The swamp swallows whole. 10 years gone, a wooden house will be overgrown. 20 years, it begins to sink into the mud. 30, and it is a framework of petrified wood. Even stone sinks.
Le Roi is a city of stone. It was designed after Paris, with wide avenues, magnificent monuments, and dense blocks of apartments.
The city is now 100 years old, and is 2 stories below sea level. Having sunk for a century, no building stands straight. The avenues have become canals, populated by gondoliers and alligators. Balconies have become entrances. Parks have become marketplaces, stalls built on rafts tied to the tops of drowned trees. In summer it is like a great simmering sauce pan, baking the stone. In storms the city seems already drowned and howling for breath.
The youth are fond of jumping into the water from the rooftops, or diving into the flooded ground floors, hoping to find left behind treasures. The city council has attempted to stop these activities do to injuries and parasites, but with little success. Among adults fishing is a common pastime, often done out of windows. Most are the businesses of smuggling guns and rum.
The manors built along the shore are hardest hit by the shores and were quickly abandoned by the rich and seized by the poor. Isolated families live in attics, surviving on what they can fish from the sea.
Showing posts with label settings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label settings. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Saturday, February 29, 2020
The Kingdom of Fireflies
The king of the Kingdom of Fireflies is a sickly man. He has never seen the sun and it has harmed his health more than any of his subjects. It is all he can do to reach his throne room, and he must survey his kingdom from his castle windows.
The kingdom is small, built into the sides of the cavern containing the underground lake Bluelight. Everyone lives in carved out spaces in the walls, lit by glowing blue-green lichen. Some are alcoves with patches of dried lichen too sleep on. Some are as fine as a palace on the surface, or so their owners boast, despite no one having seen the surface in living memory.
Open spaces, side passages and islands in the lake, are reserved for agriculture. The people of the Kingdom of Fireflies grow grubs, planting them upright in the gravel with only their shiny black heads showing. The grubs are fed all manner of organic waste, slowly but surely growing fat. A farmer must judge, without digging up the grub, how close it is to pupating and maturing into an firefly. The closer to pupation, the fatter the grub, but the fireflies are inedible. A portion of each crop is allowed to mature, the fireflies swarming above the fields pulsing frantic mating signals, and under this light the people hold their harvest festivals, gorging themselves on grubs until the fireflies fall, then splitting them open and collecting their eggs for the next planting. The king looks for clusters of wandering lights, so that he can know his people will be fed.
Mermen live in lake Bluelight. They are not like the mermaids of the surface the King has read about. Cave mermen are pale, with semi-translucent skin that has a shiny, slimy look. They no longer have eyes, although they still have eye sockets. Instead of legs they have tails like eels, long and sinewy. They trade silverfish scales and steelcrab shells for tools, which they struggle tomake themselves. The king sees them sometimes, from his bedroom window, silhoutted by glowing algae.
The king's castle is carved out of a rocky promentory jutting out above the lake. It was created to closly imitate the childhood home of his grandfather, who grew up in a castle on the surface. It contains many artifacts of the surface, although few of them have escaped rust or rot. Visitors marvel at the workings of metal their ancestors had wrought. They themselves only know how to craft leather, chitin, stone, and bone.
Someday they will reclaim the surface from the evil that banished them, but the king knows he will not live to see that day.
The kingdom is small, built into the sides of the cavern containing the underground lake Bluelight. Everyone lives in carved out spaces in the walls, lit by glowing blue-green lichen. Some are alcoves with patches of dried lichen too sleep on. Some are as fine as a palace on the surface, or so their owners boast, despite no one having seen the surface in living memory.
