CthulhuTech: Mortal Remains by Ettin
Story of NEG Wonderland
Original SA post
So I am getting kind of burned out on
CthulhuTech
. I thought I'd revive an old writeup I was doing on like... page 30.
Beyond Countless Doorways: The Return
For those who have forgotten, Beyond Countless Doorways is a 3.5 "planar sourcebook" which also happens to be a reunion of a bunch of people who did Planescape - Wolfgang Baur, Colin McComb, Ray Vallese and of course the Spielberg of RPG design: Monte Cook.
Ha ha no I'm just fucking with you.
Mortal Remains: Story of NEG Wonderland
Mortal Remains posted:
This is Mortal Remains , the core setting book for CthulhuTech . In these pages, you will find a detailed exploration of the New Earth Government and the Nazzadi, with details that are useful for anyone playing CthulhuTech . Learn what it is like to live in the Strange Aeon day-to-day. Finally understand who the Nazzadi are and from where they came. Discover new technology to help the New earth Government turn the tide of the Aeon War.
Then you’ll have a chance to peek behind the curtain and delve into the alien world of the Migou. Find out how they function, what life is like for them, and why they are so intent on invading the earth. If you’re of a mind, you’ll have the chance to explore the Migou more personally by taking them on as characters.
Welcome to Mortal Remains ! Enjoy the ride.
Really this quote tells you everything you need to know. It's a setting book, there's a lot of Human and Nazzadi fluff, and you get to be a Migou. Also, this is going to be a ride. I am pretty sure it is not the ride the author intended.
Aside from that, there's a list of setting terms (skiiiiiiiip) and a chapter list:
Mortal Remains posted:
Chapter One: Welcome is what you are reading right now. It’s meant to help ease you into the vision for this setting expansion and give you a reference for what this book contains.
Chapter Two: People of a Dying World provides and in-depth look at the New Earth Government. It contains all aspects of life, including the Armed Forces, society and subcultures, and much more.
Chapter Three: Children of Nowhere details the history and present of the Nazzadi. It contains all aspects of their world, including where they came from, what they believed, and who they are becoming now.
Chapter Four: From the Vault introduces new New Earth Government technology. It includes new vehicles, mecha, and experimental tech.
Chapter Five: Abominable Snowmen pulls back the curtain to look at the world of the Migou. It explores what they really are, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and how their world functions.
Mortal Remains posted:
If You Downloaded This Book
So if you’re one of the people who has downloaded this book illegally off the internet, let’s talk. We want to stay in business. We don’t get to stay in business if you don’t buy our products but you use them anyway. In more personal terms, if you like CthulhuTech , please go out and buy the books, because if you don’t we go out of business or we kill the line because sales suck and boom – no more CthulhuTech . You lose, we lose, everybody loses. Everybody loves something for nothing, but this sort of thing comes with a price whether it’s money or not.
Mortal Remains posted:
Chapter Six: From the Hive Ship introduces new Migou technology. it includes new vehicles, mecha, and experimental tech.
Chapter Seven: Alien Alter Ego provides all the rules for designing Migou characters, as well as everything needed to Storyguide Migou games. It includes race and profession templates, story hooks, and a complete story starter.
Chapter Eight: Appendices include the index.
Before we get into the book proper, I want to ask people who have read or heard of this (perhaps because I have told them. Probably because I have told them, actually) to not post spoilers! We are embarking on a magical adventure here and I want everything to be a wondrous surprise. On the other hand, I am pretty sure everyone reading this will be able to hazard a guess:
Mortal Remains posted:
MEA CULPA
Definition: An acknowledgement of one’s error or guilt.
Source: French.
This book discusses the way the world has turned out according to the setting. It is fictional, but there are some things that still need to be addressed.
This book covers a lot of ground. Inside, you’ll find discussions of how sex and drugs are a regular part of society. You’ll find discussions of how organized religion has all but died out. You’ll find discussion of how certain cultures have ended up or aspects of those cultures have ended up. and that’s just the start.
There’s a better than average chance you’ll find something you don’t like or with which you don’t agree. You might find the idea of what are now illicit drugs being available at a bar offensive. You might find the idea that casual sex is a normal part of life to be reprehensible. You might be a christian or a Muslim or part of some other organized religion that is described as dying a fiery death in this seeing. You might completely disagree with how a particular nation or culture is treated here.
The most important thing to keep in mind – it’s all fiction. None of it represents anyone at WildFire’s personal beliefs. Fiction gives us the opportunity to explore what the world would be like if it were different – not if it had sacred cows that never changed.
We apologize if you find something inside this book offensive. Please take it in the vein it was intended and try something different on for size. After all, it’s only entertainment. The world will still be there when you get back.
And, as always, you bought the book. it’s your game. Play it however you’d like.
Next time: The NEG! It will probably be a two-parter because holy smokes is this chapter huge. Strap yourself in, this ride is starting!
Oh, and fair warning: Even CthulhuTech fans think Mortal Remains is fucking terrible.
Lotus Lame Story
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Lotus Lame Story
The second chapter, People of a Dying World , opens with another fluff story. In "For Your Protection", a guy who works inside the Ministry of Information is tasked by his boss to try and talk an underground news site into not leaking The Truth - not that truth, sorry SLA fans! - even though everyone is pretty sure the NEG will have to kill them. Uh oh!
After that comes the NEG writeup! Unfortunately, it is boring. Two-column blocks of text for pages and pages, dry as a robot's anus. Let's see how much we can condense this shit!
Government & Politics
There are some people who think the NEG is really neat! It is kind of nice that all of humanity has finally put aside their differences to work together. On the other hand, only nine of the twenty-five years it has existed were peaceful - the NEG is a wartime government formed out of necessity to avoid dying, not an amazing achievement of cooperation. Behind the NEG's utopian facade lies a regime where people's rights are slowly being waived in the name of security, and nobody wants to confront what is really happening. This is kind of a theme with the NEG, but it's not actually bad for a Lovecraft setting. (Times I have complimented CthulhuTech on something: about 3?)
