Immortal: The Invisible War is an epic Urban Fantasy Tabletop RPG originally published in the early 90's by Precedence Entertainment. Like many games of its genre (and decade), the Immortal setting is a seemingly modern world which is only a facade for a much larger supernatural universe. The players are newly-reincarnated members of an ancient race of shape-shifting immortals, shedding their previous mortal lives just in time for the apocalyptic final battle against their eons-old enemy.
That's the short version.
The long version is that 65 million years ago, the Sanguinary — an evil, malevolent, nigh-omnipotent deity — was exiled to Earth, causing its body to shatter into innumerable shards in an impact that ended the age of the dinosaurs. The shards uplifted the surviving dinosaurs into the undying Abzulim, who created immortal slaves by implanting more shards into mammals, plants, and other life forms. Over millions of years, the Abzulim spread their empire across the cosmos, until their immortal slaves learned their powers and overthrew them.
These newly-freed immortals are henceforth the focus and the protagonists of the setting.
Over millions more years, the immortals formed a Perpetual Society of their own, explored the universe, resisted the Sanguinary's insidious influence (including its droves of corrupted immortals), and meddled with the newly-evolved human race, whose faith could actually affect the immortals, forcing them over time to assume more humanlike forms.
An Age of Myth ensued, as the immortals played the parts of humanity's earliest gods and heroes, only to end when the cataclysmic Shouting Wars erupted among immortalkind. This conflict (and the psychic plague it accidentally caused) ruined the domains outside of Earth, with the slaughter ending only when one tribe of immortals used a dread artifact to exile immortalkind into Sheol, the desolate realm formed when the Sanguinary crashed to Earth. After millennia of horror at the hands of the Sanguinary's minions (and each other), the immortals managed to escape this prison, but the Age of Myth was now long over, and most of humanity no longer believed that immortals had ever existed.
Undeterred, the immortals set about preparing the Perpetual Society for a final confrontation with the Sanguinary, only for the ensuing epochs of mind games to inspire entire tribes of immortals to execute a Great Betrayal and join the Sanguinary instead. The Perpetual Society narrowly survived (and destroyed the Sanguinary), but another apocalyptic threat arrived in the form of the returning Abzulim, with the eons having made them even more horrifically powerful than when the immortals were first enslaved. It is now the dawn of the 21st century, and the stage is set for a final battle that will determine the fate of the immortals — and humanity.
Still following along?
All of the above is not merely a Time Abyss worth of your immortal PC's past-life memories. An immortal can end their current incarnation... but their spirit is almost never actually destroyed. Each of your immortal past lives (or avatars) still exists as part of your own consciousness, and — like voices in your head — your avatars can offer advice, comment on the existence you're leading, or try to take over your body.
And this goes for every player character in your party.
And you're all still newcomers to a conflict with centuries (and millennia) worth of plots unfolding around you.
Yeah, it's that kind of game.
While Immortal never reached the popularity of the World of Darkness games, the core rulebook's intricate setting and lavish production values (for its time) won it a cult following for a number of years. It is this version of the game which is most remembered today (and pictured above).
In 1999, a second edition was produced with the involvement of Claudia Christian (who served as a cover model for the new core rulebook), but despite a vastly streamlined system, only two sourcebooks were released before the line folded.
In 2005, a third edition returned Immortal from oblivion, offering yet another new rule system and the most straightforward explanation of the setting yet. The two third edition rulebooks — the player's guide and the narrator (gamemaster) guide — are available for free from the official Immortal website.
This tabletop RPG provides examples of:
- After the End: While multiple cataclysmic events have occurred over the long history of the Perpetual Society, the Shouting Wars had (from the immortals' point of view) the most "apocalyptic" feel, as now much of the cosmos outside of Earth has been ruined for their kind, their status among humanity has faded from memory, and their enemies (the Sanguinary, the Apocrypha, and later the Abzulim) enjoy just as much — if not more — influence on Earth as they do.
- All Myths Are True: Almost every deity and mythological monster humanity has ever imagined is (or was) an immortal. Subverted in that the truth about the myths is a lot weirder than most mortals would ever imagine.
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: The laws of the Perpetual Society forbid its constituent immortals from killing each other, mostly to prevent a relapse of the Shouting Wars.
- Artifact of Doom: The conundrum shards. All of them. As pieces of the Sanguinary's body, they all have special powers, including the potential to create new immortals... but they also carry the Sanguinary's corrupting influence. From the beginning, every faction of the Perpetual Society have been divided between "we must destroy every conundrum shard everywhere" and "conundrum shards are a resource we can't afford to ignore".
- Atlantis: Present and accounted for as a sanctuary for the immortals before it was destroyed by the Apocrypha. Unlike most examples of the trope, no flooding was involved. By the time of third edition, Atlantis has been recreated by the Blue Emerald as a new haven for the immortals.
