Thought Fodder...

Any and all discussion about Dark Conspiracy, the RPG of modern conspiracy horror
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Morthrai
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Thought Fodder...

Post by Morthrai »

I have been considering something for background detail on the ETs. Ramsey Campbell's Cthulhu stories set in the Severn Valley include a buried "templeship", whilst the old 2000AD story Skizz about an alien stranded on Earth (Birmingham no less!) made mention of the "Seven Sacred Equations". Could it be that the complex and arcane geometry of travelling the multiverse has transcended science, and entangled itself into the belief systems or philosophy of the various ET races?

Rather than Arthur C Clarke's line about advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, perhaps the ETs see science and belief as one.

Any thoughts on this? 8)
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Linden »

I recall the Delta Green books made much of the idea that spells, and in particular means of interstellar travel, were just forms of advanced geometry or expressions of other mathematical concepts. I think advanced races might well venerate these ideas - particularly if they don't have, or have dispensed with, conventional religious beliefs.
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Phulish »

Perhaps they had a scientist/ philosopher that was deified. digging up an ancient gate because of its equations carved upon it.
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by ReHerakhte »

An interesting idea and one that I would like to incorporate into my DC games (whenever I get another campaign going).
I agree with Linden, I think once a race advances far enough in technology & science, conventional religions would not offer anything by way of understanding the universe (and especially a concept like the multiverse, if you use it). I think conventional religion would in fact be a step backwards for a technologically advanced race and if they were inclined to the spiritual, it would be more likely that they obtain their "enlightenment" through advancing their intellect, that is to say, by pursuing a higher understanding of the sciences e.g. geometry & mathematics.

I'd go as far as suggesting that those alien races subverted by the Dark Lords have taken the step backwards to conventional religious beliefs, i.e. accepting the Dark Lord as a deity (and forming a cult based around the Dark Lord). While they would still have the higher understanding of the sciences, they have attached any spirituality to the Dark Lord rather than the enlightenment gained from the deeper understanding of the physical world.
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Linden »

ReHerakhte wrote:An interesting idea and one that I would like to incorporate into my DC games (whenever I get another campaign going).
I agree with Linden, I think once a race advances far enough in technology & science, conventional religions would not offer anything by way of understanding the universe (and especially a concept like the multiverse, if you use it). I think conventional religion would in fact be a step backwards for a technologically advanced race and if they were inclined to the spiritual, it would be more likely that they obtain their "enlightenment" through advancing their intellect, that is to say, by pursuing a higher understanding of the sciences e.g. geometry & mathematics.

I'd go as far as suggesting that those alien races subverted by the Dark Lords have taken the step backwards to conventional religious beliefs, i.e. accepting the Dark Lord as a deity (and forming a cult based around the Dark Lord). While they would still have the higher understanding of the sciences, they have attached any spirituality to the Dark Lord rather than the enlightenment gained from the deeper understanding of the physical world.
Some great ideas there that I'd like to include in a DC campaign as well.

Has anyone seen the ultra low budget "Pi" - that had a mathematical/religious/occult vibe to it, Jewish Kabbalism played a major part as I recall. Must watch it again some time.
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by ReHerakhte »

I have a vaguely Buddhist notion in mind with this now that I think more about it.
As seen in the real world 1st World nations these days, once you have enough material comfort, spiritual comfort in the "next life" doesn't seem so necessary. People in 1st World nations typically don't have the struggle for existence still seen in many 3rd World nations and so the idea of believing in something that will reward you for all your suffering in this life, isn't particularly relevant.

Hence we see a lot of people that are agnostic (in that they still have a belief but don't particularly follow anything) or atheist (as in, choosing to live without any religious influence over their daily living). Once you've reached the stage where you're no longer struggling against nature and your fellow man just to stay alive for a few more years, the trappings of religion seem a bit unnecessary.
So once you're at that stage, spirituality would be achieved by improving yourself rather than entreating some unknowable entity to save your worthless hide, divesting yourself of material desires and emotional complications, in other words, obtaining ultimate enlightenment (or in Buddhist thought, nirvana).