The NEG's seat of power is in Chicago. It has a Parliament, and its two Chambers are known as the Hall of Commons and the Senate Council. Directly elected representatives (two thousand of them with four-year terms) fill the Hall, and it is there that bills are introduced and voted on. It is dominated by three political parties: the Federalists ("a conservative platform that stresses the need for balance between state and federal control" who are in favour of state sovereignty), the Unification Party (a liberal party with a raging boner for a centralized authority) and the Social Democrats (a weaker group that champions the common man).
Meanwhile, the Senate Council is filled with dudes appointed by a majority vote of each State Legislature and votes on legislation submitted by the Hall of Commons. It works a lot like the General Assembly of the UN, and even has its own Security Council! Above that sits the President, chosen by the majority party, and he chooses a cabinet of Ministers to handle things like military, education, propaganda, etc.
Oh yeah, and state governments have their own little differences which nobody gives a shit about, but they all have free elections and royalty isn't recognised.
God damn, my eyes slide off the page just reading all this. This section is two pages.
The current President is Konstantin Becker, who has held the office for seven years. That means he's going to have to step down during or after the next metaplot book, though there's growing support to extend the presidency another four years rather than shake things up in the middle of a war. Becker is effective, but also a Unificationist, so people are getting worried about all these increased executive powers lately.
Finally, there are a lot of lobbyist groups in Chicago. None of them are named, but we do get this plot hook:
Mortal Remains posted:
... several lobbyist groups have launched informal complaints about the activities of Senate Councilman Jan Fouche of South Africa. Though no formal evidence has arisen, it is widely believed that Jan Fouche has provided a central conduit that grants unfair government access to one particular multi-national company – The Chrysalis Corporation.
The Armed Forces
The Army is everywhere in normal life, from battlecruisers floating over towns to ads and slogans supporting the troops all over cities, and everyone loves them. They help you not die!
Its two main branches are the Army and the Navy. The Navy are responsible for air missions too, now that arcanotechnology lets you make flying boats, and have everything from transport ships to kick-ass capital ships like battlecruisers that come loaded with aircraft and mecha. (Ship-born mechs are piloted by the Marines.)
The Army, meanwhile, has retained most of its traditions and is proud as fuck of its "long and valorous history". But the NEG is made up of every Earth state, what about the ones who fought each other in the past? Whose long and valorous history do you celebrate then? Do those parts not count? SHRUG. It's cool though, a lot of this is dedicated to playing up how awesome the Army is anyway and I can think of worse uses of your word count.
Mortal Remains posted:
Of course the beating heart, and in fact the largest body of the Armed Forces is the Army. There is just no tactical substitute for the sheer guts and determination of the soldier fighting on the front line. More often than not, the source of that tenacious determination comes from the camaraderie and pride that is fostered within each individual unit. For many serving men and women, that pride extends to a long and valorous history that New Earth Government planners chose to maintain during the formation of the new global Army. What better way to integrate the military traditions of the world into a single fighting force than to allow some of those individual identities to continue today? What better way to foster self-respect in one’s unit than to honor the achievements of its predecessors? To that end, the New Earth Government chose to integrate some of the more prominent military units of the world into the modern Army and allowed them to keep their traditions intact.
There are many such examples in the world of old cultural army units integrated into the new system. The North American 1st Infantry Division, for example, still refers to itself as the Big Red One and the 1st Battalion of that Division still calls itself the Devil’s Brigade. Even though the British monarchy no longer exists, the European 2nd Infantry Division prefers to go by their original formation name, the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Soldiers of German lineage love to take pride in the 10th Mecha Armored Division, which holds its roots directly with the famous 10th Panzer Division. There is the Egyptian 2nd Corp, the Franco-German Brigade, the Brigade of Gurkhas, the Arab Republican Guard – one of the finest heavy mecha units in the Middle East. Even the elite special forces detachment attached to the European 5th Infantry Division claims its roots in the famous mountain fighters of the French Chasseurs Alpins. One of the finest light airborne rapid deployment infantry units to this day still goes by the moniker of the 75th Ranger Regiment out of Fort Benning, Georgia. Much of the character and strength of the New Earth Government’s modern Army can certainly be found in the roots of history and the battle honors of campaigns long past.
And thanks to advances in technology, they are a well-oiled machine!
Mortal Remains posted:
Today’s doctrine successfully combines the armored support and remote artillery tactics developed in the Second World War, the quick deployment effectiveness of airmobile infantry that evolved during the Vietnam War, the precision bombing and high-speed armored advance tactics of the 1991 Gulf War, the information supremacy method of waging war that guided the United States led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the coordinated airborne naval combat support methods that emerged during the First Arcanotech War.
The NEG relies on its air superiority - against the Migou they can use Nazzadi scouts to spot targets and then lay down artillery fire while airdropping units, and the Rapine Storm's air presence is basically a joke. If it weren't for the Migou, the NEG could just mow down the Storm with battlecruisers; as it stands, they are focusing on taking down the Migou and the Hive Ship and just trying to contain the Storm. Also, they have dream magic and that is spooky. The NEG is recruiting sorcerers and para-psychics for paranormal combat, though!
The Armed Forces are coordinated by the United Force Command, based in Colorado Springs because America. There are smaller force commands for each region - North America (NOACOM), South America (SOACOM), Europe (EUCOM), Middle East (MECOM), Africa (AFRICOM), the Pacific (PACOM) and Xen'drik (XCOM). Okay, I made that last one up, but I hope I gave someone a new game crossover idea!
