Family Feud
                       A Live-Action Roleplaying Event 
                                      by
                                 Alan Schwartz


INTRODUCTION

In the beginning, the earth was without form and void, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep. And the SPIRIT moved across the face of
the water, and said "Let there be light" and there was light.

And there was you and your kind.

FOUR THOUSAND YEARS LATER...

Well, John wasn't the perfect narrator, but he got most of it right.
There's a book sealed with seven seals, and when the last one is broken,
the four Horsemen will ride forth to scourge mankind, and the Beast
will arise. But the four archangels will blow seven trumpets, and come
together as a mighty force under the Bright Lady, and make war on the
minions of the Adversary.  And will triumph in the dawn of a new world.

Of course, there were a couple of things that John couldn't be told.
The SPIRIT endowed humanity with free will, and so the triumph foretold
can not be absolutely assured. Indeed, the victory of the angelic choir
depends not only on your ability to assemble your forces and fulfill
the prophecies, but on the decisions of chosen mortals present at the
time, decisions which must be made without knowledge of the battle being
raged around them.

AND ONE NIGHT, TWO THOUSAND YEARS AFTER THAT..

One advantage of being an angel is access to good hardware. Although
the SPIRIT prefers to use prophets to communicate with humanity, when
it comes to intraparadise memos, email is more usual:

   From: SPIRIT@heavenlyhost.net
   To: <recipient list suppressed>
   Subject: The time is at hand

   > It's that time. 

   And behold, let the Word go out to all the choirs of angels.  The Sixth
   Seal has been broken and the time of the final battle is nigh at hand.

   The place determined where the Adversary must be met and defeated
   is no Earthly city, but at the juncture of Earth and mind, electrons
   and data.

   mush.pennmush.org 4201

The message came as quite a shock, but its import was clear. Armaggeddon
is at hand, and for some reason, the final battle is to be fought
on M*U*S*H, a mud that you're been hanging out on for some time!
Unfortunately, this means that your usual angelic perceptions of goodness
and evil, mortal and immortal, and even male and female won't work. After
all, on the internet, nobody knows that you're a god.  (Well, an angel).

Accordingly, you're going to have to be very careful. You are forbidden
to reveal yourself to mortals, lest you give one of the chosen knowledge
of the apocalypse and counter the prophecy.  Reveal yourself to one
of the Adversary's minions, and you could endanger the final battle.
But somehow you'll have to identify the other angels in order to prepare
for the conflict...

A WORD ABOUT MIRACLES

Although your powers are severely limited by being funneled through a MUSH
player, you may still have certain abilities that you can call upon. In
general, the strength of these abilities depends crucially on the number
of sympathetic witnesses or followers present when you use them.  That is,
your powers are more effective in the presence of other immortals on
your side. They are also more effective in the presence of mortal MUSH
followers who believe in your cause or your opinions (but remember that
the chosen mortals must not be given knowledge of the final battle...)
A follower, on M*U*S*H, is literally that -- someone who has typed
'follow <yourname>' and thus appears on your list of followers.