This may mean sneaking away from an Op group
to perform some obscure task, or something more eccentric and dangerous. Any
really large-scale tasks delegated to agents inside the Jihad should be
discussed with the JU 2.0 staff and the current GM first, in order to figure out
the ramifications.
	Of course, getting caught is the biggest fear of an agent inside the
Jihad. Unless the agent is placed high enough in the Jihad's command structure,
an agent who is found spying on the Jihad will be in seriously deep trouble,
especially if he doesn't reveal whom he's spying for. In this case, the
Illuminati may attempt to set up a jailbreak, but if it can't be pulled off
without exposing the Illuminati, the agent may just be left to rot. Agent PCs
should be extremely careful about their activities.

/--END SIDEBAR

Aliens

	The Hidden War has the potential for incredible ramifications away from
the Earth. After all, should Barney win the war, it is likely that he would turn
his attention towards other worlds to conquer.
	As the conflict between the Jihad and the Ancient Enemy grows, it draws
the attention of a loosely-knit group of alien races. This group, known
(more-or-less) collectively as Galactic Civilization, or simply Galactics,
maintains a long-distance watch on Earth, to observe the course of the Hidden
War.
	And occasionally, a handful of them will come down to Earth...

--/SIDEBAR: Why so few aliens?

	At first glance, there would seem to be barely any alien beings in the
Jihad Universe. As a rule, there are plenty of aliens running around the JU —
it's just that barely any of them come to Earth. While this might put a crimp in
the plans of some role-players, the aliens have a number of good reasons for
avoiding Earth and the rest of the solar system.
	First of all, the Hidden War isn't as hidden off-Earth as it is on.
Conflict on the level of Jihad v. Barney tends to keep aliens away from the
solar system for fear of causing the War to spread.  Most of the local alien
species see the damage that might happen if the Jihad was to take its fight into
deep space, and thusly refuse to get involved, and furthermore do their best to
keep the entire Sol system separated from the rest of the galaxy.
	Because of the agreed-upon blockading of the Sol system, only aliens
with specific business on Earth show up on a regular basis.  The Greys &
Salusians are the only races who have any permanent installations in the solar
system (mostly diplomatic & scientific stations), and even those are very
lightly staffed.  As a general thing, both Grey and Salusian operatives in the
Sol system do their best to keep their people as uninvolved in the War as they
possibly can, and go about their business with a wary eye cast on the
participants.
	Other races (ones not involved in the blockade agreement, freebooters,
culture pirates, etc.) who feel like wandering around our solar system stand a
good chance of running into the Explain Star.  The crew of that noble ship, with
nothing better to do and a great deal of time to do it in, tend to enjoy
stopping and boarding every unauthorized ship (read: anything that moves and
isn't an asteroid) that crosses their path.  After the sixth or seventh boarding
action by a bunch of pirates flying a rocket-powered rubber duck, even the most
stubborn of alien races gets the point and stays the hell away from Earth.

/--END SIDEBAR

X'hirjq:
"Every action, thought, and deed by every X'hirjq for the past 400,000 of your
years has served this one purpose without error.  It is religion, as humans
understand it, the base of our culture and reason for our survival.  It is what
defines us, give us purpose, and demands our actions."

	The X'hirjq are a mysterious race of nomadic aliens who have been
wandering the Galaxy for the better part of half a million years. They are best
remembered for their invasion of Earth in the fall of 1996, when they engaged
the Jihad at the behest of their temporary ally, Barney. X'hirjq are between
seven and nine feet tall, heavily muscled reptilian beings with the prerequisite
sharp teeth, claws, and the lizard's tail. As a race, they posses strong psychic
and magical powers, and have a sizable amount of TL 11 and TL 12 devices with
which they can defeat almost any foe. X'hirjq value honor above all other
things, and desire nothing more than a good, clean fight (or a challenging
hunt).
	The X'hirjq Invasion of 1996, while initially inspired by Barney, was in
fact an attempt to test the inhabitants of Earth for worthiness; the X'hirjq
Empress wanted to know if humans were worthy of living in what is, apparently, a
"sacred" solar system. Very little is known and less understood about X'hirjq
motivations, although it seems that humanity passed the Empress' test, as the
invasion was cut short and every X'hirjq vanished again into outer darkness
within a month of the invasion's start. Nothing has been heard of the X'hirjq
since that time, not even rumor.

Salusians:
	 "We'd love to help you, really. But if we make a move, the rest of the
Galaxy might decide to kill you all out of hand. So ultimately we're doing you a
favor by staying out of this. Sorry."

	The Galaxy is home to a sizable number of sentient races. Most of the
advanced ones are linked together in a loose confederation that's known as
Galactic Civilization. Most Galactics aren't aware of the events happening on
Earth; only the species that live in our near vicinity have any knowledge or
interest in the Hidden War. Of these, the local superpower is the Kingdom of
Salusia.
	Physically, Salusians are upright bipeds averaging around 6' in height,
with somewhat canine features in the leg articulation and facial features, but
otherwise the Salusians look very humanoid. They are covered in short black/dark
brown fur (white or light tan around faces with a stripe running across the
collarbone and down the chest). Salusians also have manes of longer fur varying
in coloration (black, white, brown, red) running down the head and back of the
neck.
	The Kingdom itself is a constitutional monarchy, and considered by it's
neighbors to be one of the more "fair" minded and tolerant members of Galactic
Civilization. Salusians in general have most of what we would call the "usual"
human emotional traits, along with a quirky sense of humor and a deeply refined
sense of irony. Most Salusians who come into contact with humans end up liking
them. Probably because of the sense of humor.
	Salusian technology is TL10 in most things, approaching TL11 in
biotechnology. Salusian biotech can create surface (and sub-surface) cosmetic
alteration to make Salusians look like humans, and vice-versa. While naturally
unable to breed together, the same biotech can engineer human/Salusian hybrids
that can (in theory, albeit considered a proscribed technique and — supposedly —
has not been tested yet. Of course, some rules are meant to be broken...) breed
true with each other and members of either species.

Relations w/Jihad & Barney:
	The Salusians are friendly neutrals vis a vis the Jihad. The Salusian
government recognizes the threat posed to Civilization as a whole by Barney and
is prepared to defend themselves if necessary, but as leaders in the local
spiral arm, they also recognize the danger of letting the War spread unchecked
through indiscriminate contact with Earth.
	Salusian diplomatic & cultural attaches have been on Earth since shortly
after the first Moon landings in 1969 (it all started as a university field trip
to watch primitive spacecraft in action and ended up as a full-time posting
after a group of Salusian grad students assisted the Apollo 13 crew in returning
to Earth after the accident... but I digress).
	Because of the threat to the rest of the galaxy (and also attempting to
head off the rest of the Galaxy's preemptive sterilization of Earth before
things have a chance of getting worse), the Kingdom of Salusia has sponsored a
three light-year radius quarantine zone around the solar system. If things
spread beyond this zone, the Kingdom will be willing to pitch in and help the
Jihad, but not before.
	Although it's not generally known to the Salusian public at large (and
certainly not to the Mundanes on Earth!) several human/Salusian hybrids have
been born and currently live scattered (mostly) around the Northeast US. The
hybrids (at least the ones living among Mundanes) look human on the surface,
although there are plenty of internal differences. A first or second-generation
hybrid, being already on the edge of normal life, may eventually end up either
in the Jihad or a group like Planetary (see below).

Greys:
 "You... interest us.  Normally we would not bother with contact. There is
something here we must continue to study."

	You've undoubtedly seen the pictures. Thanks to Mundane pop-culture,
they're the most recognizable "alien" form found on Earth today. However, most
of the rest of what pop-culture has to say about the Greys is amazingly
inaccurate.
	The real Greys are not on Earth in any large numbers, nor do they abduct
random rednecks from isolated trailer parks to conduct experiments on. Most
Greys on Earth are starship crew or research physicists, and "buzzing" the
locals is considered bad form.
	Grey civilization is very old — it predates the existence of almost
every other known Galactic civilization. For all their abilities, the Greys have
never been expansionist in any way. They seem content to cultivate their
homeworld and the other planets in the Zeta Reticuli system, without putting
much thought to colonizing other star systems. The Greys have achieved a mature
TL12, and have been so for at least 10,000 years. The Greys are highly respected
by the other Galactics, especially for their near-impossible defeat of a X'hirjq
invasion force 2,000 years ago.
	The Greys have been on Earth since 1947 (one thing UFO pop-culture has
gotten right), when a research ship was dispatched to investigate readings of an
unusual wormhole developing in the Sol system. On a low-altitude pass over the
supposed wormhole, the ship was damaged by a Lyran defense system, and crashed
several hundred miles away in the New Mexico desert (again, something reported
accurately by the Mundanes, but little believed).
	The surviving Greys were rescued by the United States government, and
since that time, the Greys and Terran powers (mostly Illuminati agents using the
US as a cover) have had a limited scientific exchange program going. In exchange
for allowing a small contingent of Grey scientists access, the Greys will slip a
few small advances into human technology — nothing fancy, mostly
computer-related, or microelectronics.

Relations with the Jihad:
	The Greys, as a rule, are a deeply isolationist people. Only their
curiosity about the Lyran dimensional gate has kept a Grey presence on Earth.
Like the Salusians, the Greys are aware of the Jihad's existence, but unlike the
Salusian pro-Jihad stance, the Greys are firmly neutral. However, they are
interested in the possible connections between the Lyrans and the wormhole. As a
rule, unless one side or another starts shooting at the Grey delegation on
Earth, they will not help or hinder anybody in the Hidden War.

...and Other Party Animals

	While intruders from the stars hover above the landscape, watching both
Mundanes and Jihaddi with avid interest, others move in between the "normal"
world and the shadows. These people all have a vested interest in the activities
out on the bleeding edge of human existence. Some of them are fairly harmless,
some are possible sources of help in the Hidden War.
	And some just don't like us at all...

Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria (Bavarian Illuminati):
"We are the shapers of human destiny. Those who would attempt to usurp our power
will find us quite formidable opponents."

	While the true Illuminati works deep in the shadows of human society
towards the completion of the Project, the AISB work in the Mundane realms to
further their own personal power.
	As all good conspiracy theorists will tell you, the Ancient Illuminated
Seers of Bavaria were founded in 1776 by one Adam Weishaupt, defrocked Jesuit
and professor of law at Ingolstadt University. Weishaupt had conceived a plan to
unite Europe under the leadership of a "rationalist" cabal, with himself
naturally at the head. To this end, he formed the original AISB with a number of
German freethinkers, and ran a mostly public organization until 1785, when the
Bavarian government found out about Weishaupt's ultimate goals and shut down the
public fronts of the Illuminati.
	Of course, you can't keep a good conspiracy down, and the Illuminati
went underground, slowly but surely infiltrating as many political movements as
possible through the late 18th Century. It wasn't until the mid-1800s that the
AISB had achieved any real sort of power in Europe and the Americas, however. By
the beginning of the 20th Century, the AISB had managed to take control of a
large portion of the political and economic structure of the Occidental world,
and had made serious inroads into controlling several East Asian and African
nations.
	Interestingly enough, the AISB has often eschewed the use or even
investigation of paranormal or "fringe science" phenomenon. Consequently, the
AISB is only marginally more advanced than the Mundane governments it rules,
currently standing at an early TL8. This is partly because of the AISB's
hyper-rationalist dogma originally set down by Weishaupt, which dismisses
everything that can't be explained "scientifically." But a good part of this
blind spot is due to agents of the true Illuminati, who have managed to keep the
power-hungry AISB under control this way since the French Revolution.

Relations with the Jihad & Barney:
	The AISB considers the Jihad to be a bunch of upstarts, a group of
power-mongers like themselves, who are trying to build an impressive hoax in
order to seize control of the Mundanes the AISB considers to be their rightful
servants. The Jihad's current activities in co-opting certain members of the
American Congress have not made the AISB any less paranoid.
	As such, the AISB are distinctly hostile to anything they can pin down
as Jihaddi in nature, although they will not make any direct assaults (usually
because the Jihad can easily outgun even the best-equipped AISB soldier). The
Jihad, in turn, is dimly aware of the AISB's existence, and attempts to avoid
their close scrutiny much like they would for any other Mundane organization.
	The AISB, affected by their particular form of Mundane blindness,
doesn't believe in the evil of Barney or the Lyran forces. This has played quite
nicely into the hands of the Enemy, especially those wyrm-minions who work
mainly in the Mundane world, as it's in their (supposedly) mutual best interest
to foil the Jihad at every turn.