Oh yeah, the EOD. Anyone remember those guys? Major waterways around the world have been fortified because fuck them, and training centers at Naples and the Great Lakes prepare the Navy for amphibious combat. The NEG scored a victory against them recently, at the Second Battle of Pearl Harbor (why did Damnation View get a shitty railroad undersea adventure where nobody really does anything and not that? ), but China dying kind of overshadowed that and they didn't even get much press. Everybody Hates Dagon. It's my latest show pitch.
Other important places for the Armed Forces! A bunch of them are stranded in Mongolia, and with the Migou holding Alaska and the Rapine Storm hopping down to Australia, the NEG cannot afford to lose Japan. They are getting priority support. Thank us later, Japan! The NEG fucked up retaking Alaska, so they are building up defenses and staging random raids to keep them from pushing into North America while they come up with a plan. Eastern Europe hasn't seen heavy fighting against the Migou because they are busy in Asia, and the Migou advance stopped at Moscow like they are waiting for something anyway. What could it be? Nobody knows! (it's the second Hive Ship.) Europe has some time, so they are reinforcing what they can. The NEG lost against the Migou in northern Scotland, and those wacky Scots (under Vice Marshall
The Armed Forces need a win, so naturally their plan is to attack the first Hive Ship - Operation Final Strike involves sending a fleet of their best Navy warships to the far side of the the Hive Ship, which might be more vulnerable, and shove nukes inside it. Will it work? Find out in Burning Horizons! Or read the thread on CthulhuTech's forums where they claim that it doesn't work.
There's a little more about the EOD, but fuck you Dagon. The section wraps up by dropping the patriotism and shifting gears into THE HORRORS OF WAR.
Mortal Remains posted:
As a soldier, you see what you see, experience what you experience, and carry with you the weight of what you had to do in combat or what was done to you in hate. Sometimes you feel guilty deep down inside because there are times when you were forced to do something that no civilized person would ever do, take certain lives, let others die, or participate in any number of wartime horrors. Furthermore, you feel you cannot tell anyone about it, because unless they were there to experience what you experienced, they could never understand. You sometimes wake up at night in the throes of a nightmare with images of your best friend blown to pieces in your mind. Perhaps you see the memory of that little blank girl that you were forced to shoot in order to prevent your squad position from being given away to the enemy. You want to forget, but you can’t because if you do you are afraid that you might dishonor the memories of those who were lost to you – those friends and comrades who died fighting beside you. Sometimes all you have left is your own personal escape clause, your own carefully crafted coping mechanisms. Even with Ashcroft doctors on site, its still very difficult for you to open up. Sometimes its just much easier to engage in a staring match with a bottle or a gun barrel than to relive those terrible moments once again.
Economy
One last section and I'm tapping out for this post.
Mortal Remains posted:
Socio-capitalism. That’s the name of the new game.
Socialism has always been an emotionally charged word. There are those that want it and those that feel it is the ultimate insult to a free society. Communism, the most renowned form of socialism, failed because it required that everyone involved be, at least on some level, moral. The New Earth Government has embraced the best of socialism, because it has to. Without a controlled economy, the econo-sphere would have collapsed a long time ago. The NEG has pioneered a new form of economic policy that is most commonly called socio-capitalism.
Essentially, the New Earth Government has combined the best of socialism with the best of capitalism to keep people trying to get ahead while making sure their basic needs are cared for. No one in the NEG needs go hungry or without shelter, but those that wish to can carve out their own financial empires in the vein of capitalism.
Health care is free, subsidised by the government and basically top-notch. (Someone with a non-life-threatening condition might wait for months to see a specialist, though.) Any NEG citizen can get all the free mental health care they want, too, and the NEG tries to make sure people don't have to wait to get it. The NEG is big on not going insane. Education, unemployment and shelter are all subsidised, child-care and education are free, and while people still have to work if they can unemployment benefits are "livable". You can also get a free "basic" (read: shitty) apartment if you are homeless or a refugee or something.
It is truly the dystopia of American nightmares.
Money is still popular though.
Mortal Remains posted:
Money is still a measure of social success as those who have it tend to be more sexually successful than those who do not.
Chrysalis started as a business consulting group, which asked for shares of ownership in companies it assisted; when arcanotechnology first threw the economy into chaos, Chrysalis staged hostile/bail-out takeovers of most of them and became a multi-national conglomerate. And that was before they were infiltrated and had Nyarlathotep as a CEO. Owned, corporations. These days Chrysalis employs up to a quarter (or even a third) of the workforce in most major arcologies, but people know them better through their brands and subsidiaries and some people don't even know they're working for Chrysalis. Sucks to be the Eldritch Society.
Ashcroft is the biggest, nicest and most profitable corporation. As "the inventor and patent-holder of all power-related forms of arcanotechnology" the NEG owed them a fuckton of money, but Ashcroft waived it in exchange for political influence; Ashcroft advisors basically the entire government now. Owned , Chrysalis.
Mortal Remains posted:
In general, the economy of the New Earth Government is a war economy. The government’s military spending floods terranotes into the system, providing prosperity where there might not be any, smoothing over business cycles and fighting back recession. It is for this reason that the economic state of the NEG hasn’t fallen apart – for more than half of the last twenty-five years have been spent in war. During the time there wasn’t a full-blown war, the world was focused on rebuilding from one and fortifying against the next
Mortal Remains posted:
The video game industry, centered out of Tokyo, is a little different. Creativity is key in that industry and often what provides the competitive advantage of one product or company over another. However, the industry has matured and is predominately run by an oligarchy of developers. Few new talents can enter the creative side of video game development, as all creative ideas must come from one of about three dozen individuals.
Magic itself isn't a big business, because while everyone wants to hire wizards, most people still think magic is dangerous. You can make money making spell components and arcane research, but it's more small-scale stuff.
