The Roman Empire Never Died

Any and all discussion about Dark Conspiracy, the RPG of modern conspiracy horror
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Linden
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The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by Linden »

Not the real world, but in the wake of The Man in the High Castle TV series here's an article on Philip K Dick: Bladerunner and Total Recall both get a mention along with a few DC tropes, but the bit that really interested me was this:

"we occupy the same moment as the Romans, who maintain an oppressive influence through corporations and the CIA."

I thought that'd make a hell of a conspiracy for a DC game. Of course the Romans would be working for someone bigger - perhaps one of the more decadent emperors who has "graduated" to Dark Lord status and is pulling the strings from inside a protodimension that looks like the ancient city but refracted through mind of a Nero or a Caligua given free rein to express themselves.

Or would it just end up like an old Star Trek episode? One of the ones where they were running low on cash and had to recycle sets and props from other genre productions.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
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Re: The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by Morthrai »

Linden wrote:Of course the Romans would be working for someone bigger - perhaps one of the more decadent emperors who has "graduated" to Dark Lord status and is pulling the strings from inside a protodimension that looks like the ancient city but refracted through mind of a Nero or a Caligua given free rein to express themselves.
There's a lot of potential in this. Of course, the first thing to determine is which emperor originally set things up and/or has ascended to Dark Lord status. It will be their mind and personality that will determine the look and flavour of the conspiracy and protodimension.
Lee Williams.
"Superstition is the name the ignorant give to their ignorance"
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Linden
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Re: The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by Linden »

I think it would have to be Nero, he was supposed to have artistic leanings including architecture. There were rumours blaming him for the Fire of Rome because he wanted to clear the land for his own gargantuan building complex.

He's also possibly the 666 of The Book of Revelations and according to legend may not have died. Perhaps he just decamped to a Protodimension to wait for the right time to come back?
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
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Re: The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by Morthrai »

That works for me, it does seem like Nero's the man. Of course, being the age I am anything involving the alternate Rome concept immediately reminds me of the old Dr Who & the Iron Legion comic. That storyline actually involves several DC elements: shapeshifting aliens, robotic soldiers, death sports and a small resistance movement.
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"Dark Conspiracy Invictus" anyone? :D
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Linden
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Re: The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by Linden »

Morthrai wrote:. Of course, being the age I am anything involving the alternate Rome concept immediately reminds me of the old Dr Who & the Iron Legion comic. That storyline actually involves several DC elements: shapeshifting aliens, robotic soldiers, death sports and a small resistance movement.
I remember that - drawn by Dave "Rogue Trooper" Gibbons. Quality stuff. Miles better than a lot of the actual TV episodes that got made.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
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Re: The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by ReHerakhte »

Damn, I like this! A lot!
Something very different to the typical conspiracy theories involving the Templars or the NWO... they're used & abused so much they've become cliche, the Templars are practically the "poster boys" for conspiracy these days!

Whenever I can get another DC game started I think I'm going to use this notion as the backbone of the campaign.
I'm thinking of things like PCs finding medical reports about vagrants whose cell structure is different to a "modern" person's cell structure, finding ancient items that should be firmly in the realm of historic artefact but suddenly there's a hell of a lot of them being found and encountering people who speak versions of languages that modern scholars don't quite understand (e.g. Roman era Latin is obviously quite different to modern Latin but there were also many more regional variations to modern languages that died out over the centuries, for example, High German, Low German, the Bavarian dialect of German and so on have all been watered down or lost.)
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Re: The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by Linden »

I'm no expert but I think there's different varieties of Latin as well. At work we're having trouble getting a credible translation of a medieval market charter because it's written in a particularly obscure dialect. So far the only half-sensible suggestion we've had is a local hobbyist/amateur historian.

I quite fancy the idea of a modernised Protodimension Rome run by the Emperor Nero.
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Re: The Roman Empire Never Died

Post by ReHerakhte »

Although I had little to base it on, I had thought that there had to be various dialects of ancient Latin simply because with the amount of territory that the Romans conquered, local languages, non-native speakers and accents were going to bring some variations to the core language no matter what.
That to me seems logical and common sense. That plus languages change over time, even in the space of 40 years for some modern languages let alone 400 years.
Your experience actually gives my belief some basis in fact!
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