Planetary:
	No matter how well the Jihad (or the Illuminati, or the AISB, etc.) try
to keep things totally undercover, things will be discovered.
	Living on the very fringes of Mundane society, an underground network of
the most unlikely individuals has sprung up, dealing with the scattered
information and discarded technology the various conspiracies running across the
world have left behind them.
	This network (called "Planetary" by the younger members, after a recent
comic book series dealing with "mystery archaeologists") is made up of a loose
coalition of conspiracy theorists, arms dealers, information brokers, hackers,
crackers, and UFO enthusiasts. The theorists are interested in using the data
gathered by Planetary to expose and destroy The Conspiracy (that is, whichever
The Conspiracy they're convinced is to blame for the world, any resemblance to
the actual Secret Masters being mostly purely coincidental). The arms dealers
and info brokers use Planetary on a far more pragmatic and amoral basis, looking
for new weapons and secrets worth selling on the open market. The members of the
hack community who have joined the Planetary network have done so more out of a
love of the thrill of going places they shouldn't, doing things that they aren't
supposed to. The UFO watchers, of course, use Planetary to figure out "what's
really going on."
	The group has no set meeting place, or even a set organization. Members
typically have recognition signals (usually consisting of a gesture or key code
phrase), and usually know at least one place where members can meet personally
and haggle for artifacts. Meeting places are often businesses owned by Planetary
members, or highly public areas, train stations or public parks, where the risk
of getting killed out of hand are less. For more shady deals, members use the
network to locate only the best, most quiet back alleys from which to swap money
for hardware.
	The main information network is set up — like most things in the Age of
Information — using the Internet extensively. Members have at least one secure,
encrypted email account through which data swaps can be arranged. Rumors of
alt.marketplace.planetary are wholly unsubstantiated, and are most likely a hoax
put on by a member hacker. Really.

Relations with the Jihad and Barney:
	Both sides are very well aware of Planetary, although the network is
itself mostly ignorant of the Hidden War. While the network as a group has large
sections of the puzzle available, no one member has managed to fit together the
whole puzzle, and Planetary is far too fragmented to ever be able to comprehend
the Hidden War as a group.
	The Jihad often exploits both this fragmentation and the wealth of
knowledge Planetary represents. An observant Jihaddi with contacts in the
Planetary network can use them to chivvy almost anything from a handy member.
The best use of the network involves finding a place to lie low for a night, to
get a floorplan for a high-security government facility, or arranging a meeting
with weapons dealers to score a few quick guns.
	The Enemy, on the other hand, is more interested in the transfer of
information and disinformation. Wyrm Minions with previously established
contacts in Planetary do their best to spread tweaked propaganda around the
network. A group of crackers working for Liaison Winston has managed to subtly
convert a Planetary-connected cell of UFO cultists to the enemy cause, creating
a group of near-Sponge Minions by altering the data they collected to suggest
that B'harne was one of their Space Brothers. Planetary's wide variety of
individuals makes it a good recruiting ground for the Jihad as well. Almost
anything can come out of the group, and sometimes does.

International Order of Mad Scientists:
"For us, the laws of physics are mere guidelines, there to confine the
unimaginative. Hey! Don't touch that button—"

	Existing out on the fringes of mainstream Mundane science, the
International Order of Mad Scientists works to advance the cause of human
understanding of the universe... preferably by disassembling portions of it in
the most creative way possible.
	According to fringe legend, the Order was founded in 1898 by Nikola
Tesla, considered the God-King of modern mad science, and an immortal Leonardo
Da Vinci, for reasons that remain shrouded in mystery. Regardless of the truth
of this story, the Order has certifiably existed for the whole of the 20th
Century, attracting scientists and engineers whose theories have been dismissed
by Mundane authorities as mere crankery.
	The Order has mechanisms in place (mostly funded by patent royalties
from successful members) to help keep experiments running, but the most
important function the Order performs is the annual Mad Science Convention. The
convention provides a place for fringe science aficionados from around the world
to exchange notes, learn the latest developments and otherwise relax from the
rigors of a world that doesn't like them much. Every year at the convention, the
assembled members of the Order decide which of them gets to win the coveted
Victor Von Frankenstein Award.

Relations with the Jihad & Barney:
	The Order, per se, doesn't have any real knowledge of the Enemy or the
Hidden War. However, they do have a general understanding of what the Jihad is,
and what it's supposed to do.
	More to the point, the Order is very much aware of the Jihaddi research
and development organizations, and frequently invites R&D staff members to join.
Occasionally, Jihaddi who had some interest in fringe research in their
pre-Jihad lives will already have a membership. The best example of this is
VRDET's Professor Malaclypse, who was a fringe scientist of some merit before
joining up with the Hidden War.

--/SIDEBAR: Solo Warriors

	Aside from the groups mentioned in the main text, there are a small
number of individuals who are fighting the Hidden War on their own, away from
the Jihad, the Illuminati, or any other group. These individuals, or "solos,"
are placed, willingly or otherwise, into the most precarious position possible
in the entire conflict.
	Solos are people who, for one reason or another, have cause to fight
Barney or the Lyrans, but have no connection to any group. Some solos are
expatriate Jihaddi, former members who left for varied reasons (disagreement
with authorities, personal vows, psychotic temperments, etc.) but have not given
up the fight. They wander around the world, striking at their enemies whenever
they can, expecting to die at every moment.
	In fact, most solos do die — the average life expectancy of a solo who
has taken up arms without the support of others is less than a year. Only the
wisest, strongest and most dangerous solos become veterans, and there are no old
solos. The solo lifestyle — which involves taking on entire armies of
otherworldly beings single-handed — tends to quickly take its toll on the solo's
mind, body, and available resources. Due to this, solos as a rule are not the
most psychologically stable of people.
	Solos tend to have some amount of personal wealth, that they would use
as a bankroll for weapons, equipment, headquarters, weapons, clothes, weapons,
food and weapons. However, some solos will liquidate all of their possessions in
favor of simply dropping out of sight and living in the underclasses of the
world, where they keep alive by performing less-than-upright jobs for
less-than-upright people. Solos of this type tend to have a very loose moral
framework.
	If a solo has had enough of fighting alone, or is approaching the end of
their supply base, then they may approach the Jihad and ask for admittance. The
Jihad has taken in solos in the past — many distinguished Jihaddi, including the
Original Seven, started their careers as solo warriors — and as long as the solo
agrees to follow the Jihad's chain of command, they will be accepted and
respected by other Jihaddi.

/--END SIDEBAR

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 5: OBLIVIOUS SPECTATORS

The State of the Earth
	Earth in the year 1999 is, on the surface, very much like Earth was in
1999 in the "real" world. The Cold War has finally stopped being a daily reality
and is rapidly becoming something taught in history classes. The world on the
whole is enjoying a state of relative peace and prosperity for the first time in
decades. The Internet boom is in full swing throughout the West, as investors
begin looking to computers and communications as the future of humanity.
	This doesn't mean things are perfect, by any means. Low-level wars are
being waged throughout the Third World, and the spate of ethnic violence in the
former Yugoslavia has suddenly flared up. Politicians in the most powerful
nation on Earth have gone strange with media overexposure en masse. The
environment is on the wrong side of a desperate holding action, poor people are
getting poorer while the rich get richer almost everywhere you go, and above it
all terrorist groups are starting to make a big comeback in the Middle East.
	Everybody's waiting for the next shoe to drop, or the hammer to fall.
The Millennium is less than a year away (never mind the pundits who are
complaining about the correct date being 2001, not 2000) and everybody's
expecting something Big to happen when the clock strikes midnight. Whether it's
Hell or Heaven on Earth, everybody in the world is waiting to see what happens
next. It's a time of great atrocities and great acts of grace, a time of
incredible turmoil as the world prepares for the next century.
	In short, it's the perfect time for the Hidden War to be fought. The
Mundanes are all full of their own problems, leaving the Jihad and the Enemy a
perfect opening to work in. As long as the Mundanes don't know about the war,
both groups can operate with impunity, so it's in their best interests to keep
the war well away from the Mundanes. They may be mundane, but they still
outnumber us millions to one.

Keeping the Secret
A Word of Explanation
	Just to make things exhaustively clear, here are the exact reasons why
the Jihad and its mission must remain a secret:
	To begin with, there's the issue of crowd mentality.  The very concept
of a popular children's television character really being a creature of galactic
menace isn't the sort of thing that allows people to remain calm.  Given this,
there are two options: tell the public and watch the mass hysteria, or handle
things with a small group of trained, capable individuals.  Guess which one the
Jihad uses?
	Given the Jihad's mission, a lot of the techniques and technologies used
aren't known to the mundane world.  We're talking magic, psionics, ultra-high
technology virtually everything that makes the Jihad tick is either highly rare
or nonexistent in Mundania.  Revealing the existence of these would, once again,
trigger crowd mentality, and bad things would result.
	And finally, there's the issue of legality.  Much of the covert work the
Jihad does as a matter of course is either illegal or very questionable. 
Letting mundane authorities know about this activity would most likely result in
either JAO shutdowns and freezes (needless to say, bad) or massive bureaucratic
action (arguably worse).

Jihad coverup operations
	So, how does the Jihad keep from letting the mundanes know about their
actions? Well, it's really a lot simpler than it looks.  The main way the secret
is kept is via one of the oldest tricks in the book: covering tracks.
	Although the Jihad is rarely lucky enough to choose battle locations,
they do have the ability to clean up after themselves.  Jihaddi, whether
specially trained or merely selected from the roster of the most convenient JAO,
are expected to come into especially ‘dangerous' areas (in other words, areas
that may have had lots of witnesses, were uncomfortably close to urban areas, or
were otherwise prone to detection) to go defuse the situation.  This may involve
searching out witnesses, checking police records for recent reports of
Jihad-like activity, or whatever else the cleanup crew deems necessary.  In
other words, cleanup and track-covering after battles is very subjective,
depending on the battle it just needs to be done.
	Another important facet of cleanup and secrecy to remember is the issue
of sponge minions.  They may seem to come from nowhere, but they're really
missing people   for every sponge minion, there's probably a family searching
for them.  With this in mind, the benefits of despongification over killing are
obvious; if you kill a sponge, you have a dead missing person, and the
investigations resulting from this may not shine favorably on the Jihad.  With a
desponged minion, though, you have a missing person who's probably going home,
which means one less mundane search team.  Fewer mundane search teams means
fewer Jihaddi who have to work cleanup and more Jihaddi who are ready for active
duty.
	But there are some times when local cleanup just isn't enough.  Some
especially large or ill-planned Jihad battles may end up catching the attention
of the federal government, and that's when the real shadowy organization stuff
starts.

The Government Bestiary
	Like all good Shadowy Organizations, the Jihad has all sorts of assorted
operatives and affiliates in the offices of the federal government.  Most of
them, as normal human beings and very good civil servants, have blended in
nicely; unless a Jihaddi knows exactly where to look, they appear to be simple
mid-level bureaucratic workers, utterly unnoticed but still managing to see all,
hear all, and mysteriously stop reports of purple dinosaur violence before they
get high enough to do anything. 
	For most intents and purposes, Jihaddi on spin duty will probably be
able to find a mid-level operative in any major federal government office where
it's needed.  However, for the higher levels, simple infiltration isn't enough. 
That's when the Jihad begins the system of bribes.
	The Jihad bribes government officials from behind the screens of false
organizations; the officials aren't exactly sure of the organization's motives,
but that's not really important.  What's important is that every major statewide
and even a couple city politicians in Colorado are bribed; each of them is under
the impression that there's a different corporation paying the bills, but they
all know what to do.  With their help, most of the higher levels of the
government never learn anything about the Jihad, even that which slips through
the fingers of the other operatives.
	As a final note, certain more militaristic JAOs have different
individual setups for coverup and cleanup, because their operations are more
likely to fall into the public eye.  In this case, the JAO should have an
individual plan for such events that they'll use.

The Jihad in Mundane Pop Culture
Leaked Secrets, Conspiracy Theory, and Everything
	For all of the cleanup, for all of the care, not even the Jihad can be
sure of everything.  Though nothing huge and catastrophic has leaked out yet,
small things have: abandoned technology, minor evidence of activity, weather
balloons, or whatever   has been released to the mundane world through sheer
oversight.  Needless to say, these things have almost always fallen into the
hands of those most able to appreciate them: conspiracy theorists.
	Fortunately for the Jihad, though, the conspiracy theorists, UFO nuts,
and the like don't know this stuff's true origin.  Even if they did, they'd
probably be in denial; they attribute it all to their pet cause, whether that's
the gray aliens, the Men in Black, or the Chupacabra.  Because of this, various
pieces of Jihaddi tech can be found in museums and headquarters of various
secret conspiracy societies and institutions; this runs from JAO standard issue
weapons, which according to theory may belong to anyone from the Jackbooted
Guvmint Thugs to the Invaders from Planet Q, to entire vehicles and spaceships
purported to belong to supernatural entities.  (At least one Doberman Empire
Arioch-class battlesuit is in such a position.)
	As a result of all of these leaks, various aspects of Jihad procedure
and activity have leaked into the canons of conspiracy groups.  Those Jihaddi
who enjoy pop culture extrapolations of conspiracy theories may be surprised to
see familiar weapons and technology featured in the arsenal of completely
different foes! However, since the integration of Jihad ideas into conspiracies
is scattershot at best, there's no danger of anything unified being pieced
together from this.
	The important part of this is that, for all of the tiny details that
have leaked out, the big one is still firmly secret: the Jihad is the only
organization that knows about B'harne and his plans.  The idea has lurked into
popular humor, which may or may not make the situation better; although it
destroys any mainstream credibility the Jihad might have, were it to need such
credibility, it does mean that most evidence about B'harne will be laughed off
as a hoax by mundanes.