The financial sector is strong, because war economy markets are stable. The NEG's stock exchanges were moved from London and Tokyo to LA and Cairo, though. Investing hasn't changed much, and NEG propaganda encourages people to invest their money a lot and act like there's a future in store for them. Not many NEG high-ups bother investing, but they don't tell anyone. The real estate market is also stable, though the government regulates it to keep it from going out of control (if it can, it will, or so the book says) and makes sure there is always free, affordable housing. Some neighbourhoods are "allowed" to inflate or drop their prices to cater to the "elitist" wealthy or poor people who don't want government housing, though. Landlords are still a thing, but laws make sure you can't be a lazy slumlord. So that's good!
And... that is basically it for those sections! That was kind of boring compared to Cthulhu mecha adventures. However, I am not an expert on economic or political matters, so I am half-hoping to be entertained by the replies of someone who is.
Next time: Society, subcultures and religion! Also, blatant racism. Maybe if we have time we'll get to the casual pedophilia!
Phantasmagoria of Damnation View
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Phantasmagoria of Damnation View
Maybe I should have gone with a different naming theme.
Society
Oh hey, a sidebar!
Mortal Remains posted:
FYI
Some of the information in this section is reprinted from the Damnation View. Some of the information regarding vice laws in the New Earth Government may be familiar if you have read that book.
The NEG is a democratic society carefully designed by the government to keep people happy while shielding them from the reality of the horrors they face. They get some of the truth - the Ministry of Information figures people will be less suspicious that way, and they don't edit every news story - but big stories are censored, rewritten to make it sound like the NEG has a plan and it's all under control. The Internet is a bigger problem; it's harder to censor the truth when every idiot with a computer can post it. The Ministry shuts down sites that get too close to the truth or make them look like crackpot conspiracy theorists, but lets the rest go because a scrubbed-clean internet would be even more suspicious. Search engines are censored, though, so it's pretty hard to find the truth.
Movies and serials (nobody says TV show any more) are still popular, though serials are delivered over the internet to subscribers now. The Ministry of Information engages in what they like to call "core messaging", requiring serials to include propaganda and giving incentives to production companies that produce pro-NEG material. Print is basically dead, and periodicals are circulated as eZines instead. These follow "core messaging" initiatives too. Ministry propaganda is basically "the government has things under control and is super awesome, contribute to society to help us win!", so basically what you'd expect.
There are anti-sedition laws too; you can't criticise the government or the military in public, and if you broadcast that shit or try to organise an activist group they will throw your ass in jail. You're allowed to say whatever you want to your friends or at work, just don't go around shouting it down the street.
Anyway, that's less than a page of material. Guess what covers the next page worth of text and more?
Mortal Remains posted:
Besides propaganda, the biggest tools at the disposal of the Ministry of Information is distraction and indulgence. This has led to the legalization of many things that were once very illegal.
Prostitution! Brothels are legal and regulated by the government. Prostitutes are called escorts, work out of "Red Houses", have their prices regulated and get weekly health check-ups. The "seediness and danger" is gone. Meanwhile, the NEG has a very liberal stance on drugs: only the "severely habit forming" drugs are legal. Alcohol is fine, cigarettes are legal (and altered to be non-addictive)...
Mortal Remains posted:
marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, LSD, peyote and mescaline, ayahuasca, as well as a veritable host of designer drugs including 2CI and Bliss (a modern iteration of ecstasy) are all perfectly legal and available at most bars and nightclubs – anything regarded to be habit forming in only the psychological sense is allowed. This has created a very open drug culture.
Mortal Remains posted:
Pornography is another world that has benefitted heavily from deregulation and the shifting of social norms. Whereas once the consumption of pornography was a private and often stigmatized thing, people are open about their enjoyment of adult entertainment in the modern age. Pretty much anything is legal in the realm of pornography as long as it is consensual and doesn’t involve animals or children under the age of 16 (the age of sexual consent in the New Earth Government). It truly is astounding the amount of porn that is available.
I could probably just keep pasting this shit. The NEG's sex culture alone gets more words devoted to it than their propaganda machine.
Mortal Remains posted:
To go with that is an open culture of sex and sexuality. With the fall of organized religion and the need to distract and indulge in the face of unknown horror, people no longer have the hang-ups they once did. The average age of person in the New Earth Government losing his or her virginity is 12.
Sex clubs are totally a thing too. (We saw one in Vade Mecum , remember? The rapey one?) STDs aren't a problem - gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis and HPV have over-the-counter cures, and hep C and HIV can be cured with arcanotherapy. That makes people lazier about birth control, though, so all this casual sex can lead to pregnancies - abortions are legal, but in this time of war babies are seen as a hope for the future, so there are "many single mothers or people who are uninvolved" raising casual sex babies.
Committed relationships are still a thing, since people still want meaningful relationships; open ones where couples have sex partners on the side are okay though. Marriage is more a legal thing than a religious one, though they are still vaguely spiritual. Any couple can get pregnant, thanks to science, and in the NEG married couples are expected to have babies quickly. Incentives for three or more babies!
Oh, and sex is an important part of the Ministry's core messaging. Nudity (even full-frontal) is common in many shows and soft-core sex scenes are fine. This keeps people glued to the TV for hours!
After that we get some stuff about celebrities that's about what you'd expect - people are super into them, and so celebrities have a lot of clout in society - the NEG is down with that because "frankly, most celebrities are self-obsessed, poorly informed, and not well-educated".
The NEG uses them to distract people from the truth, and those that
are
smart are usually employed by the NEG on the side.
Oh wait we're not done with sex.
Mortal Remains posted:
With people’s obsession with celebrity and society’s relaxed attitudes regarding sex, porn stars have gotten something they’ve never known before – some level of genuine fame. Many people are aware of the major porn stars and these days they get some real press. It has, in many ways, contributed to legitimizing the profession. There are even several eZines in the style of regular celebrity rags dedicated to the porn industry and the lives and times of porn stars. Though this celebrity is real, they still rank below nearly every other kind of celebrity – they are technically the D-list. That’s still a big step above the average person.