- Background Magic Field: Immaculum (the universal flow of life force) is everywhere, but only immortals can perceive or manipulate it.
- Big Bad: In first and second edition, the Sanguinary. In third edition, the Abzulim Deepwalkers.
- Blessed with Suck: That vox shard that makes you immortal and allows you to learn kewl powerz? It was originally a piece of the godlike Sanguinary, who is very interested in retreiving it so that it can reincarnate itself. On top of that, all the immortals who previously used the shard (only to die or go into lethe) are still encoded on it, and now they're not only voices in your head, but they can commit Grand Theft Me if you give them an opening.
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": The first edition was infamous for absolutely never using a common gaming term if a more pretentious word could be used instead. You didn't have a player character, you had a persona. Your traits didn't have levels, they had motes. You didn't roll to complete a task, you rolled to overcome a hostile. You didn't take an action during a combat round, you executed an escapade during a clash. The second and third editions were thankfully more restrained.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Present in a roundabout way. Mortals can't literally change reality by believing something hard enough... but they can change immortals with their faith. It is humanity that collectively granted (or forced upon) the immortals the ability to assume human forms in the first place.
- Creature-Hunter Organization: The Apocrypha, mortals who have always opposed immortals and can wield their faith as a weapon against them.
- Crossover Cosmology: Because all of humanity's mythological gods were merely the mortal world's perception of immortals, the deities of basically every pantheon ever were (and still are) running around out there. The first edition was actually specific about which tribes the most well-known gods belonged to, but by third edition, this practice was abandoned (specific gods are still mentioned, but their tribe is left unspecified to give narrators more flexibility).
- Cult: The quiet cultures are benevolent cults, who serve the Perpetual Society (or just specific immortals) by feeding them immaculum, guarding the entrances to their hidden mantles, and countering the Apocrypha.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Pride Nimrod and their unique shadow-based himsatis... at least before the Great Betrayal.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In the timeline leading up to the third edition, the immortals finally managed to permanently destroy the nigh-omnipotent Sanguinary.
- Dreaming of Times Gone By: After reincarnating, immortals are often subject to episodes involving flashbacks to their past lives.
- Enforced Cold War: This was the basis of the original Strategem, as non-violent coexistence forced the prides to test each other in more subtle and clever ways. The goal of this was to sharpen the Perpetual Society's immortals for the inevitable confrontation with the Sanguinary. In the end, this didn't quite go as planned, as millennia of ruthless schemes (and vying for power within the Strategem) caused many of the fed-up immortals to plan the Great Betryal and join the Sanguinary instead.
- Evil Counterpart: The Sanguinary's droves are the evil counterpart of the prides/tribes.
- Evil Tainted the Place: The Dominions (most of the rest of the cosmos outside Earth) were reduced to hostile, plague-ridden wastelands by the Shouting Wars.
- Face–Heel Turn: Prides Anopheles and Nimrod, who turned against the rest of Perpetual Society en masse during the Great Betrayal.
- Fantastic Drug: Odyssey, a drug which causes memory loss, allowing users to experience things for the first time again. Popular among long-lived immortals for obvious reasons.
- God Guise: In earlier eras, immortals often posed as deities to mortals, and are remembered as such even today.
- God in Human Form: All immortals, even the ones who were once mere animals or even inanimate substances, long ago gained the ability to assume a human form.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: Both reversed and played straight at various points. In the first edition, this trope was reversed, as human faith can actually severely wreck immortals. In the third edition, this remains true, but it is also stated that without the world's remaining believers, the immortals would not be able to use their powers on Earth at all (as humanity's overall disbelief in the supernatural would stifle the immortals).
- Grand Theft Me: An immortal's avatars can attempt to seize control of the immortal's body. If they succeed, the body will even shapeshift to match what the avatar looked like when they were alive.
- Healing Factor: Immortals can quickly regenerate from any injury except for poisons or wounds inflicted in close combat. And even in the latter case, there are serenades to aid in healing.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- Tribe Terat were once a drove in service to the Sanguinary, but long ago freed themselves to join the Perpetual Society.
- Benendanti was a renegade member of the Apocrypha who lead his followers to defect back to the immortals' side, forming the first quiet culture and eventually gaining enough respect to be granted immortality themselves.
- Human Alien Discovery: Immortals who go into lethe will reincarnate as mortals, with no awareness of their former existence as an animal or inanimate element uplifted to immortality by a shard of a shattered alien god. Sooner or later, though, flashbacks to their past life will begin, and inevitably they will awaken as a new version of the immortal that they were.
- Masquerade: After the Age of Myth ended, the Perpetual Society forbid immortals from revealing their existence to the mortal world, mostly out of fear of the Sanguinary and its minions (though the Apocrypha were part of that fear, too). Even now that the Sanguinary is gone, the masquerade remains in place, this time because humanity is not ready to accept the existence of immortals (and the Apocrypha are still around).