But once your society has reached a technical level that allows you to manipulate the world around you as if you were a god, then perhaps enlightenment requires something more than just divesting yourself of your love of a comfortable life with its fully stocked pantry, large screen telly, swimming pool, two cars and 2.5 kids.
So perhaps you need to expand your intellect to the point where you can comprehend multiple dimensions? Expanding it far beyond your everyday interactions with the physical world and even technology. But how do you reference and then gain understanding of the world beyond what you know?
Chaos Theory, Geometry and Fractal Mathematics...

Phulish mentioned scientist/philosophers, in this instance, your whole society would be scientist/philosophers... well, those who got the right education would. The less intellectually proficient would probably form the drudge work manpower pool (e.g. military personnel, maintenance personnel. Which could lead to spiritual schisms between the enlightened and the unenlightened
In regards to DC, certain alien races might even have a symbiotic relationship with a less intellectually advanced race, the less proficient race performing all the crap jobs so that the intellectuals can pursue their enlightenment... until they all crash headlong into the nearest Dark Lord who says "Bow down and worship me or I'll eat your soul".

Well that's my train of thought anyway.
Strangely enough, as I was thinking about all of this, I had a recollection of the Maggie O'Neill character, Dr Tucker from the mini-series Invasion Earth being stuck in an alien dimension - must try and find that show on DVD and watch it again.
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Phulish »

Plus are you still using the three empathic paths, or just psionics?
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by ReHerakhte »

I hadn't actually thought about the Empathic abilities or their integration into the ideas listed above. I had been thinking purely in terms of how a race so technically & intellectually advanced that they no longer needed a traditional religious belief would achieve some sort of spirituality - specifically if we free the concept of spirituality from the ties to religion that some people have put on it and define it as a sense of connection to something "bigger than ourselves".

If I remember correctly, the main book doesn't explicitly state that all the alien races subverted by the Dark Ones had Empathic abilites. I think it implies that some of them did but I'll have to read the book again to be sure.
If those races did not have major Empathic abilities then perhaps the reason they slipped back to religious practices and created cults around Dark Lords is because the Dark Lords were able to offer them "great mystical powers", something that appeared "as if magic", i.e. superior Empathic abilities?

Yeah they have engines that can propel them faster than the speed of light, they have weapons that focus atoms into beams of energy so powerful they can melt concrete but all that technical prowess is a known quantity, something they can understand on a technical/intellectual level. The Empathy skill of Dimension Walk is something unknown to them and not relatible to techology and appears to render their FTL spaceships a tad redundant. It's mystery makes it appear magical, as if it is some "power from a god".
I have a mischievous desire for subverting Clarke's third law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.) - any sufficiently advanced technological society can still be awed by magic if it makes them more spiritual - especially if it's seen as a shortcut to spirituality :P


Geez Lee, you really picked some heavy philosophical "bait" for the hook this time! :shock: :lol:
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Linden »

ReHerakhte wrote:
Yeah they have engines that can propel them faster than the speed of light, they have weapons that focus atoms into beams of energy so powerful they can melt concrete but all that technical prowess is a known quantity, something they can understand on a technical/intellectual level. The Empathy skill of Dimension Walk is something unknown to them and not relatible to techology and appears to render their FTL spaceships a tad redundant. It's mystery makes it appear magical, as if it is some "power from a god".
I might have mentioned this before but I had a vague notion that alien FTL drives were in fact powerful dimension walk devices enabling the ship to enter high speed/low distance quantum dimensions. The ship travels through these until it gets to where the aliens want to go then re-emerges in the "real universe".

Not really thought about the specifics i.e. whether it's just a larger version of the conventional dimension walk devices mentioned in the game, or is some high powered empathic alien plugged into a biological machine of some sort. Perhaps the alien is horribly mutated like the Navigators in Dune?
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Linden »

this post deleted for repetition
Last edited by Linden on Sun Oct 23, 2016 7:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by ReHerakhte »

I do like that approach, I recall reading a short story set in the near future (I think it was in the now defunct Omni magazine) featuring warplanes with pilots who were physically disabled people but who had been cybernetically integrated into the aircraft itself giving them a freedom unavailable to even physically able people - of course, they also became addicted to the enhancement drugs used to give them an edge in combat and as I recall it, the drug use would eventually cause them to "hear the call of the wild" and go flying off into the wild blue yonder, run out of fuel and die.