So anyway, fine art! It is very important as an emotional outlet and one of the few places people can truly express their emotions about the Strange Aeon. Theater is making a comeback (the Ministry doesn't have the time or men to manage all the fringe theaters, though). Art galleries are having a "renaissance", which is like a comeback but classier. Song and dance and even performance art are popular. Digital art - video, 3D holograms, animation etc. - is a respected medium that competes with the others.
Also important is community. People come together to support each other in the Strange Aeon - people stay near their families or keep in frequent contact, families are less dysfunctional thanks to free counseling, friends are important and hang out at least once a week, parties are common, neighbours get to know each other and have get-togethers and block parties, and friendship is magic.
Pets are popular because they reduce stress and give you another outlet for companionship. Arcologies make things weird though - small mammals like mice are illegal, because they can escape and mess with the infrastructure. Poisonous exotic pets aren't cool either. Other caged pets like snakes, fish and birds are fine though. Cats and dogs are still the best. Cats aren't allowed outside without supervision and there are cat parks so they can stretch their legs. Dogs can't run free either, but get dog-walking routes and designated dog bathroom areas. (You have to clean the areas if your dog poops in them though.) Pets must be spayed or neutered unless you are a licensed breeder.
Other Walks of Life
Subcultures!
Most people live in or near an arcology. A lot of those who don't suffer Sick Building Syndrome; their bodies just don't like living indoors with artificial lighting and recycled air, or have trouble with industrial chemicals, microbes, toxic mold or arcology acoustics. Sufferers manifest allergic and sensory reactions and have health problems. About 5% of the population have Sick Building Syndrome, and that's why a lot of people live just outside arcologies. You can get a Drawback for it!
Mortal Remains posted:
Sick Building Syndrome (2)
Your Character cannot live inside an arcology. He is sensitive to the unhealthy factors that come from living in a building all the time. He might have allergic reactions or be generally unhealthy if forced to stay inside an arcology for any length of time. This, however, does not mean that he cannot visit or enter an arcology. It does mean that if he stays inside an arcology for any length of time, he will develop Sick Building Syndrome symptoms within a couple of weeks, but potentially as soon as within the first few days.
Anyway, "outside dwellers" usually either have SBS, hate or want to avoid the government's watchful eye, or are poor and attracted by the cheap (or even free) housing far from arcologies. Or people with something to hide, unregistered sorcerers and para-psychics, criminals, mentally unstable people who want to avoid in-patient care and "conventional definitions of insanity" and "rapists, serial killers, extreme sadists, and the like" looking for an effective way to practice their vices. Different strokes.
There are still small towns out in the middle of nowhere, usually on trade routes or near farms. Some are just lucky enough to have avoided the last half-century of war. These towns have modern tech but are 20-30 years behind on "social development", tend to be insular and xenophobic, hate Nazzadi, sorcerers and para-psychics, etc. They often have their own militias for security, and some are trained by military vets who have come home. You never know when some Migou or a cult is going to roll in, and those towns who get owned rarely show up in the news.
The most extreme outside-dwellers are the survivalists. There are large stretches of countryside that are basically open, and survivalists risk their lives to live there outside government influence. They hate outsiders and just want to be left alone, but band together for protection. Sorcerers and para-psychics are usually unwelcome, and some survivalists left the cities because they didn't trust the Nazzadi. They live in the middle of nowhere and will rarely show up in a game.
Next we hear about an arcology subculture, the "wannabes" - young Humans who act like Nazzadi, "dress like Nazzadi, listen to Nazzadi music", eat their food and learn their language. So basically they are weeaboos with no nudity taboo. The grognards.txt of the future is a terrifying place. Most Nazzadi are either accepting or amused, but other Humans tend to look down on them and older Nazzadi don't think it's funny.
Ballroom dancing is another growing subculture. I don't give a shit about these guys.
"Art terrorism and art pranksterism" is another thing! They are basically artists that like causing chaos, and sometimes form "art police" collectives to critique people's works. Apparently some of them even break into art galleries to leave behind criticism, and I think I just found my next character.
There's also an occult subculture! These guys aren't actually sorcerers, but they do like to dress like dark wizards and read government-doctored Necronomicons because they think it makes them look cool. A lot of "disenfranchised, socially-unsuccessful, or abused youths" do this, and the average person fears them. Sometimes they "use the allure to become more sexually successful or create their own personal harems". Thannks for that, Mortal Remains ! The OIS knows they are harmless but keeps an eye on them just in case.
Next time: I decided the Religion section deserves its own post.
Smugterranean Atheism
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Smugterranean Atheism
So, Religion .
TTRPGs and religion have a rocky relationship. It's hard to write it well, but easy to write something dumb and offensive. Mortal Remains has clearly had some research put into it, though, so will we perhaps see a proper treatment of religion in CthulhuTech ?
Mortal Remains posted:
In the decades leading up to the Strange Aeon, organized religion had not had a good time of it. Christianity had especially taken a hit in the wake of corruption and scandals, and the violence of radical Islam had rocked the world for generations. More and more people found that the answers they were looking for and the comfort they sought was not to be found in the halls of an organized faith. For the first time in thousands of years, the churches of the world began to lose followers and their power over the minds and moralities of society.
NOPE.
So, religion isn't doing well. First there was the revelation that magic is real, and not "the unholy power spoken of in religious tomes". Then there was the First Arcanotech War, where "people were now confronted with evidence that there were aliens and that the Earth was not the center of the universe, metaphorically speaking." Once the existence of aliens had totally rocked religion, the Second Arcanotech War happened and real aliens showed up! Then dead gods began to awaken and so on.