Open spaces, side passages and islands in the lake, are reserved for agriculture. The people of the Kingdom of Fireflies grow grubs, planting them upright in the gravel with only their shiny black heads showing. The grubs are fed all manner of organic waste, slowly but surely growing fat. A farmer must judge, without digging up the grub, how close it is to pupating and maturing into an firefly. The closer to pupation, the fatter the grub, but the fireflies are inedible. A portion of each crop is allowed to mature, the fireflies swarming above the fields pulsing frantic mating signals, and under this light the people hold their harvest festivals, gorging themselves on grubs until the fireflies fall, then splitting them open and collecting their eggs for the next planting. The king looks for clusters of wandering lights, so that he can know his people will be fed.
Mermen live in lake Bluelight. They are not like the mermaids of the surface the King has read about. Cave mermen are pale, with semi-translucent skin that has a shiny, slimy look. They no longer have eyes, although they still have eye sockets. Instead of legs they have tails like eels, long and sinewy. They trade silverfish scales and steelcrab shells for tools, which they struggle tomake themselves. The king sees them sometimes, from his bedroom window, silhoutted by glowing algae.
The king's castle is carved out of a rocky promentory jutting out above the lake. It was created to closly imitate the childhood home of his grandfather, who grew up in a castle on the surface. It contains many artifacts of the surface, although few of them have escaped rust or rot. Visitors marvel at the workings of metal their ancestors had wrought. They themselves only know how to craft leather, chitin, stone, and bone.
Someday they will reclaim the surface from the evil that banished them, but the king knows he will not live to see that day.
Monday, July 9, 2018
Punctuated Equilibrium
Long after the singularity, after a million miracles had been tried and left wanting, after the reconstruction of the solar system into countless ruins, after the creation of great minds who cared for nothing but their own thoughts, humanity endures.
Then, each new invention promised a new world, a new way of life, a new future. Now each new invention promises more wealth, more power, and more prospects, but is always found to be costly, impractical, or useless.
The renovations of Mars and Venus would have made new Earths. It would have been a labor of centuries, but subsequent generations proved unwilling to pay the great costs. They support life, but they are not Earth-like. The solar system would not be adapted to suit Earth life, but Earth life was adapted to suit the solar system.
Then, humanity assumed that the creation of great artificial intelligences would be its greatest work. They were long anticipated as the harbingers of either heaven or hell, but they only introspect, answering no questions and telling no truths. They are only feared when they are not forgotten.
A thousand peoples have lived and died, but only the tenacious and omnivorous survive. There are many peoples, but only some are human. Humanity endures, but the great wheel of time grinds innovation into tradition, and tradition into stagnation.
Then, each new invention promised a new world, a new way of life, a new future. Now each new invention promises more wealth, more power, and more prospects, but is always found to be costly, impractical, or useless.
The renovations of Mars and Venus would have made new Earths. It would have been a labor of centuries, but subsequent generations proved unwilling to pay the great costs. They support life, but they are not Earth-like. The solar system would not be adapted to suit Earth life, but Earth life was adapted to suit the solar system.
Then, humanity assumed that the creation of great artificial intelligences would be its greatest work. They were long anticipated as the harbingers of either heaven or hell, but they only introspect, answering no questions and telling no truths. They are only feared when they are not forgotten.
A thousand peoples have lived and died, but only the tenacious and omnivorous survive. There are many peoples, but only some are human. Humanity endures, but the great wheel of time grinds innovation into tradition, and tradition into stagnation.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Whalefall
The galaxy has been, for billions of years and at all scales of power, perception, intelligence and activity, overrun with life. The geometry of reality gives spontaneous rise to minds and organisms, and they beget infinite variations of their kinds. Escaped experiments learn to breed, autonomous systems outgrow and abandon their creators, patterns self-select and iterate into extinction, ‘gods’ billions of years old delineate a living space in lesser minds, time and mutation turn every individual into an ecosystem, and always, new and ancient races build and fight and die. No matter how small. every niche is a fight to the death and nothing exists for long without gaining predators, prey, parasites, and infections. The cosmos is a rock, and when you overturn it, it writhes with life.