And this again, is one of the greatest strengths of DC, all the ideas we've been discussing here could be combined to varying degrees, into the one gameworld. I'm tending towards the idea that the initial alien races were not highly Empathic and the raw power (as in, no need for technology to be able to do various things), provided by Empathy was part of what subverted them and pushed them into service to the Dark Lords - based on the assumption that a highly intellectual race of beings is not going to just blindly believe whatever seduction ploy an alien (to them) entity is trying to use on them, (their intellect being superior to their emotion, they'd see through the ruse).

However... after being subverted, they could then start creating technology that makes use of Empathic abilities so yeah, I'm totally stealing your idea Linden! An Empathic powered FTL drive would offer options most likely not available to a purely tech based FTL drive e.g. Empathic FTL probably requires no special fuel, no complex navigation software, no special shielding to protect the ship during FTL travel and so on.

So that's likely to be how I will use the aliens and Dark Lords in my next DC campaign: -
  • 1. not particularly Empathic until contact with the Dark Lord - Neuropathy only
    2. contact with the Dark Lord occurs earlier than suggested by the main book, gives them some more years to develop their abilities and infect their homeworlds, create Empathic integrated tech e.g. DarkTek, and gives the varying skill/power levels among the aliens
    3. aliens, under direction of the Dark Lord, seek out other subverted creatures including some more Empathic than them
    4. expedition sent to Earth eventually reaches here and then it's time to involve the PCs
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Morthrai »

Right, I'll be putting up a longer post later but to touch on a couple of points:

1- Anne McCaffrey's "Brainship" stories are all about a spaceship directly operated by the brain of a disabled human. Sounds similar to the Omni story.

2 - Even I have never been entirely sure if the ETs in Dark Conspiracy have access to FTL travel. The scout craft that crashed at Roswell was searching ahead of the Mothership which did not have FTL capability, but it's unclear if the scout travelled FTL or via a portal through quantum p-dims. If they have ready access to portals (as ETs do) then FTL is not necessary.

More later! 8)
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Morthrai »

Okay, further thoughts on this topic...

First off I seem to have forgotten that the original Empathic Sourcebook explicitly states on page 35 that some ETs have started a movement called Mathematical Dimensional Transcendentalism. This ties together the empathic schools of mysticism, psionics and sorcery. Given the mental and cultural differences between the various ETs and us I don't think this would be available to humankind, so they keep the advantage of actually knowing WHY things like empathy and dimensional travel work. Human scientists, and empaths too, are restricted to merely learning HOW things work 8)

Now, back to FTL travel. I personally am going to stick with the notion of ETs using dimensional gates for their smaller spacecraft. The mothership is so large that it would require an extremely high amount of energy to open a gate big enough to pass through, plus it is still way out beyond Jupiter and presents no immediate physical threat. Probably. :twisted:
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by ReHerakhte »

You're not the only one Lee, I completely forgot about the Mathematical Dimensional Transcendentalism article let alone how it relates to the game.
And because it's been so long since I actually read those particular sections of the main book, I had also forgotten about the mothership and it's means of travel. If I remember correctly, it implies or states outright that the mothership took many years to travel to our solar system. The further implication being that they did not have FTL engines (either purely technological or hybrid Empathy-Tech).
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Re: Thought Fodder...

Post by Linden »

ReHerakhte wrote: And because it's been so long since I actually read those particular sections of the main book, I had also forgotten about the mothership and it's means of travel. If I remember correctly, it implies or states outright that the mothership took many years to travel to our solar system. The further implication being that they did not have FTL engines (either purely technological or hybrid Empathy-Tech).
Or it's from somewhere so far away that even travelling though the quantum dimensions still take ages?
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