Mortal Remains posted:
Most people, though they desired the peace of mind many religions promised, came to the realization that whatever “god” was, they’ve had it wrong all along. Organized faiths and their dogmas simply were not designed to live in the world that Humans had now entered into. In short, the day the world discovered the larger universe was the day nearly all organized religion died.
Next comes Islam! I am just going to copy-paste this entire section, because damn.
Mortal Remains posted:
Radical Islam, however, was unusual – it became even more radical over these troublesome times. In the years leading up to the First Arcanotech War, most Islamic nations had reached a point where they had fully rejected any kind of peace. The only answer to them was violence. No longer would they accept the other peoples of the world, even if they converted to Islam. The fundamentalist belief that everyone else should be killed was the order of the day. The aggression of the Middle East, in particular, grew out of control. No longer could they wield the oil sword over the world, as now everyone had a clean, inexhaustible fuel source that didn’t come from the ground. Growing hatred combined with economic shock and depression and Muslim terrorism reached new heights. One-sixth of the world’s population was Muslim and it seemed that they were intent on murdering the other five-sixths.
Of course, not all Muslims were keen on the idea of genocide. Peaceful sects tried to split off from the whole in an attempt to bring sanity to the situation. Unfortunately, the response in every case was violence. All such sects were immediately attacked and slaughtered. It seemed there was no one who could bring sense to the people of Mohammed.
Then came two things. First was the New United Nations. The rest of the world banded together, leaving the radically Islamic nations all to themselves. One might think that all nations wanted a place at the global political table, but those of radical Islam could have cared less. The second thing was the arrival of the Nazzadi and the ultimate opening of the world. Suddenly, there were aliens, dark gods, and monsters, and magic was real. The world became huge and the religion of Islam was not prepared to encompass it.
The clerics did what they could to fabricate answers that would force the world back into their dogma. It satisfied the blind followers, but most had their faith shaken to the point where they wanted real answers. Furthermore, the position of hatred and intolerance could not be maintained. The world had become about all people against other forces in the universe that sought to extinguish them. It was time for people to come together, not kill each other. Many former Muslims became the strongest voices for peace and unity in the new world. While the religion of Islam failed, many did not lose their faith in Allah and came to know a kinder, more loving version of their god.
Islam, like most former organized religions, is a shadow of its former self. While 15% of the world’s people were once Muslim, only a fraction of that remains.
This is literally a racist caricature of Islam. Writing credits go to "Matthew Grau, Fraser McKay (NEG Government, NEG Armed Forces, and Tech)", so I guess this is something the mind behind CthulhuTech personally wrote and decided to publish. Thanks, Grau!
Afterward (we're not done
) we get Christianity. They were hit the hardest, because oh
fuck this.
Mortal Remains posted:
Ultimately, it is Christianity that was hit the hardest. The group that once believed that the universe revolved around the Earth refused to believe that there was extra-terrestrial life – despite apocrypha that said differently. If God made man in his image, there could be no others. Humans were special and alone in the universe, stuck in their own personal drama of good versus evil. Now, add a world in which humanity is not alone and the gods that are very real are nothing like what the Christians expected.
Many sects of Christianity had already been hit hard in the social arena. The Catholic church had to deal with priests molesting children and the revelation that they’d been covering it up for generations. Most Christian churches spoke out against what are now non-issues, such as gay marriage, abortion, and even inter-racial marriage. Towards the middle of the century, most had even come out against Islam, ready to start another Crusade. In the end, they had diverged so far from the basic tenets of “love your God and one another” and “do no harm” that they saw a consistent decrease in church membership and attendance.
When aliens, beings like Hastur and their cults popped up, most Christians lost faith - maybe not in a god, but in the church. The Christian sects tried to "backpedal" and "force the new world to fit into their dogma", but it was too late, and these days Christianity is almost extinct. Now it is a cult!
Mortal Remains posted:
What is left is so radical that it might as well be a cult unto itself. The “morality” of the Strange Aeon alone is enough to send most still-practicing Christians into a tizzy. Where one-sixth of the world’s population was once Christian, there are now maybe one million practicing Christians world-wide.
"Surprisingly", Judaism hasn't changed much. The Jews are still "the only chosen people" and they wait for their messiah and defend Israel. Some people think they are "myopic and foolish", but others admire their conviction. I guess this is a good writeup for CthulhuTech .
Hinduism is also fine, because they have just adapted the new world to their pantheon. Hastur is totally a manifestation of Shiva, and Mythos monsters are just other demons! "There has always been something fluid about Hinduism that has allowed it to endure virtually unchanged throughout the ages," unlike Islam and Christianity I guess. They don't attract new followers (since like the Jews, Hindus are a people and you are either born one or you're not) but they're doing alright.
There's a new religion too! The Universal Church is most people's church of choice, a non-denominational spiritual community with little dogma and no holy book or body or knowledge. They have churches, but they're not filled with iconography and holy symbols, and services don't include religious songs or "other pomp and circumstance". Instead, these generic churches are comfortable gathering places with services guided by a minister (who must have a doctorate in philosophy) holding spiritual discussions which include current events and community issues, like group therapy. Community service is a big part of it too. The I Can't Believe It's Not Church is a "contemporary, laid-back, service-oriented approach to an organized faith"!
Mortal Remains posted:
The principles behind the Universal Church are simple. The basic tenets include:
• There is a higher power in the universe and we are a part of an intelligent design.
• All living things are part of a greater energy and that energy always continues.
• Do what you want but hurt no one, including yourself, in the process.
• We are all bound by spirit into a universal community and it is an honor to give back to others.
By the way, the I Can't Believe It's Not Church was actually started by the NEG in order to give people something to turn to as their religions failed while avoiding "the ideals and stipulations that have created so much strife over the generations". The NEG secretly gives them benefits to help them expand, but they don't have any influence of politics.