--/SIDEBAR: The Jihad Files

	The pop-culture TV phenomenon The X-Files, launched shortly after the
Jihad began, has tackled every single form of conspiracy theory known to Man,
and made up a few of their own. So naturally there have been episodes involving
the Jihad, though the name "Jihad" has thankfully been absent.
	Early in the second-season mythology, the show aired an episode titled
"Die Hand Die Verletzt," where Mulder and Scully track apparent "witch
killings." The rituals shown on screen were amazingly similar to known Lyran
rites, and a little investigation by a Jihad spin team learned that the episode
was patterned on an incident which occured in 1987 in upstate Wisconsin.
Naturally, individuals on both sides were somewhat disturbed.
	Jihad lore appears again during the fourth and fifth seasons, as Mulder
and Scully cross paths with a group of "alien hunters" equipped with
beyond-state-of-the-art weapons and tracking gear. Mulder's hunt for the Truth
(with a capital T) was often stymied during those seasons by the "Hunters"
wasting the alien/government conspirator before he could ask any questions. As
television went, the Hunter arc varied between pretty bland to pretty godawful.
Still, for some unknown reason the mysterious alien hunters became cult figures
in the X-Phile fan community.
	What Chris Carter knows (or doesn't know) has never been conclusively
proven. Jihaddi telepaths have pronounced him free of Enemy influence, and have
suggested that Carter has merely pieced together various bits of Jihad lore
already in the conspiracy-theory mainstream. However, Psychic Research students
at the JPV have suggested that some of the details of Jihad lore may have been
left behind in Carter's brain by the telepathic scans, possibly indicating that
the producer/writer is in fact a latent sensitive.
	Whatever the rationale, references to Jihaddi technology or tactics have
not appeared since the end of the fifth season, as the X-Files moved into trying
to focus on alien invasions, men smoking cigarettes, and who's sleeping with
whom. Overall quality and credibility has plummetted, and for everybody in the
Hidden War, that's a good thing.

/--END SIDEBAR

Barney and Mundania:
	Ironically, Barney has, for differing reasons, much the same attitude
toward the mundane world that the Jihad does.  While the Jihad would like to
expose Barney for what he is but knows it could not credibly do so and would
thus lose its ability to fight him if it tried, Barney knows that the majority
of the world's ignorance of his true nature is what enables him to so easily
spongify humans.  The old saying that the devil's greatest trick was convincing
the world he doesn't exist very much applies to Barney.

Keeping the secret
	Barney's most effective method of concealing his true nature closely
follows another old saying, he hides it in plain sight: Barney and Friends. Even
the majority of the public that doesn't like Barney's TV show consider it
harmless, just another saccharine kids' show to be mostly ignored.  The creation
of the Babylon Road coincides with the nascence of television technology; seeing
its potential to influence people on an unprecedented scale on Earth, Barney
began to subtly influence the direction and content of this technology and the
massive industry it eventually generated and finally in the early 1990s
culminated that long effort with direct use of his own image on Barney and
Friends. And with Barney and Friends, he not only managed to reach a large
number of the most vulnerable and impressionable minds available, but instantly
created for himself the most innocuous of all possible images with those he
didn't immediately reach.  The end result is that the vast majority of all
humans would consider the idea of Barney as any sort of real and threatening or
malevolent being laughable at best. 
	Television is Barney's primary means of concealment, but not his only.
Realizing the nature of both Earth's major religions and secular communities to
dismiss or even ostracize smaller religions of differing beliefs that crop up
within the larger communities, Barney through either direct or indirect
intervention began to create several smaller religions of this type at a very
early date.  When bits of the truth about Barney's nature crop up through
incidents that can't be  otherwise explained, there are various occult or
alternative religious groups who identify some small part of the incident with
whatever their mythos happens to be and latch onto it with religious fervor,
thereby gaining its immediate dismissal along with whatever group is trying its
hardest to keep it from being dismissed by the majority of the public.  Barney
has a  multitude of ready and willing "cleanup" groups to help him keep his
secret who don't even know the secret they're helping to keep.  And these
groups, with a constant supply of what they perceive as proof of their beliefs,
never question any of it; one of the most widespread and successful of this sort
of group was actually founded by the very Lyran who lead the contingent of mages
to open the Earth end of the Babylon Road and still never had even the
beginnings of suspicion as to its true nature or purpose.
	The most direct method Barney uses to maintain public ignorance of his
nature is another thing which is ironic in its similarity to some Jihad methods:
the direct control of influential humans by seducing them into becoming wyrm
minions (who have widely varying knowledge about who and what they're really
loyal to), subjecting them to direct mental control, or more subtly controlling
them with bribes from a network of commercial interests. Governmental
institutions, commercial corporations, or various independent organizations can
be directly manipulated with minimal or no threat of exposure when money they
have is needed in another place, something unusual needs to be overlooked,
places are needed for manufacturing, or one of Barney's interests in the
entertainment industry needs to be protected.

Long-term Interactions with Mundania

The Jihad
	Other than its cover-up activities, the Jihad's main long-term
activities concerning Mundania are slight.  There are, however, questions of
money and supplies, both of which are needed to continue the fight.
	The Jihad makes its money off of investments and assets held in
Mundania.  Investments include diversified low to medium risk funds and stocks,
CDs, and municipal bonds.  They are managed to produce income after inflation
and selected to minimize tax burden.  New recruits will occasionally have
significant assets to bring to the Jihad, but this is not accounted for in
budgets.  Other assets include actual corporations that the Jihad has set up for
specific purposes.  One of those purposes is, of course, to add funds to the
Jihad's treasury.  The other is to provide safehouses in Mundania.  The
safehouse provides a place of refuge for Jihaddi on the run (from the enemy or
from Mundane law-enforcement), places from which to monitor spongification
within a specific area, staging bases for international Jihad operations, and so
forth.  The Jihad owns hundreds of small companies like this all across the
world, in a number of different businesses.
	The Jihad also has a series of investments in some of the
less-than-legal parts of the global economy.  Jihaddi operatives are actively
involved in smuggling operations, most often gunrunning and "soft" drugs
(marijuana, hashish, various psychedelics, etc.).  The money involved in these
activities is actually relatively minimal (the Jihad makes more on a daily basis
playing the markets, anyway), but the connections made in the underworld are far
more valuable than the money involved.  The Jihad's underworld connections
provide extra safe areas and other resources for field operatives caught out in
the open; mention the right names and you've got a bed for the night, anonymous
transportation, false ID, or any number of other things readily available in
such circles, no questions asked.
	There has been some considerable debate in the Jihad's upper ranks about
the morality of the Jihad's illegal activities.  Some Jihaddi have taken a
stance that the group should be as upright as possible, while others have taken
a more pragmatic stance.  Currently, the Triumvirate has leaned towards the
pragmatic stance; this may change as the membership changes, however.

The B'harnese Forces
	What about the Purple Forces and Mundania?  Why, for example, hasn't
"Barney & Friends" simply been pushed off of PBS?  With all the Jihad's
government contacts, why hasn't the license been denied, or charges of some sort
brought against them?
	Answer: The Purple Forces have a section dedicated to exactly this
purpose.  There is no ammunition for a license denial.  Every i is dotted, every
t is crossed.  Any inspection of the studio reveals nothing untoward, even if
five minutes ago the place was filled with sorcerous runes packing
spongification by the pound into the broadcast signal.
	Remember, Mundania would not be best pleased to learn of a demonic
presence in their midst.  Mob riots might not make for good Jihaddi planning,
but they don't help kids get hooked on the Fiend, either.  Thus, Jihaddi
clean-up crews may actually find themselves working with Sponge- or Wyrm-Minion
crews on certain cases, although typically there will be a brief(and very quiet)
struggle after which the surviving crew does its job.  (The dispute is over
methods.  Sponge crews typically spongify witnesses and reprogram them, for
example.)
	Finally, a few bribed officials make sure that PBS keeps broadcasting
the show regardless of any complaints that do get through. 
	There is one figure, currently the Liaison who goes by the name of
Winston, who does all of this publicly.  He frustrates the Jihad to no end,
because they can't just kill or kidnap such a public figure, or even present any
evidence that could justify a public investigation of his activities.
	The Purple Forces make their money off of merchandising, PBS fees,
revenues redirected from other divisions of the Lyons Group, and black-market
sales of looted and stolen goods from battlefields and sponged people's
possessions.  Also, there is a public (if weird) "Cult" of B'harnii, which
solicits donations and usually takes as much of new members' money as possible. 
The mastermind and organizer behind the cult, Winston, keeps his role as such
secret.  The cult encourages donations and support from causes.  They do
certainly get kids and troublemakers off the streets - it's just that they don't
keep them out of trouble afterward.

--/SIDEBAR: Sample Shell Operations

	ETI Technosystems: ETI is a producer of specialized electronics and
software for the consumer and industrial market. In truth, ETI is one of several
Jihad-held companies that trades (less-advanced) Jihad technology for cash. The
company is based out of Alamosa, CO, perviously a sleepy ranching town that is
slowly becoming a model of post-industrial prosperity.

	IJT, Inc.: The International Jihad Treasury holds many of the Jihad's
mundane financial assets. Based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the IJT is a "black
box" investment firm which acquires funds for the Jihad and distributes them
under the guise of charity work and other non-profit outlays.

	Verthandi Import/Export: This New Mexico-based company does a modest
business transporting exotic goods around the Americas, but more importantly it
provides covert transport for Jihaddi equipment and operatives, as well as
maintaining supply caches and boltholes for Jihaddi caught out in the open.

	Templar Mining, Inc.: Based in San Francisco, the Templar Deep Sea
Mining Corporation is a publicly-owned operation, with the JAOs as majority
shareholders. Templar Mining provides 10% of its daily production to the Jihad
to maintain the resource base for the production of war materiel.

	The Church of Barney: The primary enemy face to the public, the Church
presents itself as a stereotypically dippy New Age religion, while insinuating
into everything it possibly can. The Church's proper headquarters are in
Washington, DC, but "temples" can be found in almost every major city in the
United States. Also, the Church has a compound in the swamps on the
Texas-Louisiana border near the town of Port Neches. The place, known by the
locals as "the Loony Bin," is being cautiously investigated by the police,
fearing another Waco.

	FunCo Toys: This company produces most of the toys, dolls, playsets and
all the other many types of merchandising available based on the Barney &
Friends TV show. The vast majority of the enemy's legitimate funds come from
FunCo products. The Chicago company has, as such, been completely taken over by
wyrm-minions.

	Happy Time Studios: The "official" production studio of the Barney show,
Happy Time also does a brisk business renting out sets to television shopping
channels, televangelists, direct-to-video movie producers and other similar
members of the bottom rung of entertainment society. The studio's main stages
outside Dallas have plenty of clients, as well as plenty of Barney episodes to
film.

/--END SIDEBAR

Basic Mundane Character Templates
	So, you want a mundane onlooker?  A relative or friend of a Jihaddi?  A
conspiracy theorist or other sinister plotter?  Well, here's how you do it. As
with all character descriptions, you should include a physical description:
height, weight, hair and eye color, age, clothing worn, and other such niceties. 
This is fairly essential for those trying to write your character, so don't skip
it.
	All of these archetypes are meant to be 100-point characters; after all,
they aren't called Mundanes for nothing. Points may be spent as the player sees
fit, although Mundanes as a rule will not have knowledge of TL8+ science or
technology beyond what they've read about in science-fiction, and buying an
Unusual Background means the character isn't Mundane; the whole point of being a
Mundane is you have no unusual backgrounds whatsoever! Secret Advantages (GURPS
IOU p. 20) or Secret Disadvantages (GURPS IOU p. 23) are allowed, but make sure
the GM knows in advance if you have something specific planned for that
Advantage/Disadvantage. GMs are wily creatures at heart, and love to fiddle when
given an opening, so be on your guard.

Witnesses
	Unless the witness becomes the main focus of a story or Op, you don't
need much here.  Things you will need, however, include:
	* How exactly the character witnessed a Jihad action.  Did they have the
bad luck to be hiking through the woods near a sponge minion camp on the day of
a siege? Are they a relative or friend of a spongie who went searching one day,
only to find them in the midst of on-duty Jihaddi? In other words, why is the
character in this position?
	* The character's basic reaction to what they saw.  This can be anything
from contacting law-enforcement authorities to hiding and running for their life
to actively seeking Jihaddi or B'harnates.  Whatever the character does, it
should have coherent motives and reasons.
	* The character's rough personality and any skills that may come up in
the writing (latent magic capability, weapons skill, or anything else that may
prove useful in writing the character).  This is a writing aid.  Be specific!