- Medieval Stasis: The mantles that immortals create often mimic a particular period of human history (the Roman Empire, ancient Egypt, Medieval Europe, etc). These pocket worlds are never allowed to progress beyond whatever era of history they're about.
- Merger of Souls: Reversed. An immortal cannot merge an avatar into their being in the traditional sense of this trope, but if they can gather enough immaculum, they can "splinter" the avatar as a new immortal, making them an independent being once again (and ridding them from the first immortal's mind).
- Metaplot: Each edition moved the game's timeline further along and introduced notable changes to the setting. The second edition featured the Great Betrayal, changing the list of Perpetual Society factions (who were now "tribes" instead of "prides"), while the third edition featured the death of the Sanguinary, replacing it with the returning Abzulim as the apocalyptic threat to Earth.
- Mind Hive: Downplayed. While an immortal could potentially have a huge number of avatars from their eons' worth of past lives, typically only one or two avatars are "awake" at any given time. And if the immortal and their avatars have a good enough relationship with each other, a Split-Personality Team is not out of the question.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The himsati form of most immortals is a prehistoric (but plausible) animal or plant, albeit one that is super-powered. Some, however, have hybrid himsati forms with features from multiple life forms. These latter gave rise to some of the more fantastical creatures from human mythology.
- Magitek: Mystech devices, which only immortals can create. Immortals can also use their serenades to enchant normal human technology with powers.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The third edition never explicitly describes how the immortals managed to destroy the Sanguinary, that eternal all-corrupting nemesis of their kind.
- Once-Green Mars: Not just Mars, but all the other planets of the solar system (including the gas giants and the planet that the asteroid belt used to be) were once habitable before the Shouting Wars wrecked everything.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Most myths about dragons have their origin in the Abzulim, who are so reviled that any Perpetual Society immortal who actually had (or developed) a dragon himsati would be dogpiled and obliterated immediately. Compounding the trope, the Abzulim themselves have existed (in one incarnation) for so many eons that they long ago evolved past their original dinosaur/dragon forms and into beings more akin to Eldritch Abominations.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: Gossamers are the spirits of slain immortals, stuck in the Blue Air until they can gather enough immaculum to incarnate again on Earth. Until then, they lead a very ghostlike existence, and are able to affect Earth only in limited (and risky) ways.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Immortals who acquire taint can purge it by taking immaculum from mortals — willingly or otherwise. Stealing immaculum from a mortal causes the mortal permanent stat loss, but also risks inflicting a curse on the immortal. And yes, Dracula and his scions were immortals themselves, and the curses they incurred inspired the most popular tropes about vampires.
- Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: Zig-zagged. The age of the dinosaurs did end when the Sanguinary crashed into Earth 65 million years ago. The impact split the Sanguinary's body into innumerable conundrum shards, which in turn gave rise to the first immortals... who were the dinosaur-based Abzulim.
- Physical God: High-tier immortals, with their superhuman attributes and wide range of serenades, are basically this.
- Puny Earthlings: With the exception of the Apocrypha, individual mortals pose a threat only to the newest (and weakest) of immortals.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: The Perpetual Society observes this religiously. The most powerful immortals are the ones who are in charge of every tribe.
- Resurrection Gambit: From the beginning, a prominent plot point was the loss of many hundreds of immortals in the Great Fire of London in 1666 (in which the immortals fought an Antichrist-level pawn of the Sanguinary). For a long time, the other immortals assumed they were casualties of the battle, only for it to be revealed that the lost immortals actually went into lethe en masse to be reincarnated as mortals — this being the only way to safely enter the world of mortal dreams (where the Sanguinary's consciousness was hidden) to find out what the Sanguinary was really up to.
- Time Abyss: While it is possible to create a new immortal with a spare vox shard, most immortals have existed (in one form or another) for literally millions of years. A few, including the remnant Abzulim, have even experienced this entire stretch of time in one incarnation.
- Trapped in Another World: Immortals who acquire too much taint can find themselves shunted from Earth to the Dominions. The good news is that their tainted stats are restored to full, as taint is only a thing that matters on Earth. The (much worse) bad news is that the Dominions are monster-infested and plague-ravaged wastelands so incredibly dangerous that almost the entire Perpetual Society long ago fled them to live on Earth.
- Turned Against Their Masters:
- A rare heroic example as the Abzulim originally created the other immortals to serve as slaves, only for the latter to ultimately rebel.
- The Apocrypha began as a cult sponsored by Tribe Magdalen, who wanted to use their faith as a weapon against rival immortals. It wasn't long before the Apocrypha decided that the Magdalen had to be wiped out, too.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The physiology of an immortal makes them uniquely vulnerable to poisons (including drugs).
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Played up in the third edition. An immortal who survives for millennia or even eons will build up increasing amounts of ennui, and face an equally increasing temptation to voluntarily enter lethe (or simply die).