Most people these days are less religious and more just "spiritual". Instead of belonging to a religious group, they have worked things out for themselves, and most people would call themselves agnostic. They acknowledge that there's a greater world beyond the one they know, but trying to understand or quantify it is futile.
Also, fuck religion.
Mortal Remains posted:
The New Earth Government is not a fan of most organized religions and doesn’t allow new ones to sprout up. They brand most new religious movements as cult activity and break them up before any can rise to any kind of powerful status. While religion is and always has been the ultimate form of control, it is volatile and that is something with which the New Earth Government is not willing to deal. They prefer a carefully designed society manipulated by propaganda to maintain control.
Next time: The Everyday World. I hope you like naked children!
Highly Responsive To Pedos
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Highly Responsive To Pedos
Mortal Remains posted:
The Everyday World
So what is it like living in the Strange Aeon? Most aspects of everyday life are the same as they’ve been for a long time. However, the world of the New Earth Government would seem very different to a person born a hundred years ago.
Most are still born in a hospital, though there are plenty of midwives and home/water births are popular. Conception is easy now, there are few complications and few mothers die during childbirth because
. Drugs can prevent most birth defects, but fetuses with untreatable ones are aborted before they are born. All mothers get nine months maternity leave, fathers get six months. The NEG provides federally-funded and staffed day-cares, though these places are often understaffed; the alternatives are private nannies and stay-at-home parenting.
Most NEG families are blended, which means one or both of the parents have been married before or some of the children are from different parents. Most marriages succeed, with only a 20% divorce rate, so most of the blending comes from widowers remarrying or people who had kids in an unmarried relationship or a casual encounter. Adoption is also common, since there are orphans-a-plenty in this grimdark world. Couples have three children on average. Extended family is also important, and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are a big part of a kid's life. Most extended families aren't intact, though, because "approximately three out of every four people on the planet has been
killed sometime in the last thirty years."
Primary school and secondary school are both Things, federally funded and running from grades 1-8 and 9-12. Completing secondary school gets you the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), a "basic diploma" which "qualifies people for very few jobs".
The alternatives to public school are the better prep schools for those who can afford it and homeschooling.
Mortal Remains posted:
Parents who home school their children are usually very fearful and/or paranoid, are those who live a fringe existence outside an arcology or major urban center, or are extremely religious in some way. Many of the remaining Christian and Muslim minorities insist that their children be home schooled. (...) Of course, parents who are part of cults always home school their children.
(So far I am not sure how I feel about this, because while I like me some setting fluff, we are veering into "unnecessary information" territory here.)
Kids in CTech are like our kids, only more. They still go to school, do assignments, do sports and clubs, play in playgrounds, have birthday parties, etc. They're addicted to "instant gratification", though, thanks to the internet allowing them to get all kinds of information and media instantly and nanofactories making sure nothing they want is ever out of stock. There are "many problems" with kids acting like they have ADD because they ignore things that aren't immediately gratifying. Also,
Mortal Remains posted:
A product of a highly sexualized culture, pressure for sexual experimentation begins usually around age ten, when sex education begins. Naked play, kissing, and touching are commonplace by this age. By eleven, most children have experimented with oral sex in some fashion or another and by twelve most have partaken in full sexual intercourse. Sex education is thorough, however, so most are smart enough to utilize birth control.
SO ANYWAY.
Secondary school! Turning 16 means you can drive, though most live in arcologies so who gives a shit, and the "mandatory 9 pm federal curfew for children under the age of sixteen" no longer applies. Thanks for telling us when that was relevant! Good test scores to get into university are very important at this age, because "post-secondary education is still required for nearly all skilled jobs, even if it is only vocational or technical training." Despite the social divide, though, the white-collar and blue-collar people understand everyone is valuable! (This section is incoherent as fuck.) Some people rely on sports and scholarship, some don't, blah blah. Extracurricular activities are still a thing, except all students also have to do community service.
Socialising! Dating begins at around fourteen, two years after fucking. Friends become super important, social activities become "crucial", and those damn kids still get in trouble. Underage use of alcohol and drugs (especially marijuana and Bliss) is a thing, but graffiti, vandalism and theft are also popular. Most teens "begin to learn patience and gratitude" as they leave the selfish years of childhood, though, and start to notice what is really going on and how uneasy the NEG is. By the age of eighteen (minimum age for voluntary enlistment!), a teenager has a "serious grasp of world affairs" and is therefore smarter than the dude who wrote this book.
The NEG "recruits aggressively" in secondary schools and colleges, because they like their recruits young and impressionable. School walls are covered with patriotic slogans and video ads are all over the internet, the kids are told that a soldier's life rules and is honorable and noble, and many teens are offered a short contract of "only two years" - which, if they go for it, turns out to have fine print that adds "unless the state of war requires their continuing service", effectively trapping them. Stay classy, NEG!
After secondary school, provided they have not been tricked into joining the Armed Forces, these new adults go off to tertiary education. Most students are serious about university because they want to be useful members of society. This is also when the "intentionally designed cultural desire for distraction" sets in, and wild parties and casual sex abound. When they begin their professional career, it's time to move out! Government-subsidised housing exists, but as we have mentioned it sucks, so those with better jobs can rent an affordable flat or buy a townhouse. Space is a premium, Most people grew up sharing a room with a sibling, and my eyes are seriously sliding off the page here. I'm not saying this isn't useful to anybody but it sure does make for a boring Let's Read. Let's spice this up.
People crave yards. Not many flats have them, so if you want one you're going to have to get at least a townhouse. Then you can sit out on the grass or invite friends over for drinks on it! Wow! Or maybe even you can have a garden. You could even get a special "townhome", which also has - wait for it - a smaller residence to make way for another yard in the back! Holy shit!
There are also parks for arcology-dwellers who want a yard but do not have one, or feel they need to go even further beyond.