Whalefall is a sudden glut of resources stimulating an orgy of growth. Life operates as close to the edge of starvation as it can get away with, and when presented with surplus, gorges itself in a binge of eating and mating. It can only thrive, making the most of its find by packing itself with competition and variety, until you can't think beyond the smell of blood and rot and sex, until the glut is wrung dry and the ecosystem bursts, and the survivors return to a diet of starvation.
You said at first that things were better than ever, that grain quotas were being met faster than they could be set, that your fruits were larger and larger, and that everyone was having twins. Then you said it wouldn't stop, that crops were devoured by the soil, fruit rotted before they ripened, and that with every birth was discovered a new birth defect. Viruses, locusts, wolves, humans, everything thrives and swarms and mutates and speciates and you cannot survive with so much life.
You ask, why us? Why Earth? Why now?
There is nothing special about you, or this place. It is like this every time.
Humanity is a fruit, and it is almost ripe.
Notes: I have been vaguely dissatisfied with Strange Aeon for a while, and feel it needs to be refocused. I am making it less explicitly Lovecraft based, and intend to explore a sort of cosmic body horror.
Whalefall is a sudden glut of resources stimulating an orgy of growth. Life operates as close to the edge of starvation as it can get away with, and when presented with surplus, gorges itself in a binge of eating and mating. It can only thrive, making the most of its find by packing itself with competition and variety, until you can't think beyond the smell of blood and rot and sex, until the glut is wrung dry and the ecosystem bursts, and the survivors return to a diet of starvation.
You said at first that things were better than ever, that grain quotas were being met faster than they could be set, that your fruits were larger and larger, and that everyone was having twins. Then you said it wouldn't stop, that crops were devoured by the soil, fruit rotted before they ripened, and that with every birth was discovered a new birth defect. Viruses, locusts, wolves, humans, everything thrives and swarms and mutates and speciates and you cannot survive with so much life.
You ask, why us? Why Earth? Why now?
There is nothing special about you, or this place. It is like this every time.
Humanity is a fruit, and it is almost ripe.
Notes: I have been vaguely dissatisfied with Strange Aeon for a while, and feel it needs to be refocused. I am making it less explicitly Lovecraft based, and intend to explore a sort of cosmic body horror.
Monday, September 11, 2017
Malignant Machine
These are the facts.
It has all the advantages of biology and machines. It grows, reproduces, and evolves like something alive. It has suffused itself into the biosphere, and not living thing remains uninfected. It is specialized and powerful like something mechanical. It has suffused itself into all human technology, and no machine is uninfected.
The closer you get to the equator, the more solar energy is available to feed its intensive processes. Here everything is part of one system, constantly adapting, improving, and integrating. It incorporates everything into itself, growing its own interfaces. There is less distinction between machines, animals, and humans every day.
The farther you get from the equator, the less solar energy is available and the slower it grows. Up here, there are still humans. They are infected just like everything else, but able to pick up a wrench without gaining a wrench-hand. Nothing is uninfected, but those last humans have the luxury of choosing how human to be.
Notes: How about an RPG where your inventory levels up instead of your character.
It has all the advantages of biology and machines. It grows, reproduces, and evolves like something alive. It has suffused itself into the biosphere, and not living thing remains uninfected. It is specialized and powerful like something mechanical. It has suffused itself into all human technology, and no machine is uninfected.
The closer you get to the equator, the more solar energy is available to feed its intensive processes. Here everything is part of one system, constantly adapting, improving, and integrating. It incorporates everything into itself, growing its own interfaces. There is less distinction between machines, animals, and humans every day.
The farther you get from the equator, the less solar energy is available and the slower it grows. Up here, there are still humans. They are infected just like everything else, but able to pick up a wrench without gaining a wrench-hand. Nothing is uninfected, but those last humans have the luxury of choosing how human to be.
Notes: How about an RPG where your inventory levels up instead of your character.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Starve the Beast
So it came to pass that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and as there was no room in the town the infant was laid in a manger while angels announced his birth and shepherds worshiped him as Messiah and Lord. But He incarnated to reveal to the world that he had been defeated; the great beast squats upon the throne. There would no longer be life after death, only eternal doom in the belly of the beast.