Allies
	This includes characters like a Jihaddi's mundane loved ones and other
assorted mundanes the Jihad may contact.  If you're writing  profile about a
Jihaddi who has close mundane loved ones (at least, those who'll probably come
up in the story), writing one of these for those loved ones would be highly
useful.  Once again, you'll need information on physical attributes,
personality, and skills, but you'll also need some others:
	* The character's exact relation to the Jihad.  Any specific Jihaddi
that the character is associated with should be mentioned here, along with their
relationship.
	* How much, precisely, does the character know about the Jihad?  This
should be kept to a minimal level barring extenuating circumstances, no mundane
would know that much about Jihad workings but one closely associated with a
Jihaddi would know that that Jihaddi is involved in something unusual.
	* What the character's reaction would be to learning about the Jihad and
its workings.  In other words, if the character was placed in a witness-type
situation, what would they do?  After all, anyone too close to a Jihaddi is far
more likely to learn some piece of the truth than a more random Mundane.

Enemies
	This is the realm of conspiracy theorists and those other people who may
fight against the Jihad  although they may not know their enemy as such.  You'll
need the basic character information, as well as:
	* Full details on how the character found out about Jihad activities.
This is essentially character history, and it should be similar to that provided
for a witness character.
	* What exactly does the character know about the Jihad? Have they found
any Jihad technology?  And if so, what is it, and do they know how to use it?
	* If they don't attribute what they've seen to the Jihad itself (which
is quite likely), who do they attribute it to? This highly depends on the
character's precise conspiracy theory; different characters could attribute the
same incident to the UFOs, the Men in Black, the government, or strange weather.
	* Given a chance to act against the Jihad, what would the character
probably do?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 6: RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

	The Jihad to Destroy Barney roleplaying games have traditionally been a
very freeform activity, somewhere between a diceless roleplaying game (ala
Amber), a MU*-style computer game, and a writing circle. While we provide rules
for the GURPS system throughout the book, for a very long time the group didn't
use a tabletop roleplaying system to create the stories that make up the Jihad
Universe.
	In this chapter, we've put down most of the old "unwritten" rules and
guidelines used in Jihad Universe freeform roleplay regarding the mechanics of
the universe itself and how to play around with it without going over the
canonical boundaries. Most of this material isn't all that critical to running a
Jihad Universe campaign in freeform or tabletop format, but we consider it a
valuable resource for both players and GMs looking to get a more in-depth handle
on the game world.

Canon, Cannons and Pointy Hats
	In a lot of the text, we make continual references to "the canon." For
somebody who isn't familiar with internal politics and history of the Jihad to
Destroy Barney, this can get fairly confusing. As the current revision of this
book is intended to allow people who aren't familiar with the internal workings
of the Internet group to use this as a role-playing resource, we need to get a
few things clear right off the bat.

What is "The Canon?"
	The contents of this book are considered the canon of the Jihad Universe
2.0. This is the base setting, depicting the game as it exists as of April 2004
in real life and May 1999 as it is in the game world. This chapter will provide
the basic guidelines as to how this world works, specifically how science and
magic work, as well as providing a general guide to creating characters for the
Jihad Universe. The following chapters will provide additional detail as to the
main players in the Jihad Universe.
	Canon is solely defined at the discretion the players and GM (or writers
and Line Editor, depending on how you look at things) of the Jihad to Destroy
Barney. It's the primary campaign, which means that they get to set the tone.
Additional books may be released advancing (or changing) the canon as the nature
of the game - and the players - changes.

Why the emphasis on canon?
	There's a long, boring story involving a series of internal Jihad
political struggles connected to this, (The GM's Apologia at the very end of
this book covers some of this for the morbidly curious.) but the short form is
that at the time Jihad Universe 2.0 was started, the in-group game was very
chaotic and difficult to understand even by insiders. The decision was made to
create a bottleneck for "official" game materials in an attempt to clear things
up a bit.  That decision ultimately resulted in the contents of this book.

Do I need to get the Jihad's permission to run JU2?
	No. In earlier versions of this book, it was intended solely for people
who were already members of the Jihad to Destroy Barney, and there were a number
of dire imprecations about using it outside the context of the Jihad group.
We've removed these from this version (We think. We hope.) with the intent of
creating a more general role-playing book.
	As it is, you do not need to ask permission of the Jihad group to use
JU2 as a resource, any more than you need to ask permission of the writers of
Rifts or In Nomine or Silver Age Sentinels to use their books. We do, however,
hope that if you use JU2 as a resource you'll let us know about it so we can
link your game/stories from the jihad.net homepage.

How can I get my game added to the canon?
	Be a member of the Jihad to Destroy Barney.
	No, really. That's pretty much it. The core writing group of the Jihad
to Destroy Barney - along with a smaller number of individual writers - are the
ones who create the canon and set it. However, it should be noted that as of
this writing (04/2004) the group is not actively seeking new members, and new
members have for the most part stopped seeking us out. We're still available,
though, and the GM is willing to listen to any pitch so long as it's
entertaining.

If you're thinking of making a pitch, here's a few things you should do:
	First of all, be sure to read this book through and make sure you're not
duplicating things we've already written.
	Then, write up a short sketch of the idea in general. This can be
anything from a few paragraphs of a story featuring your idea to a brief
timeline of how it fits into the Jihad Universe. The important part of a sketch
is to get as much information as you can into it. Don't, under any
circumstances, just submit something that's lifted whole cloth from an existing
fictional source. Stuff like "Barney finds the One Ring," or "Captain Kirk joins
the Jihad" can make for a funny one-shot story, but it's not something that the
Jihad group is interested in adding to the canon.
	When you've got your sketch ready and willing, take it over to our
message board at http://www.jihad.net/phpab4d and post your sketch with the
header "Audition." We'll take it from there, and probably have lots of questions
for you.

Credit where credit is due...
	The characters, concepts, stories and whatnot used in the Jihad belong
to their creator and traditionally cannot be touched unless the original creator
has given permission.
	For purposes of JU2 as a public gaming resource, all characters, items
and situations profiled or mentioned in this book still belong to their
creators, but permission has been given for ther general use. As a matter of
form, if used elsewhere and posted publicly, users should provide credit to the
creator when possible, or to "The Jihad to Destroy Barney" if you can't figure
out who the creator was.

Profile Writing
	Jihad roleplay, being mostly freeform, was never really based on the
concept of character points. Instead of rolling up a character, Jihaddi
traditionally just wrote up a character profile. This sounds a great deal easier
than having to puzzle out a character sheet in GURPS or AD&D, right?
	Well, it isn't. Creating a freeform roleplay character can be just as
tricky as creating one for a tabletop game. In this section, Brother Fireball
provides a guide to writing up a JU character that's easy to use for everybody
involved in a game. There are two basic steps to getting a character into Jihad
role-play, generation and then profiling....

Character Generation
	Make a reasonable character, if not human than at least with some
human-seeming qualities; immortals and all-powerful types of almost any kind are
rejected out of hand.  Everyone has someone better than them  at a given talent,
and Munchkins should never be forced to demonstrate  someone being better.
	A character with interests in specialization should not have more than
one specialty.  For example, being a world-renowned mage capable of  building a
supercomputer with match sticks, a roll of aluminum foil, and silly putty looks
silly.
	Now it's time for another episode of "Good Idea, Bad Idea."
	Good Idea: "A wide variety of magic to choose from, but very little of
it fully controlled.  One bit of magic she can control is the ability to open a
portal to virtually any destination. The portal can get her there instantly, but
she loses time with each use of the portal ranging from about a minute (for
short jaunts) to 15 minutes (for a trip halfway around the world).  She has all
the vulnerabilities of normal humans, and is a poor non-magical fighter."
	One or two interesting skills which she is adept at, with plenty of room
for the character to grow and be developed in stories should the character's
owner want.
	Bad Idea: "He is a competent hand-to-hand combatant, Mech pilot,
aerospace fighter pilot, marksman with both handguns and rifles, and a decent
swordsman. He is very well aquatinted with commanding a large fighting force,
and has had experience with both land and aerospace combat command.  He
possesses extremely powerful psionic abilities..."
	Now that's just too much, looks kinda silly doesn't it?  And that's only
a small excerpt from the rather bland skills listing in that particular profile.
	The prohibitions against creating a character based on yourself that run
throughout most fanfic circles don't really exist in Jihad role-play.  A vast
majority of the characters are at least partially based on the people that play
them, just don't give yourself too many extra or enhanced abilities.
	Try to come up with something reasonably original.  Just as you
shouldn't steal technology from another fictitious universe and import it to the
JU, you shouldn't steal people; a Jihaddi jedi or terminator or romulan or
Highlander-style immortal or whatever would just end up looking lame.  There are
some exceptions, just using more vague concepts from outside sources can be
acceptable.  There have been Jihaddi vampires, dragons, werewolves, elves, and
characters from various tabletop rpg's that've all successfully integrated into
the Jihad Universe.
	Good Idea: "Can become insubstantial at will.  Can change appearance at
will.  Can absorb energy attacks, magical or otherwise."
	Can't even tell which fiction that's lifted from, can you?
	Bad Idea: "Went hiking in the mountains once, got lost, found some old
guy, studied Jedi stuff, found my way home."
	Honest, that's not a summary.  It's not only a poorly done borrowing
from another (very well known) fictitious universe, it's a rather spectacularly
bad job of profile writing too.
	Another note on excessive abilities and borrowing from other fictitious
universes: A big reason that most of it that's accepted is accepted has to do
with good writing more than anything else.  If you've got one of those sorts of
ideas and think it might work you can go ahead and try it, just be sure to take
extra care in your character generation, profile, and story writing; ask lots of
advice.
	You need some sort of explanation as to why your character has joined
the Jihad (and "just sorta dropped in" won't cut it, it's just being sloppy and
lazy and won't make for good role-play).  Maybe your character's a conspiracy
theorist type who discovered some of the Jihad's secrets and was inducted that
way, or maybe you've got some outside grudge against Barney or Lyra in whatever
dimension you happen to come from.  This also helps to create a more
well-balanced character, one with some sort of outside life that isn't just
killing spongin or Lyrans or various other things 24/7. 
Parents/friends/relatives/pets killed by Barney has started to become a little
overused though, so if you do that type of story just be careful you don't end
up sounding cliche. 
	Good Idea: Kidnapped by a scientist loyal to Barney and altered for use
as a living weapon against the Jihad.  Rebelled, managed to escape, and joined
the Jihad to use what he'd been made to fight the horrors he'd seen.
	Creative and original.  Can be said briefly but also lends itself well
to a more detailed origin story.  One of my favorites and better than anything
I've ever come up with.
	Bad Idea: "After one such tour, he found himself channel-surfing and
wiped out when he hit the B'Harnii and Fiends television show. So disgusted by
what he was witnessing something snapped."
	Something like that could be a possible start, but it's very thin.  This
is more of a real life reason than a roleplaying one.  As J. FoxGlov often said,
Barney is very easy to hate.
	If you do use preexisting Jihad canon in your character's background, be
sure to run your idea by the JU2.0 staff or whoever owns the particular bit of
the Jihad Universe you want to use to make sure that idea doesn't violate any
canon. Your best bet is to actually read through the released canon sections,
especially the "Planetary" fringe movement (in the chapter on third parties), as
it can accommodate a good number of diverse ideas and provide an easy "in" from
the Mundane world.
	Good Idea: A thief caught in the middle of a battle between spongin and
TRES Corps forces in the midst of attempting to steal an artifact the spongin
wanted for a weapon.  Injured in the fight that also kills his best friend and
partner, he is rescued by TRES and ends up joining their ranks to fight the
newly discovered (to him) Purple Menace and avenge his friend's death.
	I like this.  Creative, original, establishes discovery of the Jihad and
reason to join using just the most common and easy to write parts of canon.
	Bad Idea: "but he is reluctant to divulge any details about his life
before he jumped into the solar system in a stolen Lyran space fighter"
	Hehehe, this is bad.  Unless you're a group of Maenads, you wouldn't
steal a Lyran ship, you would maybe get within sight of a Lyran ship before the
lower-circle Lyran mages guarding it caught you and spent a few decades
torturing you just to impress a superior.  Or the ship would eat you.
	Along that line, reading through some of the profiles of current Jihad
characters before you get too far into creating your character is a good idea,
not only just to see what other characters look like and how people have
developed them, but so you don't unknowingly do something too many other people
have done and end up looking cliche.

