The Detrimental Robot

Any and all discussion about Dark Conspiracy, the RPG of modern conspiracy horror
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Linden
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The Detrimental Robot

Post by Linden »

Wasn't sure whether to put this in the book or film thread so I compromised by starting a new one...

Have recently been watching 70's BritCrime series The XYY man. The latter episodes feature a ruthless intelligence officer called Dero who takes his name, for reasons not entirely clear, from the Detrimental Robots created by sci-fi author Richard Sharpe Shaver. The Deros are intellectually advanced but morally degenerate humanoids living in huge subterranean cities. I suppose they're a not uncommon sci-fi trope but the wikipedia write up got me thinking that the Deros were pretty similar to DC's conception of the Dark Elves. Shaver claimed that the Deros and their cities were real but it does appear that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

Using Shaver's ideas in Dark Conspiracy you could perhaps have a pulp sci-fi author with a high Foreboding skill who starts receiving visions of the Dark Elf civilizations beneath the Earth. When he writes them up into bestsellers the Elves decide he needs to be silenced and try to assassinate him. It's the PCs job to keep him alive as he embarks on a book tour to promote his latest blockbuster. Cue mass assaults by Igors, Animators and once everthing else has failed the Dark Elves in person.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
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Morthrai
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Re: The Detrimental Robot

Post by Morthrai »

Never heard of the chap but there's plenty to be done with the idea :)
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Linden
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Re: The Detrimental Robot

Post by Linden »

Nor me, until I caught the Dero reference in the XYY Man and decided to investigate further. Reading the Wikipedia page it's an elaborately imagined occult conspiracy up there with Icke and his lizards and/or Hubbard and his Thetans. I don't mean that in a good way necessarily. It's really way out stuff, but I thought it had that pulpy truth-is stranger-than-fiction vibe that really suits Dark Conspiracy, like with the supermarket tabloids.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
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ReHerakhte
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Re: The Detrimental Robot

Post by ReHerakhte »

As a tangent, the Dero are also one of the races from 1st Ed. AD&D as, surprise surprise, a race of evil dwarves (if I remember correctly).
I had seen some of the references to Dero as part of the 'alien conspiracy promoted by people like Icke but like Lee, I hadn't heard of the XYY Man nor Shaver so thanks for the info in that regard :D


Update: Having just read the bio on Shaver, I realized I had heard of him before, I just didn't connect the dots this time around as the last time I read anything about his story was several years ago about "underground weirdness" in the USA - and there's a lot of that sort of thing over there!
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Linden
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Re: The Detrimental Robot

Post by Linden »

ReHerakhte wrote:
I had seen some of the references to Dero as part of the 'alien conspiracy promoted by people like Icke but like Lee, I hadn't heard of the XYY Man nor Shaver so thanks for the info in that regard :D


I thought someone on here would have heard of them. I love this forum :wink: . I'm not surprised that they've become more or less subsumed into conspiracy lore. Shaver seems to have been a proto-Icke in some ways.

The XYY Man is unusual series, it's quite slow and convoluted but it does explore some themes of interest to conspiracy buffs: Shadowy intelligence agencies, private armies and terrorism. It's even got a waterboarding scene, way before that sort of thing became popular (if that's the right word to use).
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
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