Daniel Hemmens

What’s This All About Then?

The Sun Never Sets is a quasi-historical supernatural-conspiracy-espionage game set primarily in the nineteenth century and the fourteenth century BC, with stopovers at intervals throughout the intervening three millenia.

It is a “24-Hour RPG”, meaning that it was designed in (more or less) one 24 hour period. I started typing at 7pm on Sunday April 1st 27, and finished at 9.5pm on Monday April 2nd. The idea had been kicking about in my head for a while before then, but I was in a tapas bar at the time, so I’m not counting it.

Because it was produced under an artificial time constraint, this game has not been playtested fully, or indeed at all. The core mechanics, however, are simple enough not to need more than minor tweaking. The Flashback mechanics are more complex, and would benefit from more work.

Setting

“If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the correctness of this view of the energy of the solar system. How much Akhenaten understood, we cannot say, but he certainly bounded forward in his views and symbolism to a position which we cannot logically improve upon at the present day. Not a rag of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new worship evolved out of the old Aton of Heliopolis, the sole Lord of the universe” – Flinders Petrie.

History

One thousand, three hundred and thirty six years before the birth of Christ, Amenhotep the Fourth ascended to the throne of Egypt. He was to reign for thirty-eight years, and in that time he would change the face of Egyptian theology. He would abandon the old gods, destroy their temples, outlaw idolatry, and adopt the name by which history would remember him: Akhenaten.

He was succeeded by his son, then named Tutankhatmun. Later kings of Egypt sought to bury all trace of Akhenaten and his heresies, burying his tomb, and the tomb of his son, deep beneath the sand, and erasing all traces of his name from any official records.

This much is a matter of historical record (albeit filtered through the fallible memory of a twenty-first century game designer). What follows next is not a matter of historical record, it is – well – it’s made up. But in character it’s the True And Secret History of the game setting.

Secret History

Akhenaten outlawed all icons and idols save one: the image of the Aten, the disc of sun. The disc was depicted surrounded by rays ending in hands, which are generally thought to symbolise the invisible spirit of Aten. The rays do, indeed, symbolise the immaterial spirit. The hands, however, symbolise something else entirely.

The Hands of the Aten were Akhenaten’s elite cadre of spies, assassins, and sorcerers. They were his most trusted agents, and his religious and secular police. They worked from the shadows to enact the reforms which the Pharaoh decreed should take place in the Kingdom of Egypt. When Akhenaten fell, the Hands survived. When the later kings of Egypt erased all memory of the Aten-cult the Hands became the secret servants of a secret king.

In this most absolute secrecy the Hands of the Aten flourished. As dynasties came and went, the Hands endured, and looked outwards. They sent their agents across the sea, and took hold in lands where men were more amenable to their philosophies. For thousands of years they spread their influence, and worked the will of Akhenaten on peasants, priests and princes.

It is now eighteen-sixty-four, and an upstart kingdom called “Britain” oversees an empire on which the sun never sets. The Hands of the Aten are there, from London to Lahore, fighting their shadowy battles for the legacy of their forgotten king.

Modus Operandi

The Hands are a secret conspiracy of spies, assassins, and sorcerers. They are also, at the higher ranks, at least, immortal.

The Hands of the Aten know the secret magics of life and death, and they use this to permit their most favoured agents to return from Duat, to be reborn and to live many lives. The principles of this magic are similar to those underlying the process of mummification: the soul of the initiate is called back from the underworld, and they are granted a new life and a new identity by the power of their Ren.

Being effectively immortal, the Hands play the long game. Their intrigues cover centuries, their reach extends across continents.