Profiling
	You write a character profile to define him/her/it/them within the Jihad
Universe canon and also to help others understand and possibly write about your
character.
	As with all other writing, grammar is god.  Care should be taken for
description, development, history, etc.  Good writing, and hence good stories
and role-play, depend on solid character development.
	Good Idea: "Personality notes: [She] is stubborn as hell. She only
listens to you when she wants to, and will often disagree for the sake of being
ornery. Has a horrible temper when she gets upset or frustrated."
	Great.  Brief but still descriptive; the sentences that should be short
are short, the sentences that should be longer are longer.  The profile goes on,
but just this bit very quickly and easily establishes an image of what the
character's like.  And the spelling has been checked. (special note: contrary to
what your eighth grade teacher told you, starting a sentence with and is kosher,
you just have to know what you're doing.)
	Bad Idea: "Nearly always in a pseudo uniform, generally wears a Black
vest w/ lots of pockets over a Gray Long sleeved shirt, Woodland camo BDU pants,
pistol belt, Black leather combat boots."
	This person never learned sentence combining, or proper capitalization. 
Compare that with "Prefers clothing which looks as if it could be part of some
sort of uniform.  A black multipocketed utility vest worn over a grey shirt and
BDU-style camouflaged pants with standard-issue black combat boots are his
normal."  A bit more wordy perhaps, but it does far more to evoke an image.  As
with several other things, grammar problems can be fixed easily.  Review your
own writing a while after you've written it, and also find a couple other people
to review it for you.
	Also important is how you write a profile, that it's structured properly
to give the right information in the right way.  Just lists of abilities,
skills, attributes, and weaknesses are pretty lifeless and boring and don't
really give that much useful information about the character (listing your
character's abilities and such is important, but it has to be incorporated into
a profile the right way, it doesn't make up a good profile on its own.)
	A good way to get a good profile down is to think of your character in
the third person.  Try to think about what you think other people should know
and what you want them to know in order to write about your character and
role-play with him/her/it, not necessarily everything you've personally thought
up about the character.  When in doubt about something to include in your
profile, ask yourself "Do I want people I role-play with to know this about my
character when they write?" or "If I was writing about somebody else's
character, would I want to know this?"
	A suggested format is the one I used for my character available at
http://egad.narf.zort.poit.net/profile.html, written from the perspective of a
Jihad-wide personnel department.  Give some important statistics for the
character (with some explanation and description), write a short history, then
use a 3rd person analysis to cover personality and anything else that didn't
come out in the rest of the profile (such as weaknesses, they come out much
better written about as personality traits than just listed somewhere).  This
format isn't a requirement though, just a suggestion for those who might be
having trouble because it worked well for me.
	That covers one Good Idea...
	Bad Idea: "Profile: A slightly out of order character history that
relies heavily on context that isn't written into the profile (this sort of
thing is common, but gives no information that would be really useful to
somebody writing about the character).  "Skills: He has a shrewd business sense
and a great understanding of economics.  He can understand several languages. 
He is a skilled marksman.  He is a competent swordsman.  He is a skilled pilot."
(While marginally useful information, the profile I took this from was only
slightly more descriptive and less bland.)  "Other abilities: Blah blah blah..."
(Now this is just silly, a second bland skills list)  "Weapons/paraphernalia:
... "  (Another list, with a little explanation this time.  This sort of thing
can occasionally be made to work but usually doesn't, most of the time it works
better when integrated into other parts of the profile).
	Read some of the profiles out there for yourself; it should become
quickly apparent which work and which don't, and what sort of format would suit
you best.
	Usually, your character needs a history.  If your character's background
changes from story to story, it not only gets confusing for the reader but it
makes for pretty bad role-play.  At the same time, don't spend all your time
developing your character's personal history, only a minimum is required to fit
a profile into Jihad canon.  If you have a more complete, detailed personal
history for your character, that's great, but it's usually better off in a
separate origin story.
	And when you have a draft of your profile done, find a couple people to
look at it and edit it for you.  Not just somebody who'll read over it once and
say it's fine, but people who are going to seriously review it for you, people
who are going to be critical about grammar and willing to tell you if you
created a munchkin.  Your profile will benefit the same as anything else you
write, if you've got people who are willing to critique it somewhat harshly and
if you do a few revisions based on that critique.
	Writing and role-playing is about being creative, having fun, and
enjoying yourself.  Other players and writers should be able to get a feel for
your character's nature after interacting, or reading about it.

--/SIDEBAR: In re: Munchkins

	Earlier versions of this book had, among other things, a number of dire
warnings and rules regarding the use and abuse of the rules for the purpose of
powergaming. Or in simpler terms, being a munchkin.
	Most of these warnings and rules have since been removed, as they were
really meant to correct problems with the internal freeform game that have long
ago been solved. Beating people who aren't in the internal group over the head
with the No-Munchkin stick seemed well... a bit insulting, really.
	As far as munchkinism in and of itself goes, well... frankly we're not
fond of it, but as vices go it beats acting out hyper-violent fantasies with
loaded weapons, so we'll let it slide. As far as munchkinism goes in the
freeform roleplay, our rule of thumb is "if it's written well, we'll be more
likely to let it go through than otherwise." We figure that if your players are
bright enough to create a munchkinistic character and then play it well, they
should be allowed to.
	It's open season on nitwits who like to max out their stats and act like
the Punisher instead of actually roleplay, though.
	(For more on munchkins, their habits and methods of controlling the evil
little buggers, we highly recommend The Munchkins Guide to Power Gaming.)

/--END SIDEBAR

Mad Science, Madder Engineering

	The Mundane world as of 1999 is transitioning from a mature TL7 to an
early TL8, but outside of certain government and corporate research programs the
only real evidence of TL8 equipment is in the form of the ever-expanding
Internet and related spinoff technologies, such as MP3 audio players and the
first beginnings of ubiquitous computing.
	The Jihad, with it's high concentration of powerful and somewhat loopy
R&D people, has achieved a base technology that is obviously more advanced than
the outside world. Most of these obviously are military in nature, with
communications, vehicle technology and medical tech bringing up the rear. The
average Jihaddi has access to equipment between mature TL7 (The tracked vehicles
and artillery so beloved by members of the MAUL Mobile Heavy Infantry.) to an
early TL9 when it comes to communications gear like the JihadLinker.
	Most standard issue Jihaddi equipment is a nice and mature TL8, verging
on TL9. A few specialized items, like the Jihad's large computer systems, are a
full TL10 or above. The X-Rifle standard-issue energy longarm for TRES Corps,
for example, is a TL9 plasma weapon (GURPSites can treat it like a standard TL9
blaster rifle, UT51 or B209.) but due to the complexity of the production, it's
the only standard-issue TL9 weapon available to the Jihad. More common are
weapons like TL8 laser pistols or even high-quality TL7 slugthrowers - after
all, you'll never have to worry about running out of power for a Colt automatic.
The critical thing that keeps the Jihad from producing more high-TL items is the
constraint of the war. Because the Jihad is running with a fairly limited
resource base - and is unable to access the wider resources of the mundane world
- they don't have the time or the materiel to expend for large amounts of
high-TL production runs or any real theoretical work. TL11+ prototypes, while
they do exist, are often hand-built and the personal property of a researcher or
technician.

Superscience
	There are things in the Jihad that do transcend the limitations of the
expedencies of war. These are the products of superscience. Most of these
devices are singular in nature - only the inventor really understands how (or
why) the device works. In extremely rare cases, the devices can be mass
produced. That usually doesn't lead to anything good.
	During the early years of the Jihad's existence, new members tried to
come up with the absolute perfect superweapon to defeat B'harne (this period is
called the Age of Amuck Scientists by the current research teams). Some of the
more bizarre devices from this period — such as the BurgerMasterBlaster, a TL15
matter-transformation device that converted any organic target into a bacon
cheeseburger — can still be found in the dusty corners of TRES or DE armories,
although if a player manages to find one, he/she may be hounded to death by
embarrassed WEDJEE scientists who want the abominations they created to stay
buried.

Tech and the Bad Guys
	The Purple Forces tend to stick with whatever gear they can scrounge
from the mundanes or the Jihad - B'harne stands for the stifiling of innovation,
after all. The Lyrans stand above B'harne's immediate minions, of course, using
their advanced magical powers to warp lifeforms into doing their bidding. This
is a TL(4+8) divergent technical path for the Lyrans, due to the fundamental
incompatibilites between human science and magic. (see page 76)

Using Magic For Fun & Profit

Magic, the Theory and Practice
	Magic is based on an energy field (called for purposes of simplicity
"mana" after anthropologist J.G. Frazier) that is closely tied to living things.
The field tends to be stronger where there is a great diversity of life (like
the Amazon basin) or where a disaster has killed large numbers (such as
Hiroshima, Dresden, the Cambodian killing fields, Krakatoa, etc. There's the
possibility of strong "fossil magic" surrounding the Chixilbub crater — where
the comet that killed the dinosaurs hit). The field also tends to condense along
lines and nodes — usually the result of generations of use by sentient beings.
Many high-mana sites like Stonehenge are the result of ancient Celtic peoples
focusing power on the site, which was already saturated with mana before the
site was designated.
	Magi (people who use magic) have a genetic predisposition and sensitvity
to mana flow. While people without the required metagene can learn theory, they
cannot actively manipulate magical forces w/o the assistance of a mage.
	Magi are capable of increasing their abilities through regular practice
and training. With enough time any mage can reach the theoretical limits of
human magic, generally considered to be as powerful as the legendary mage Merlin
(who may have existed, but records are fragmented and contradictory). A
particularly ambitious mage may exceed those limits under the right conditions
(peak physical condition, standing on an exceptionally strong mana node), but
the price paid usually involves the death of said mage, often very messy death
at that.
	In general, Jihaddi mages are mostly inexperienced, thanks to a general
lack of magic in Mundania.  Experienced magic users are rare, and powerful magic
users are extremely rare.  Like all general concepts, there can be, and often
are,  exceptions to the rule.
	The Lyrans, a race that have deep roots in magic, are capable of casting
just about any spell an expert human mage can by the time they ascend to the 5th
circle. The Lyrans have an innate understanding of magic that humans are unable
to grasp, and are able to use that knowledge to do impressive feats of magic,
Any specialized abilities are found and honed to full and regular use by the
time the lyran reaches 6th circle.
	Magic and technology are currently incompatible, and will remain so for
a long time to come. Both systems attack the problem of manipulating the
universe from different angles, and use very different systems. Using modern
physics and mathematics to describe mana interactions is like trying to
translate Beethoven's 9th Symphony into mathematical notation and still make it
understandable by musicians. (Important emphasis.) In theory this can be
overcome with the use of advanced quantum math, but for OOC purposes, this math
has yet to be developed to any useful level and is unlikely to be developed
during gameplay.

--/SIDEBAR: Magical Artifacts

	Magical artifacts in the Jihad Universe fall into three general
categories:
	1.   An object which amplifies magical energy.
	2.  An object which filters/reduces magical energy.
	3.  An object which has a spell or function attached to it magically.
	Artifacts generally are created mysteriously, and no-one knows exactly
where they come from, the stuff of legends, etc.  They may even be guarded by
some nasty monster...   for Jihad purposes, the character should have (or have
had) to go through some awful ordeal to obtain it. Any artifact of reasonable
power will likely be very old, dating back to the time of Merlin or further, and
thus be extremely rare.
	Magical objects, and/or magical tools (whatever you want to call them)
are generally regular non-magical objects "enchanted" by a very experienced
mage.  (i.e. A spell is attached to it to perform a function.) Example: A
wizard's staff can either be an artifact (if this mage is lucky enough to have
found a natively magical material to make it from) or an enchanted object (This
would apply to approx. 90% of mages in the JU, as Earth doesn't generally have
many magical materials.) Enchanting Mundane gear is possible, but requires n+1
times more energy to imbue to a complex device (car, plane, computer) than to a
simple device (sword, chariot/oxcart, basic gun).

/--END SIDEBAR

Spells
	Some spells might demand rituals, simply because they are too much for a
person to do on the fly — to remember, or to perform without mistake.  It's
rather like requiring someone to play a symphony by himself, but allowing him to
use a synthesizer to record each track separately on metronome and overlay,
checking and re-editing, before playing the final product.
	Spells depend on the available ambient energy as well as the physical
strength of the spellcaster; a magi in good health standing on the Serpent Mound
in Ohio will be able to cast more and stronger spells than a wounded magi stuck
in a low-mana zone like Gary, Indiana.
	The average magi will be able to perform a few simple spells right off
the bat, most importantly Detect Magic and a few simple elemental spells. With
training and perseverence the basic "combat mage" spells like fireballs, shield
spells, etc. can be learned and used with relatve ease in all but the most
heavily low-mana areas. Specialization, combined with obsessive training, can
create elaborate rituals that - if the correct components are handy - represent
the ultimate peak of human magecraft.
	In a few extreme cases, magi have been known to create spellcraft of
extraordinary power and scope under conditions of heavy duress. The situation
has been compared to incidents of "hysterical strength" that allow humans to do
incredible things under similar circumstances. As yet, nobody's figured out how
to duplicate the situation reliably without sticking the mage into a
life-or-death situation, so the question of how it works remains unresolved.