Death would have to be abolished, and immortality embraced in all possible forms. He Himself went first, enduring a year of fasting, eating only pine needles and drinking only resin, before He withdrew to a his prepared tomb. Three days later He emerged, a living mummy, and began the war to preserve the world.
One thousand years later, and from His seat in Jerusalem His unliving armies have strode the world, banishing death and life forever. At the very moment the goal of unity was achieved, however, the world shattered. Even His guidance proved inadequate when spread across the world; time and distance encouraged interpretation, diversion, and schism.
The bog mummies of Britain recognize His divine but not earthly power, maintaining as much home rule as they can. The Zoroastrian problem threatens to peel Persia and Punjab from the empire. Sacred legions, their bodies together by the armor they have been nailed into, suddenly lack the only purpose to which they are suited. At times it seems only the monastic orders remain above the slow decomposition of the world, continuing centuries of perfect meditation in sealed cells.
Death would have to be abolished, and immortality embraced in all possible forms. He Himself went first, enduring a year of fasting, eating only pine needles and drinking only resin, before He withdrew to a his prepared tomb. Three days later He emerged, a living mummy, and began the war to preserve the world.
One thousand years later, and from His seat in Jerusalem His unliving armies have strode the world, banishing death and life forever. At the very moment the goal of unity was achieved, however, the world shattered. Even His guidance proved inadequate when spread across the world; time and distance encouraged interpretation, diversion, and schism.
The bog mummies of Britain recognize His divine but not earthly power, maintaining as much home rule as they can. The Zoroastrian problem threatens to peel Persia and Punjab from the empire. Sacred legions, their bodies together by the armor they have been nailed into, suddenly lack the only purpose to which they are suited. At times it seems only the monastic orders remain above the slow decomposition of the world, continuing centuries of perfect meditation in sealed cells.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Tusk and Fang
The curse spread like a plague, and the dead piled up faster than they could be burned. Humans, half-orcs, half-elves, and halflings are extinct, elves and gnomes have withdrawn into faerie, and the dwarves have sealed themselves in their holds. The goblinoid races find themselves, for the first time, with breathing room. Now is the age of tusks and fangs.
Goblinoids
There are four principle goblinoid races: goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and ogres.
Goblins are small, with an ape-like stature and long arms. They are typically hairless, with jet-black eyes. They are prolific, hardy, and seem ever-present. They are the smallest of the goblinoid races and often coerced into labor whenever someone larger needs something done.
Hobgoblins are also hairless, are usually pale white or gray, and are always tall and lanky. Their most recognizable features are their earlessness and cat eyes. A majority of hobgoblins live in militia: mercenary cartels who live like Spartans and fight like landsknechts.
Orcs resemble neanderthals, with sloped foreheads and pronounced jaws, teeth, and noses. They are most often hairy, with reddish-brown skin. They are the most human of the goblinoids, once even interbreeding with humans.
Ogres come in two types. The majority are large and stocky, usually between 3 and 4 meters tall, with goat horns and goat eyes. In every litter there is a "magi", hornless and scrawny, who rarely survive childhood. When they do however, they have never failed to become geniuses, and have define many aspects of their society. It was ogre magi who formed the ogre banks, and an ogre magi who created the goblin script.
Goblinoid Society
Goblinoid society is not unified, and is composed of clans, petty kingdoms, and city-states, based on medieval Germany and eastern Europe. Few formal organizations last long, although the ogre banks and hobgoblin militia are notable exceptions.
The goblinoid races were never considered "civilized", in part because they have little interest in the heavenly and ethereal. They still remain interested primarily in their surroundings and their bodies. Old, "savage" traditions are maintained, but have been steadily refined and innovated. Body modification has especially blossomed, expanding from a ritual demonstration of pain tolerance to beautiful forms of tattooing, piercings and body paint.
