Four heroes.

Three empires.

Two galaxies.

And one Filet o' Fish.

It's been over a decade since the Forte campaign finally closed up shop, and the regular gaming has long since passed. The world of Forte slipped into the arena of fiction and went online. The only live Champions gaming that went on any more was pretty much restricted to the annual San Diego Comic-Con get-togethers, where someone will usually run a game each year, and whomever from the old Forte gang shows up gets to dust off their old characters and get them back into the action again, if for just a few brief hours. And those Con games have started become less likely, too, as the Con has become such a busy affair (like with Tim and I getting on the Nice Guy thing and having to spend our Con time dealing with that) and with people less likely to show than they were in the old days, now that everyone's got lives and spouses and kids and careers and all that OTHER stuff that gets in the way of both convention trips AND gaming...

But, every once in a while, there does come a special occasion.

And one happened this March, when Forte alum and Forte 2000 scribe Aaron Storck decided to come to Sacramento to visit. And aside from wanting to go out and get a few cold ones with some old friends, he did have one other request. Mr. Storck wanted some gaming. Some Forte gaming. Ahhhh yeah.

I'd been living back in Sac for a couple of years, which put me back in proximity to Randy, Jim and Adam, three of the old Forte players. While gaming wasn't really a part of my life anymore, I did think it would be fun to get together once in a while with the guys and run a little Forte universe adventure or two for them. So I started making promises about that. And then life got busy. And then it was almost two years later.

What I wanted to do for them was run something with their old Forte characters, something a little more modern day, and I wanted to make it something all their own. These players had guest-starred in a Con game I ran that ended up being a Forte 2000 issue, as that's where all the Forte action is these days. But now I needed something new. We see Forte as a comic book, you see (this IS Champions, after all, and that's what the game is supposed to simulate, in theory...). The Forte comic ended when the campaign ended. When the Forte 2000 stuff started (as fiction, then eventually into some sporadic gaming) it became its own comic. And the Con games? With the exception of the Forte 2000 run, they usually involve heroes from other worlds, too (the other old Clobberin' Times players who show up) and are part of the "Clobberin' On Infinite Earths" series of annual one-shots, not Forte. But if I was going to create something semi-regular for these guys, I needed to establish something else...a new comic, if you will.

And the idea--the comic I came up with to tell these new stories--was a new series called "Forte Chronicles". The idea was that it would be a sporadic series (a quarterly, perhaps) that acted more like an anthology. Like "Tales of the Dark Knight", it would tell self-contained stories, perhaps told over several issues, with a beginning, middle and end, but would then move on to the next story, and they would all have connection. The "pitch" for the comic would be, "What if we made a new book that told new stories starring some of the old Forte characters? The characters that don't HAVE their own book anymore but people still want to look in on and read about?". It wouldn't be about a regular team, per se. It would star different familiar Forte characters each tale, whichever ones happened to fit the story.

My plan to do this with Randy, Jim and Adam never quite came together (yet), but with Aaron coming to town, and those three guys ready to drop in for a Saturday with us and do some Forte adventuring, it seemed like a perfect place to start the "series" off. A one-shot story starring three old Forte characters (Anvil, Tomarssuk and Lightsedge) and one current one (Dyna Girl). So I worked up a tale that mixed some current Forte continuity with some pre-Forte history, threw in some high-stakes epic adventure, and on a Saturday afternoon and evening, the first issue of Forte Chronicles came together. The one you're about to read.

This tale focused a bit more on Dyna Girl (and therefore more Forte 2000 stuff) because, hey, it was Aaron's vacation, so it was more for him. But future "issues" will zoom in on the old familiar Forte guys, get back into the campaign's past and the untold and unresolved stories there, and lay the groundwork for Forte current continuity and future. And there are a LOT of stories waiting to be told, thanks to such a rich campaign history and great characters that still have plenty of facets to explore. I hope this will be the springboard for that, and, at least in my own humble way (hey, not like I'm K.C. or anything...), I can try to bring the world of Forte back the way it was meant to be. With tales built not just by one writer, but by a group of creative and adventurous folks telling a story together.

But for now, let's start with the first issue for Forte Chronicles, and let's start it off on a BIG scale! Epic galactic adventure awaits you! Hope you enjoy.

Forte Chronicles #1