--/SIDEBAR: Types of Magic

	Combat magic is somewhat freeform, but based on memorized words,
gestures, or similar menomynics acting as a focus for the mage's willpower. Such
spells tend to be simple attack or defense types, with as much power as the mage
dares thrown behind them.
	Ritual magic involves longer, more intricate spells, planned out as
thoroughly in advance as possible. There are a number of schools of ritual
magic, all of which disagree with each other. Rituals are used for complex work,
and often require multiple mages to work properly. Ritual schools include:
	* Sacred Geometers: Mages who use Pythagorean geometric mysticism, the
Egyptian pyramids, or networks of "ley lines" (mana paths) to do magic.
	* Shamanic: Mages who follow the traditions of pre-industrial societies,
such as Celtic or Native American religious ceremonies.
	* Neo-Shamanic: Mages who follow a middle path, blending modern
neurology and theoretical physics with traditional shamanic rituals (and the use
of psychotropic drugs).
	* Neopaganist:  Another middle-path school based in elements taken from
pre-Christian Europe, often involving nature rites. Neopagan mages tend to mix
fictional (and often erroneous) elements with remnants of actual rituals to
create a unique form of magic.
	* Hermetic: Magic and ritual based on Victorian distortions of Eastern
and Greek philosophy. Alister Crowley and Helena Blavatsky are the prime
examples of Hermetic thought.
	* Rationalist: A totally new school founded in the Jihad Praxeus
Veneficum, intending to try and condense magic into purely scientific terms.
	* Taoist: Magic based on the writings and philosophy of Hung Mung, Lao
Tzu and the Chinese thinkers that came before them.
	* Synergists: Another new school from the JPV, the Synergists attempt to
collect *everything* from the known schools and create a working understanding
of magic from that.

/--END SIDEBAR

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER 7: MARCHING OFF TO WAR, HURRAH

	So. You've read through all of the rules, the history of the Jihad, and
all the other information. You're all fired up to run your own campaign in the
the JU.
	How the hell do you do that?
	That's what this section is for.

Mal's Handy-Dandy Tips on Writing Jihad Campaigns

	The Jihad, like Life, is never easy to cope with. In the past, all the
Jihad's roleplaying has been done in prose format — the characters write the
story according to a plotline set down by the GM, instead of doing real-time
gaming the way most RPGs are devised. Now, in this chapter (and scattered
through some of the others) we provide information on running a Jihad game for
the GURPS system. If that's what you want to do, then the information should be
helpful. If, however, you want to do a prose campaign, we'll provide some tips
on running one properly.

	0) Know where you're going before you set out. You may not know how the
whole thing is going to end up, but you should at least have some idea of the
campaigns goal, prominent bad guys, prominent good guys, time scale, that sort
of thing. Make notes, because they are your friend. Having a great concept is
knowing the rough destination, but that's not enough to make a good story. Fill
out your concept before you start shopping for players.

	1) Cut down on redundant segments. If you look at The Marraketh
Connection, Operation Pacifica, etc. you'll see a lot of segments where the same
battle/scenario is replayed with a slightly different point of view. Avoid this.
Get people who're in the same thing together and consolidate segs. Having the
different POV is often a good thing, but cluttering up a newsgroup or web board
with fifty different 2KB stories from fifty different people is considered poor
form. It's best to have just one 100KB story with the all the pertinent players
contributing.

	2) Have framing pieces... spots along at the beginning, end, and through
the length of the story where you (as GM) keep the plot moving. They don't have
to be long, and they don't have to be filled with tons of the dreaded expository
dialouge; just remind the readers that there is a central storyline. This is
very helpful when your players are taking their sweet time getting past the
introdution.

	3) Keep the story fast-paced. This ties back to #1. You want to keep the
readers interested, something that the big Ops really failed at, because they
got bogged down in excruciatiting detail and too many segments. If you have five
or six big-assed multi-author story segs, it'll read faster and most likely be
better written than a twenty small  single-author segs.

	4) Set and be a hardass about deadlines whenever possible. Accept delays
based on real-world problems if they arise (as a rule of thumb, reality should
always take precedence), but if the story/seg/section is not mission critical,
don't be afraid to pass that author over.

	5) Never have more authors than you could successfully run a tabletop
RPG with. That's what you're doing in essence, after all — role-playing without
the dice. Table RPGs get difficult to play past 6 players / 1 GM. So 7 should be
the top player/author limit. However, you should use as many other people as
NPCs as possible, to give the Op the proper feel.

	6) Expect the unexpected, and plan accordingly. Over the course of the
story, your players may come to you with an interesting digression they want to
add to the story. Since you are writing for an audience, you should be willing
to indulge digressions. While it's nice to keep the story moving at a good clip,
if speed is making you boring you ought to slow down a little. Or conversely,
one of your players may devise a better ending to the story than the one you
came up with. If this happens, swallow your pride and go with the better ending.
Prose campaigns, like traditional RPG campaigns, are organic creatures, and the
players should be able to influence the story. The GM Is Always Right, but
sometimes he's wrong.

	These are just basic tips for getting together a prose campaign. There
are other things, of course, but most relate to rules of grammar, spelling,
characterization and other literary devices. We recommend looking up Strunk &
White, or the Associated Press Style Book for further suggestions on how to
improve the quality of your writing.

Defining the Game

	When GMing a Jihad Universe campaign, you set up what the world is going
to look like to the players and how they will interact with that world. These
are things that you should figure out before you start recruiting players. The
Jihad as presented in this book is the "canon" version. That is to say, it's the
version as played by the members of the Jihad to Destroy Barney that exists out
here in the physical world. As such, the base setting is tricky to change, at
best. However, this should not stop you from taking a different look at the JU.
Starting from a different POV of the same subject can lead to a very different
game than the traditional Jihad campaigns.
	This book is both a mirror and a prism. All sorts of possibilites are
refracted through it. Make the most of it.

Character Involvement
	The world of the Jihad is pretty well set, so the GM (with a little help
from the players) needs to decide the role the PCs play in the Jihad Universe.
Are they part of the System, or on the outside looking in?

Seeking the Jihad
	The Jihad can be glimpsed at a distance from here, as the PCs are trying
to find the group and figure out what's going on. The Jihad's role may change
from game to game, or over the course of many games as the players learn about
the Hidden War and the available sides.

Joining  the Jihad
	The heroes may even learn enough that the Jihad welcomes them into their
ranks. The 401k is decent enough, and you get to travel. Conversely, the PCs may
be Jihaddi from the start; it's a strange world out there, and the Jihad stands
by its men. And women. And aliens. And whatever.

Fighting the Jihad
	The again, the heroes may not approve of the Jihad. Even if you aren't a
member of the Purple Forces (which is also an option here, by the way), the
Jihad makes for an intriguing enemy of all the outside world considers good and
pure. It does, after all, consist of a massive terrorist organization that is
responsible for numerous incidents of vandalism, assault and murder all over the
world. And to top it all off, the Jihad lies to outsiders — and justifies their
actions by saying that Mundanes can't handle the truth.

Genre
	The genre of the game is the most basic type of story you're telling,
and sets the direction the game will be pointed in.
	The baseline Jihad Universe setting is written to spec with a
Conspiratorial Fantasy genre: The world is a lot stranger than the average
person knows, and only by digging deep and asking a lot of questions will the
players ever get to the bottom of it all. Once the heroes cross the barrier
between the Mundane world and the Jihad's world the Fantasy element kicks into
high gear, throwing the players into a world where dragons and rayguns exist
side-by-side (in some cases, the dragons are using the rayguns!).

Setting the Tone
	The tone is how you'll approach the genre of your campaign, helps set
the overall goals, and what kind of flavor you add. Each tone is like an
adjective; you can use as many as you like, but it's a good idea to avoid too
many in one shot.
	Action: Boom boom, baby! The classic "hack and slash" setting, featuring
high-speed pursuits, John Woo gun battles, martial-arts action, desperate
battles, explosive climaxes, deathtraps and narrow escapes. Action works well
for military or special-ops games. Chasing wyrm-minions through the back streets
of LA, guns a-blazing, things like that.
	Camp: Take every clich้ you've ever heard, and run with it. Drama and
swashbuckling permeate the surroundings, Capital Letters are thick upon the
ground, and every hero and villian gets a dying soliliquy. Played either for
laughs or for sheer sense of wonder, camp is for just letting go and enjoying
the world in black and white (or maybe a rich plaid).
	Cinematic: Realism takes a hike and the perfect scene is everything.
Directed by Jerry Bruckheimer with an unlimited effects budget and all the great
Hollywood stars, there's always just a few seconds left on the bomb, the hero's
girlfriend gets jumped by spongin, and the whole thing is set to a sweeping
soundtrack featuring Howard Shore and Hans Zimmer. Just remember not to be the
plucky comic relief.
	Dark: The world is going to hell, and all Barney does is speed it along.
The Jihad may be able to stop him and Charn'El for taking over, but the Mundanes
are all corrupt anyway. The Lyran plans may not be the worst thing to happen to
the world after all, and the Jihad will learn the price for neglecting their own
souls to stop the evil...
	Gritty: The game doesn't quite conform to reality — after all, in a
realistic game extradimensional aliens don't exist and most of the Jihad's
devices don't work — but realism gets first shot at everything. Shoot a spongin
and go to jail. Barney's evil works on the shadowed streets the Saetherians
slither through. Joining the Jihad means abandoning your friends and family, and
wetwork leaves deep psychological scars.
	Illuminated: You're not cleared for that. Fnord.
	Silly: Not even bothering to play it straight at all, silly campaigns
take the strange and twist it into laughs. Joining up with the Jihad to protect
the penguins of the Ross Ice Shelf from the evils of Barney, magical girls
created in R&D accidents and other like things can happen in a silly campaign.
See GURPS Discworld for a more exhaustive description of silly campaigning.
	Superheroic: Similar in nature to the cinematic tone, but with a lot
more color. Full-fledged four-color action involving parahumans, regular humans
with superscientific devices, the aliens they fight and the civillians who have
to get out of the way. Suspense, action, and good clean fun with a simple but
effective narrative thrust is the core of a superheroic game.
	Technothriller: It's all about the chrome-plated HK 99s. The
technothriller takes cues from the action and cinematic, but there's always time
to stop and lovingly inventory all the toys in detail. Building the perfect
X-Rifle, devising a ritual to stop a lyran sorcerer in his tracks, or springing
the perfect ambush on a group of spongin soldiers — that's the fun in
technothriller gaming.

Scale
	Setting the scale is important, especially in a Jihad campaign. The
scale will usually determine time, place, available resources and the worst
nasties the players will have to deal with.

Historical
	A good deal of the nitty-gritty of the Jihad's history has been lost
over the years. Despite the work of Dr. Carmichael (p. 8), there are a lot of
blank spots. Anything could have happened, but we really don't have details.
This details the period 1990-96, the formation of the early Jihad and the
organization of the first JAOs, but adventures involving Lyrans and the
ancestors of the HellWyrm can stretch back as far as Atlantis 25,000 years ago.

The Operation
	This is the classic form of the Jihad campaign, a huge all-out battle
with the forces of Good and Evil clashing. The trigger can be something small (a
chance encounter with an enemy base in Operation HomeFront) or something truly
cosmic (the Multiversal Doomsday Device in Operation WorldWalk). Either way,
almost the entire Jihad will get involved in an Operation when things finally
come to a head. Operations are the most challenging form of campaign in the JU,
so GMs should be prepared in advance and ready for the players to shift gears
unexpectedly in midstream.

Skirmishes
	When only one JAO has to deal with a problem, it's a skirmish. This can
be a globetrotting adventure or set in the back alleys of a major city. All the
sides are treading a great deal more carefully than usual when fighting here,
and all the bloodshed is kept out of sight of the news cameras. This is the
arena of the Liaisons and the spin teams, who keep the wheels of war running
relatively smoothly.

Downtime
	When slam-bang action involving the movement of armies gets a little
tiring, it's good to drop down a gear and engage in a quiet little story. Short
character interaction between battles in the Hidden War, the occasional
investigation into unusual activity and maybe a "What I Did On My Summer
Vacation" story or three, set anywhere in the Jihad Universe during the current
time period.

Power Levels
	The Jihad Universe can support an impressive range of power levels, from
innocent bystanders to nigh-invulnerable superheroes.

Oh Shit! Run! It's Godzilla!: <100 points
	At this level, the PCs are the classic Expendable Extras; the guys who
run screaming from the scene of the disaster, the nameless spear carriers that
die under the Hero's (or the Villain's) guns. In short, the perfect sponge
minions. Now, you know and I know that your players aren't necessarily going to
go for PCs that have less than 100 points — although stranger things have
happened, especially with GURPS Bunnies & Burrows fans. Still, it might be
interesting to play ordinary Mundanes that have to run away from danger,
eventually becoming aware of the whole stranger world around them, and maybe
wanting to get some payback in. Mundane dependents of Jihaddi PCs (spouse, kids,
pets, etc.) would work well here as well.