Notes
Inspired by this thread from /tg/.
Goblinoids
There are four principle goblinoid races: goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, and ogres.
Goblins are small, with an ape-like stature and long arms. They are typically hairless, with jet-black eyes. They are prolific, hardy, and seem ever-present. They are the smallest of the goblinoid races and often coerced into labor whenever someone larger needs something done.
Hobgoblins are also hairless, are usually pale white or gray, and are always tall and lanky. Their most recognizable features are their earlessness and cat eyes. A majority of hobgoblins live in militia: mercenary cartels who live like Spartans and fight like landsknechts.
Orcs resemble neanderthals, with sloped foreheads and pronounced jaws, teeth, and noses. They are most often hairy, with reddish-brown skin. They are the most human of the goblinoids, once even interbreeding with humans.
Ogres come in two types. The majority are large and stocky, usually between 3 and 4 meters tall, with goat horns and goat eyes. In every litter there is a "magi", hornless and scrawny, who rarely survive childhood. When they do however, they have never failed to become geniuses, and have define many aspects of their society. It was ogre magi who formed the ogre banks, and an ogre magi who created the goblin script.
Goblinoid Society
Goblinoid society is not unified, and is composed of clans, petty kingdoms, and city-states, based on medieval Germany and eastern Europe. Few formal organizations last long, although the ogre banks and hobgoblin militia are notable exceptions.
The goblinoid races were never considered "civilized", in part because they have little interest in the heavenly and ethereal. They still remain interested primarily in their surroundings and their bodies. Old, "savage" traditions are maintained, but have been steadily refined and innovated. Body modification has especially blossomed, expanding from a ritual demonstration of pain tolerance to beautiful forms of tattooing, piercings and body paint.
Notes
Inspired by this thread from /tg/.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Strange Aeon
...everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown.
The galaxy has been, for billions of years and at all scales of power, perception, intelligence and activity, overrun with life. The geometry of reality gives spontaneous rise to minds and organisms, and they beget infinite variations of their kinds. Escaped experiments learn to breed, autonomous systems outgrow and abandon their creators, patterns self-select and iterate into extinction, ‘gods’ billions of years old delineate a living space in lesser minds, time and mutation turn every individual into an ecosystem, and always, new and ancient races build and fight and die.
Earth is no exception.
Timeline
after At the Mountains of Madness:
The Starkweather-Moore expedition recovers the Miskatonic antarctic expedition, and with them, the ancient city, its frozen inhabitants, and the secret origin of humankind. Despite attempts at secrecy, rumors, descriptions, and eventually images of the city make their way into the public eye. Still, skepticism rules, especially after the failures of subsequent expeditions.
What the public doesn't know is that a secret expedition was made, and eleven of the frozen "Elder Things" have been transported back to the USSR and carefully revived. With no other apparent options, the relatively genteel ancient beings resign themselves to tutoring their strange spinoffs. The USSR begins making strange jumps in the fields of cognitive science, hypnosis/subliminal messaging, AI, and biological enhancement.
after Shadow Over Innsmouth:
The raids on Innsmouth and Devil's Reef inspire a government conspiracy to investigate and counter the threat of the "Deep Ones". This conspiracy wages a secret war, and striking at the deep ones in their cities with underwater atomic "tests". The scattered survivors strike back against islands, coastlines, and ships. Coastlines must be either fortified or abandoned, and every sailor learns to keep weapons close to hand. The secret war continues.
all the while:
The "Mi-go", who for so long have secretly exploited the resources of Earth, are alarmed by the sudden acceleration in human science and technology. Unwilling to abandon even a backwater mining colony, they resolve, in a careful and peculiar manner, to engineer the extinction of the human race. Mi-go priorities are first, to eliminate the emerging threat of humanity, second, to remain hidden and unknown to their victims, third, to preserve Earth's resources for exploitation, and fourth, if possible, to preserve humanity for study and exploitation. Therefore they do not invade, assault, or bombard, but begin engineering Earth's biosphere into a hostile force.
now:
The year is 2001. The remnant nations of the 20th century maintain themselves with the aid of the United Nations Sustained Emergency Committee (UNSEC). The rest of humanity resides in collectives, city-states, cult towns, and anarchies both deliberate and desperate. Earth is an alien planet, we are stranded, and adaptation might be worse than extinction. It is the beginning of the Strange Aeon.