Something's Happening Here: 100 points
	At this level, the PCs are all talented Mundanes who've been hipped to
strange happennings. Planetary members searching for clues to who dropped that
power-armor in the middle of downtown San Diego, Mundane adventurers looking for
archaeological artifacts of power, and the traditional "person seeking vengance
against mystery beings who offed a loved one" are all viable character templates
at this level. These adventures tend to emphasise investigation, if only because
the players aren't quite powerful enough to charge into a situation and wreak
havoc.

The Corps Is Mother, The Corps Is Father: 150-200 points
	Here, the PCs have more than likely joined the Jihad (or are in the
process of joining), and are undergoing training in one of the main tracks. This
is the "grunt level" of the Jihad, and anybody who doesn't measure up fast runs
a risk of getting killed. Missions at this level are divided between combat and
investigation; sending out a few grunts to do forward observation isn't an
uncommon event. This power level can also start to support heavy magic-users,
psis, or other parahuman characters.

Who You Gonna Call: 250-300 points
	At this level, PCs are mid-ranking Jihaddi in good standing, often
commanding a group of lesser-ranked members and/or newbies. Here the more
impressive PC concepts can come out to play: Heavy-duty human wizards,
martial-arts masters, pulp-hero engineers, interdimensional travellers and
agents of the Illuminati. The mayhem from here on out gets set to overdrive and
never looks back.

Badasses in Black: 400+ points
	Now we're cooking with liquid hydrogen. PCs at this level are all
high-ranking members of the Jihad, people who have been around the block an
uncountable number of times, as close as the players will ever get to becoming
Secret Masters themselves. Here, the PCs are leading entire divisions of JAOs
into mortal combat with Lyran sorcerers, Mikari armadas and the dread HellWyrm
himself.

Advantages, Disadvantages and Skills

ADVANTAGES:

Ally Group (The Jihad)	             see p.CI19
	You have a friend in the Jihad. Actually, you have a lot of friends in
the Jihad, and they all have very big guns and will come and help you at a
moment's notice!
	Jihad Ally Groups are based on 100-point NPCs and will appear on a 9 or
less all the time – even deep-cover Liaisons can count on that if they feel a
need to call in backup. The size of the group will depend on the character's
Rank level; A Rank of 2 or less will bring a small group, a Rank of 3-5 will
bring a medium-sized group, and a Rank of 6 and higher will bring a large group.
	Example: Grunty McBrock, mean and cold Independent Operative for the
Jihad, gets himself into a serious corner and calls for backup. As a Rank 0
Jihaddi, his backup will consist of three or four random agents pulled off the
nearest watchtower. On the other hand, TRES Grand Admiral Felton (Rank 8) can
call for backup and recieve the entirety of TRES Omega Squad and air support
from the nearby MAUL airbase. As always, it's good to be the king.

Divine Favor (Feral Jackson)	 see p.CI36
	Maenad characters can, in a pinch, call for help from their demigod
Feral Jackson. Jackson however doesn't always like to be called, and will not
respond well (-1 to all reaction rolls, -2 if it doesn't involve Lyrans) if
called for a non-trivial reason.
	If the GM feels like it, Jackson's Divine Favor may be held as a secret
Advantage should the character be considered a candidate for Maenadship.

Divine Favor (Grimace)		 see p.CI36
	Members of the Brotherhood of Grimace can call on the Lord of the Fries
(Don't look at me like that, I just report this stuff.) in a tight situation.
Grimace, however, is not somebody who is summoned lightly, and doesn't always
come when he's called, so treat him as an infequent Ally (roll a 6 or less)
unless Barney himself is in the area. If Barney is nearby and the Brother knows
that, any attempt to summon Grimace will automatically succeed.

Divine Favor (St. Dino)		 see p.CI36
	Members of the Church of St. Dino the Avenger can call on their patron
saint for aid in an emergency. The saint will respond in person if the situation
is dire enough, but for less-dire problems St. Dino is more likely to create a
distraction by remote, such as causing every television within 2d hexes to start
playing Flintstones reruns. Abusing the privilege of calling on St. Dino's
protection may result in the awarding of the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage.

Hard to Sponge                          +5/level to +15
(0 for Mundanes)
	You have a natural resistance to the effects of spongification; it takes
more than a few dozen repetitions of the I Luv You Song to break your mind.
Characters with this advantage get an extra +2 to Will rolls against
spongification per level. Mundane characters (which aren't going to deal with
sponges or spongification on a regular basis) can take this advantage for zero
points at the GM's discretion.

Illuminated				  see p. CI38
	Illuminated characters instinctively know what's going on, so they make
lousy Mundanes. An Illuminated character doesn't have to be a member of an
Illuminated organization, but it's likely that the organizations will seek that
character out as a potential member. The Jihad prizes Illuminated people as
master strategists in the Hidden War — they know instinctively where the enemy
is plotting, and where to strike.

Military Rank 		              see p. B22
	Rank is respected by members of the Jihad (an automatic +1 Status for
any superior-ranking Jihaddi meeting another), although that respect may not
necessarily equate to respectful behavior.

Unusual Background		   see p. B23
	An Unusual Background is almost standard procedure for most Jihaddi PCs.
Looking through character profiles dating back to the Golden Age, it's hard to
find a character that didn't have one form of Unusual Background or another.
GM's option to let less powerful characters have Unusual Backgrounds, but for
ex-Mundane characters the cost should be at least 15 points.

DISADVANTAGES:

Enemy (Barney and Friends)             see p. B39
	Barney may love you, but he has a funny way of showing it...
	High-ranking Jihaddi may take Barney and his minions as formidable (-30
to –40 points) enemies, who will always show up on a 9 or less. You may adjust
that point value depending on how often your character is involved in field
work. Lower-ranked Jihaddi who deal more with the minions than the generals may
decrease the point cost as needed.
	Example:  A team of rookie Dobermans may regularly cross swords (on a 12
or less) with the local cell of sponge-minions (a –10 point Enemy group), so
they would have a –20 Enemy in that sponge cell. Meanwhile, Most Holy, enigmatic
commander of MAUL, leads his troops into combat (literally; they're often racing
just to catch up to him) against the Purple Forces' best armor divisions (a –30
point Enemy) quite frequently (on a 12 or less), thus making Barney & Friends a
–60 point enemy for MoHo.

Spongified				  -60 points
	You are completely under the thrall of the Demon Lord B'harne, and are
completely unable to think for yourself. A character with this disadvantage has
the cumulative effects of Cannot Learn, Chummy, Confused, Dull and Extreme
Fanaticism. You cannot buy this disadvantage off without somebody else
despongifying your character.

Recovering Sponge-Minion		    -5 points
	The character has just recently come out of an extended period of
spongification, and has yet to readjust to their normal IQ. Creates a –1 penalty
to all IQ-related rolls and +10 for any attempt to responge while the character
is afflicted. This disadvantage can be bought off after 3d days and a successful
Will roll.

Vulnerability: Spongification      -5/level to –15
(0 for Mundanes)
	For whatever reason, you have a natural susceptibility to the siren call
of B'harne's spells; you will fall into spongification far faster than the
people around you. Characters with this disadvantage get a –2 penalty per level
on Will rolls against spongification. Mundane characters (which aren't going to
deal with sponges or spongification on a regular basis) can take this
disadvantage for zero points at the GM's discretion.

SKILLS:

Beam Weapons/TL9 (X-Rifle) (Physical/Easy)
Defaults to DX-4
(other Gun skill)-4
	This is the ability to use the Jihad's primary infantry weapon, the TRES
X-Rifle plasma blaster. Add 1 to your skill for an IQ of 10 or 11, and 2 for an
IQ of 12 or better. Modifiers: -2 if you're used to a similar weapon (e.g., the
Blood Jihad make of laser pistol that's been your close companion since you
started adventuring); -4 for an X-Rifle that's in poor condition; -4 or more if
you're used to 20th-century handguns and not Jihad-make energy weapons.

Desponge (Mental/Hard)      Defaults to IQ-6
	This is the ability to remove the influence of B'harne from an affected
person. This skill is different from the Desponge spells in that no magic is
required, only an understanding of the spongification process and the most
common mental antitoxins (rock music, high-sugar/fat foods, caffiene, etc.). On
a successful skill roll, you can desponge a single individual with the speed of
the Instant Desponge spell. A critical success will also desponge any other
minions that happen to be within 2d hexes! A failed skill roll will not affect
the target.

Recognize Sponge-Minion (Mental/Average)
Defaults to IQ-5
Prerequisites: Psychology
	You can see sponge-minions! The telltale mannerisms of the average
spongin are revealed clear as if they were wearing a big neon sign on their
foreheads. On a successful skill roll, you can determine if the person you're
looking at is a sponge-minion or not. On a critical success, you will determine
the spongin status of everybody within sight. However, on a critical failure,
you will mistakenly tag a non-sponged person as a minion, and act accordingly.

Savoir-Faire (Jihad) (Mental/Easy)         
Defaults to IQ-4
	This is the skill of knowing how the Jihad works; the customs,
traditions and regulations of his JAO and the Jihad in general. It also details
the unwritten rules: what's acceptable and what's not, even if there's no
regulation about it, how to horse-trade for specialized equipment, how to rise
in the ranks and why VRDET really keeps that slacker elf on the Mt. Blanca night
desk.

Ritual Magic (Lyran) (Mental/Very Hard)        
No default
Prerequisities: Magical Aptitude+2,
Thaumatology-15 or higher
	This skill allows you to understand the spiritual and intellectual basis
of Lyran rituals. Lyran magic is very literally millennia more advanced than
anything humans have created to date, and as such it is incredibly difficult for
a human mage to understand. On a successful skill roll, you will know exactly
what is being attempted. On a critical success, you will know the exact
particulars and will be able to attempt the ritual yourself.
	For a human perfoming a Lyran ritual, roll against Ritual Magic again -
a critical success will mean the ritual worked. A success will not trigger the
spell but will also not affect the mage or the surroundings. A failure will mean
the ritual backfires on the mage, causing 1D6 damage. A critical failure will
mean a catistrophic backfire, causing the mage to explode and 3D6 damage to
everything in the surrounding area (the room, bystanders, objects, etc.).

Symbol Drawing (Lyran) (Mental/Very Hard)
Defaults to Ritual Magic(Lyran)-4
	This is the art of understanding and creating Lyran magic symbols as
used in their spellcraft. This skill determines the character's knowledge of the
symbols and his ability to draw them; people with the appropriate Ritual Magic
skill may understand the symbols, but may be unable to draw them properly.
	The symbols help in conducting rituals. For every 2 points by which the
practitioner makes his Symbol Drawing roll, add +1 to the ritual conducted over
it. Symbols must be redrawn each time it is used for another ritual. Lyran
symbols can be drawn with non-traditional materials (and considering the
"traditional" materials used bythe Lyrans, ths is a very good thing indeed), but
they are usually less effective: +1 for every 3 points of success.

Xenology (Lyran) (Mental/Hard)              
Defaults to IQ-6
	This is a basic overall knowledge (at least what the Jihad has been able
to determine; see Chapter 4) of the Lyran species: biology, history, culture,
mores and psychology. This information is extremely limited in the Jihad
Universe, as the Lyrans come from so very far away and don't leave much in the
way of talkative captives (if they leave captives at all — Lyrans are nasty
characters). A successful Xenology roll will give +1 to any Tactics or Strategy
roll if the opposing force is believed to be led by Lyrans. Maenads get an
automatic +1 to their Xenology rolls, as the servants of Feral Jackson have much
more familiarity with the Lyrans than normal humans or parahumans.

Xenology (Barnoid) (Mental/Hard)        
Defaults to IQ-6
	This is a basic overall knowledge (even sketchier than the Lyran
information) of the extradimensional entities that B'harne has imported from
wherever he came from originally. This includes M.E.N.S.A.Ns, Jello Beast
creatures, the Hellwyrm's subordinates and even Barney himself. As above, a
successful Xenology roll will give +1 to Tactics or Strategy rolls in combat
situations involving any of these creatures.

NEW SPELLS:

Gradual Desponge		                  Regular
	Lets the caster remove the spongification effect from a person
gradually. After one hour of exposure to this spell, target is fully and
permanently relieved of the effects of spongification.  As a side bonus, the
subject gains a permanent +1 to save against future attempts at spongification.
	Duration: 5 minutes
	Cost: 1 to cast; 1 to maintain.
	Time to cast: 5 minutes
	Prerequisite: Wisdom

Instant Desponge			      Regular
	Removes the effect of spongification from the target very, very quickly. 
Target does not, however, gain the +1 bonus to save against future
spongification attempts. 
	Duration: 10 seconds
	Cost: 4 to cast; no maintenance
	Time to cast: 10 seconds
	Prerequsite: Gradual Desponge

Mass Desponge	         Area; Resisted by IQ
	Lets the caster attempt to desponge large numbers of people at one blow.
Each sponge in the area affected is given one chance every 10 minutes to roll
against their natural IQ to shake off the effects of spongification.  Has the
additional effect of engaging all beings in the area who fail a save vs. IQ —
and the caster automatically — in some naturally-despongifying activity: music,
discussion, etc.  Nonspongified beings shake off the effects in seconds; sponges
must wait until desponged or until the spell ends, whichever is first. 
Expensive, complex, dangerous, and less certain of result, it is of use in
limited situations, but can have dramatic effects when used appropriately.
	Duration: 10 minutes
	Cost: 1 per hex to cast; 1 per hex to maintain
	Time to cast: 5 minutes


Crossovers

GURPS Time Travel/Alternate Earths
	World-jumpers have something of a tendency to accidentally fall into the
JU. Most often stay and join up with the Jihad. On rare occasions, Jihaddi have
fought enemy actions on alternate worlds, although with the Earth-only bias in
effect these battles have been brief at best, and often connected to personal
agendas of individual Jihaddi (see The Marraketh Connection for an example).
	In the Infinite Worlds campaign (in Time Travel), the JU is a Quantum 3
alternate world, surveyed by Infinity but not garnering any serious attention;
the Hidden War hasn't been made manifest in front of the I-Cops. If it should,
though, Infinity will want to know whether or not Barney is a serious threat to
Homeline. If they learn that VRDET has a method of crosstime travel that doesn't
follow the accepted parachronic phyisics, then things may get very interesting.

GURPS Atlantis
	The Atlantis frames presented in GURPS Atlantis don't exactly match the
Atlantis presented in JU2, but the information is helpful for those who wish to
search for the ruins of the sunken Atlantis, and perhaps clues to the Ancient
Enemy. The possibility of Atlanteans still living is remote, but a creative GM
might have some different ideas...

GURPS Illuminati
	The Jihad and its enemy fit nicely into a "warring Secret Masters"
Illuminati game. Using the Illuminati as presented in the text or something more
traditional is also an option. The Hidden War also makes for an interesting turn
of events for a traditional game... imagine what the PCs would do if instead of
finding the Bavarians, they found Barney hiding behind events?

GURPS Space
	The galactic ban on travel to Earth effected thanks to the War isn't
100% perfect; between the Greys and the Salusians, there's still a fair amount
of covert extraterrestrial activity going on.
	Also, it's not unimanginable that the Jihad may attempt to make a
long-distance strike against the Lyran homeworld. Such an attack would be more
symbolic than effective tactics, but a space strike mission would suck up a lot
of the Jihad's technical resources for a non-inconsiderable amount of time.

GURPS Illuminati University
	If the leaders of the Jihad aren't Illumni of IOU...
	On a halfway more serious note, IOU is the sort of setting that can
exist in some out of the way corner of the JU, and is perfect for any PC
requiring an Unusual Background to round out their character. The War may
sometimes crash the campus, but more often than not, the two sides can manage to
coexist peacefully — well, "peacefully" as defined by IOU, so the bloodfeuds are
kept to a minimum.

GURPS Black Ops
	Argus and the black ops make for a good "second-string" group, dedicated
to keeping the mundanes safe from evil aliens. The Greys have more of an agenda
than previously claimed, and there are other conspiracies running around the
Jihad may not be aware of.
	The average black op may be a little overpowered for a JU game, but in a
ten round match with the Jihad's finest.. they'd probably call it a draw. Use
Argus sparingly, if at all.

GURPS In Nomine
	Now for something that's really challenging...
	There are two ways to play this. If you favor In Nomine over the Jihad,
then B'harne is a high-ranking Balseraph of Nybbas (Demon of the Lowest Common
Denominator), backed up with some very high-powered Vapula gadgets, and the
Jihaddi are Soldiers of War/Sword/Faith/Lightning, commanded by senior
non-Wordbound Servitors of their respective Superiors.
	That's one way. If you favor the Jihad setting over In Nomine, then
B'harne might not necesarily be part of the conflict between Heaven and Hell,
perhaps being a particularly powerful ethereal (After all, Barney is a dinosaur
from our imagination) looking to move up in the world, and the Jihad may be a
group set up by both Celestial realms to combat this upstart third threat.
	And you know, a lot of the Jihad ubertech looks suspiciously like Eli's
crafstmanship...

GURPS Technomancer
	Technomancer is a good setting for a more "overt" Jihad. The main bases
sit firmly in the normal-mana zones created by Trinity, and with Barney's demons
running about, the Jihad would be a larger, more organized group of monster
hunters. It's a pretty aggressive change from canon JU, though, and would be
better for a one-shot "warped reality" game than for an extended canon campaign.
Not to say that a JU/Technomancer crossover campaign isn't impossible, but it'd
take some serious work.

GURPS Supers/International Super Teams
	Setting the Jihad in the IST universe is just adding more grist to the
mill. In a world of supers, the Jihad may be somewhat redundant. Or it could be
the UN Special Covert Operations Group, fighting horrors even the IST supers
would have trouble confronting, with their special blend of magic, powers and
superscience.

GURPS Y2K
	Y2K is the book on post-apocalyptic gaming, and if the PCs should FUBAR
in particularly impressive fashion, a game in a Y2K setting where the Jihad lost
the war could be very entertaining. Further crossovers with Time Travel are
possible here as well, as the players try to find a time machine that will take
them back and correct mistakes.

Campaign Seeds
	Okay, so you want to run a story/realtime game, but don't have the time
to really come up with a good, original storyline.  So, in the interests of your
sanity, we've come up with a few mini-adventure plots to help you out.

Return to the Pacifica Adventure!
	VRDET's WorldWatch satelite network has picked up a series of odd
disturbances out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, near where the Lyran island
stronghold of Pacifica sank in 1996 (incidentally, where a fair percentage of
the remaining Jihad Old Guard were either MIA or KIA).  The PCs are sent out
with the latest in Zeta Squad/VRDET R&D/WEDJEE underwater combat and exploration
gear (Scuba mecha, anyone?), to find out What's Going On.  Is it Lyrans trying
to salvage the citadel?  Equipment-strapped spoungin looking for remnants of
Lyran biotech?  Or is it something... else?

Classic Jihad: The Blair Barney Project, or Yeah, We Know It's A Ripoff
	Unless you've been living in a cave for the last couple of years, you
know the story: Three students making a documentary vanish in the Maryland
woods, and a year later the footage is found.  What they didn't tell you was
that those unfortunates didn't find a witch or a ghost, they instead stumbled on
a nest of enemy soldiers — and the less said about what happened next, the
better.  The PCs are a team of rookies from the Doberman Empire, commissioned by
the Fleet Commander to find the mutant spongin and wipe them out.  But the FC
didn't expect that a low-ranking Lyran magus was riding herd on the creatures...

In Memory Yet Green
	Cleaning up after a raid on a spoungin base, tantalizing clues are
found, providing some idea of where the Blood Jihad vanished to in the aftermath
of the X'hirjq invasion.  Immediately the PCs are told by0 the Triumverate, in
full official capacity no less, to follow the trail until they either run out of
leads or find the Blood Jihad.  Of course, this could be a trap, set up by the
Liasons, but the only way to find out is to follow the road...

The Enemy of My Enemy
	A group of TRES irregulars, cornered and out-gunned by a group of
wyrm-minions, are rescued by a shadowy figure, who then turns on the Jihaddi! 
After the fight, the PCs learn that their erstwhile "rescuer" is (or was,
depending on how frisky the PCs got during the fight) a member of The Order of
Asissi, a secret cabal of warrior/monks, devoted to cleansing the Earth of
"inhuman creatures."  Of course, since a good number of people who qualify as
"inhuman" are Jihaddi, this naturally puts the Order on bad terms with the
Jihad.  Can the PCs (or some other group of PCs) manage to make peace with the
Order to fight the common enemy?  Or will the Jihad forever have to watch it's
collective back against an ambush by rampaging monks?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APOLOGIA: THE LAST WORD

		"It's a weird feeling to sit in a Las Vegas 
		hotel with a fantastic room service bill run 
		up in 48 hours of total madness, knowing that 
		just as soon as dawn comes, you're going to
		flee without paying a fucking penny."                 
					—Hunter S. Thompson

	Sweet monkey Jesus, it's been a long strange ride to this point.
	It all started ten years ago, when as an mostly-innocent high school
student I downloaded off of a local BBS a copy of "Barneystein 3D," a fairly
silly-ass mod to the equally silly-ass FPS Wolfenstein 3D. Included with the
image mod was a good big old stack of fiction from
alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die, including what most people consider the first
Real Classic of anti-Barney fiction, "Day of the Barney."
	I read it, and I was hooked.
	Around the same time, I found a dialup shell account out of the
University of Denver. The account was free, so access was limited, but I could
wander around the Web and gopher — remember? — using lynx. And lo and behold, I
found Deadslug's Jihad website. Using lynx, I didn't know how hideous & garish
the design was, but the available content was even more interesting than the
other stuff.
	When I managed to cajole my parents into getting a proper Internet
service, my first destination was good old ab4d. Destiny had it in for me from
the start, I guess.
	My early career was... unimpressive. Like many a newbie before me, I
started my own JAO: The Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow. Like many another
newbie, I was laughed at by the older members until I had aged a little. I
managed to show up in the middle of the great Serp Expulsion, so I don't doubt
there was a fair amount of paranoia where I couldn't see. There would later be a
great deal of paranoia where I could see, but that's another story altogether
	Anyway, life went on, Phoenix and Pacifica happened. Between the two
projects, destiny decided to fuck with my life once again. On the spur of the
moment, I decided to build a general guide to the Jihad's oft-confusing
story/game world. The beginnings of the project were, to be frank, pretty weak.
Not much more than a list and description of stuff found in the early stories.
When DeadLock the Feral, the then up-and-coming de facto leader of the Jihad,
took an interest in the project, it really began to get off the ground. Between
the two of us, we decided that instead of a simple list of stuff, we should try
and formulate a proper role-playing guide to the JU.
	We had long voice & IRC conversations about how to shape the universe.
Most of it, however, was eventually lost. Partly because I lost the notes over
time, but mostly because a lot of DeadLock's suggestions were heavily influenced
by White Wolf Game's World of Darkness series. At the time (this would be near
the end of Pacifica, IIRC — call it late 1996), DeadLock and the Maenads of the
Holy Albino were the de facto storytellers in the Jihad, and they had a very
strong bias towards WoD. Well, DL did anyway, and he was the driving force
behind most of the Maenad storylines.
	I don't like WoD. Never have, never will. And ultimately, DeadLock's
contributions to JU2 have been pulled out, as they're no longer relevant to the
group.
	Time passes. The Jihad changes oh so slowly. And still I kept at it.
DeadLock left the Jihad, claiming boredom (and I don't doubt there was some
truth to that) but also having made a number of enemies along the way.
Including, as it turned out, me. I was named a Leader of the Jihad — I still
don't really understand why — and I kept working on JU2.
	Brother Fireball came on the team to replace DL, and together we pulled
off a miracle: We made sense of the muddle of stories that made up the Jihad and
created the Jihad Universe 2.0. We released it to the Jihad and, well, nobody
who hadn't already seen it gave a damn.
	I got pissed and threw a public rant/resignation. A month later I was
back at it, building bigger and better structures for the JU to rest upon.
Slowly but surely, the great Work began to take shape out of a mountain of
insane rantings, and now the true form can be seen.
	I have been consumed by this mad gibberish, swallowed like Jonah into
the a world where danger hides behind a kidvid show, mad scientists lurk
underneath mountains opening holes into other dimensions, Atlantis waits under
the sea for the foolish to pry her secrets out, and anybody with the eyes to See
and Understand can grab a Really Big Gun and help Save the World.
	It's been ten years since I first read about this group, and much has
changed. Almost all of the old guard from 1994 are gone. DeadLock's gone, JFox,
Arsenal, J-Rock, Owsen, Windigo, Shardik... all names of former Great Leaders
who've departed for warmer climates. The Jihad itself has dwindled from a cast
of hundreds to a mere dozen active members. The message boards and web pages are
all collecting dust.
	But. Those dozen people left of the Jihad have a great deal of fire to
them. They're continuing to add to the structure that I built, creating newer
and greater monuments to one of the Internet's oldest running gags. As a GM, I
couldn't be prouder of any of them.
	It's to them, katster, Zibblsnrt, Aris_TGD, KillJoy, Fireball, Shadur,
Tangaroa, Puppeteer, Nemesis and Jeff Hurley, that I dedicate this
final-and-I-mean-it-dammit version of the Jihad Universe 2.0.
	As for me, I'm outta here.
	Ave Atque Vale.

                                    "3-laM"
                             Sean Malaclypse Breen
                                 April 9, 2004
                                 
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