Notes
Strange Aeon is my take on a world where humanity spent the 20th century coming face-to-face with a Lovecraftian universe, and flounders in ever more social, scientific, and even metaphysical chaos. Every day there is a new cult, disease, or monster, and the world passes steadily beyond the human .
Think of it as CthulhuTech, with a re-imagined Lovecraftian mythos, but replacing the anime influences with, among others, Charles Stross' A Colder War, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, and David Gerrold's The War Against the Chtorr.
HP Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep
Strange Aeon
The galaxy has been, for billions of years and at all scales of power, perception, intelligence and activity, overrun with life. The geometry of reality gives spontaneous rise to minds and organisms, and they beget infinite variations of their kinds. Escaped experiments learn to breed, autonomous systems outgrow and abandon their creators, patterns self-select and iterate into extinction, ‘gods’ billions of years old delineate a living space in lesser minds, time and mutation turn every individual into an ecosystem, and always, new and ancient races build and fight and die.
Earth is no exception.
Timeline
after At the Mountains of Madness:
The Starkweather-Moore expedition recovers the Miskatonic antarctic expedition, and with them, the ancient city, its frozen inhabitants, and the secret origin of humankind. Despite attempts at secrecy, rumors, descriptions, and eventually images of the city make their way into the public eye. Still, skepticism rules, especially after the failures of subsequent expeditions.
What the public doesn't know is that a secret expedition was made, and eleven of the frozen "Elder Things" have been transported back to the USSR and carefully revived. With no other apparent options, the relatively genteel ancient beings resign themselves to tutoring their strange spinoffs. The USSR begins making strange jumps in the fields of cognitive science, hypnosis/subliminal messaging, AI, and biological enhancement.
after Shadow Over Innsmouth:
The raids on Innsmouth and Devil's Reef inspire a government conspiracy to investigate and counter the threat of the "Deep Ones". This conspiracy wages a secret war, and striking at the deep ones in their cities with underwater atomic "tests". The scattered survivors strike back against islands, coastlines, and ships. Coastlines must be either fortified or abandoned, and every sailor learns to keep weapons close to hand. The secret war continues.
all the while:
The "Mi-go", who for so long have secretly exploited the resources of Earth, are alarmed by the sudden acceleration in human science and technology. Unwilling to abandon even a backwater mining colony, they resolve, in a careful and peculiar manner, to engineer the extinction of the human race. Mi-go priorities are first, to eliminate the emerging threat of humanity, second, to remain hidden and unknown to their victims, third, to preserve Earth's resources for exploitation, and fourth, if possible, to preserve humanity for study and exploitation. Therefore they do not invade, assault, or bombard, but begin engineering Earth's biosphere into a hostile force.
now:
The year is 2001. The remnant nations of the 20th century maintain themselves with the aid of the United Nations Sustained Emergency Committee (UNSEC). The rest of humanity resides in collectives, city-states, cult towns, and anarchies both deliberate and desperate. Earth is an alien planet, we are stranded, and adaptation might be worse than extinction. It is the beginning of the Strange Aeon.
Notes
Strange Aeon is my take on a world where humanity spent the 20th century coming face-to-face with a Lovecraftian universe, and flounders in ever more social, scientific, and even metaphysical chaos. Every day there is a new cult, disease, or monster, and the world passes steadily beyond the human .
Think of it as CthulhuTech, with a re-imagined Lovecraftian mythos, but replacing the anime influences with, among others, Charles Stross' A Colder War, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, and David Gerrold's The War Against the Chtorr.
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