Most people have active social lives, because distractions! Through to the 30s, that probably means outings to trendy restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Quieter ones like galleries, movies and dinner parties are more common for older and/or married people. I bet a lot of people hit Reply after seeing the bit about eleven-year-olds having oral sex. If you didn't why the fuck are you reading this shit? I have spent entire paragraphs talking about fucking yards. . What are you doing here. So anyway, when people aren't engaging in social pursuits, they have plenty of other things to do. People can always "let their lives pass them by" by watching serials and movies and playing video games, the only way some people can cope. Many people have a hobby, which means more social interaction! Look at this sentence.
Mortal Remains posted:
Hobbies remain as diverse as they have always been and as simple or interesting as someone needs them to be.
Most people aim to "find the stability of a job and then stick with it", because with all this uncertainty in the Strange Aeon you need something constant. Most people don't change careers or companies much - it helps that companies "now appreciate the labor force, on every level" - I kind of like how fast this setting jumps between "leftist American utopia" and "grimmer and darker than what remains of a Dalek's bottom". There are more jobs than people in most arcologies, every employee is valued, and while labor unions still exist they wield less power because "there is little for them to protect workers against". There's a lot of socialising with coworkers and community building, though supervisors still stay a little distant from their workers.
Transportation! Arcology transport is always public unless it's a utility, delivery, emergency or law enforcement vehicle. Walking is cool, many streets have "slidewalks" (basically conveyor belts) because fuck walking though. Elevator banks sized for a dozen people each get you between arcology levels. Distance travel is accomplished by maglev trains built into every major arcology, computer-controlled to get you wherever you want to go. All kinds of people are forced to pool together in these trains so it's kind of a melting pot. I am burning through this paragraph because fuck this section. Train spokes run out of the arcology to get you in and out but that's about it, so cars are required outside. Some arcology dwellers have a car just so they can drive out under the sky sometimes. Getting between arcologies requires A-pod airliners - usually safe, unless you go near hostile territory and you need a fighter escort! The EOD love downing passenger planes so I hope you don't need a trans-oceanic flight. Most people avoid road trips down lonely open roads for the same reason dingos do not sit on my driveway (because a crazy dude in a bathrobe is going to jump out and beat you).
If you somehow live long enough to retire (age 60), you can get a fixed income from the NEG's Retirement Pension Fund - enough to live on, thanks to socialised healthcare. If you can't take care of yourself, the NEG has nursing homes! Instead of the "dismal old-folks' homes of the past" they are "nicely designed and maintained, though modest, apartments with regular nursing car". Also private assisted living communities. If you are terminally ill or over eighty and would like to die now please, euthanasia is legal and "usually" via lethal injection!
I love it when RPG fluff uses weasel words. You noticed they do this a lot, right? "Probably", "usually", "most" (most of the time), pretty much any time someone says "rumour", etc. It can't be a thing that happens, it has to probably happen. So now I am wondering what happens when the euthanasia isn't lethal injection. Do they hang old people? Is there an Old People Incinerator? Is there some dude whose job it is to shoot old dudes in the head on request?
Once someone dies, there's the usual funeral and then probably burial, in huge graveyards far away from arcologies. The second most common form of interment is cremation!
Finally, a token reference to other cultures existing.
Mortal Remains posted:
In the end, peoples’ lives are difficult to predict. While many may follow a path similar to those examined here, there are always those who choose something different. For example, the path of the artist is a very different road. But the structure of society re-mains and even such people conform to most of it. Furthermore, though the New Earth Government is globalized and therefore, in many ways, homogenized, local flavor always creeps in. Those who grow up and live their lives in different parts of the world will always have differences.
Can we go back to Damnation View ? I liked describing battle scenes and how Athena's life sucks for some reason. Let's go back to that.
Next time: The rest of this fucking Human chapter and then we can get on to more important things, like Nazzadi nudity taboos.
The Embodiment of Stupid Drivel
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: The Embodiment of Stupid Drivel
So, that was fun. I signed up for Rulebook's August design contest and did things that weren't this review for a while. It was good times! While I was out, Burning Horizons failed to debut at GenCon as promised.
To celebrate, more Mortal Remains !
We need to blow through the rest of this chapter, so let's start with A Brief Look At the World Of The NEG . This thing goes on for like ten pages and summarises what each continent and their hot spots and cities of note are like. Good times!
First, a section on Globalisation. First, the NEG insisted there be one "offical" language of the world; after a lot of debate, they made it English because it was "the language of trade". The official currency is the Terranote, based off the Euro (the strongest currency at the time). Also this!
Mortal Remains posted:
Nowadays, one can go anywhere in the New Earth Government and find things with which they are familiar. Chain stores and service providers exist in every major city and arcology, so peopl ecan always go with what is familiar. However, unique national and regional flavors still remain, carried on by the people of those places. Old traditions have not been forgotten, traditional holidays are still celebrated, but the people can all communicate, use a common currency, and no longer hate each other because theyre different.
No matter where one goes, however, the influence of the Nazzadi is felt on the local culture. They are the one true global civilization, spread out in an intentional diaspora to become true partners in the New Earth Government at least once the prejudice and segregation of the most of the decade prior to the Second Arcanotech War ended.
Time to SUMMARISE.
North America
The US and Canada merged together almost seamlessly, and it wasn't hard for Mexico because "a large chunk of North Americas labor force was made up of both documented and undocumented Mexican workers" . Some older Mexicans refuse to learn English but that is "unfortunately, a barrier to success in the new landscape of the world".
One of their biggest problems was dealing with the "socialist aspects" of the NEG - businesses like medical insurance were "full-blown racketeering industries", entire industries dried up when the NEG started looking after the basic needs of every citizen, etc. Fuck you, America. Mexico needed to have to corruption ingrained in its government rooted out, and Canada mostly had to worry about the removal of their cultural preservation laws.
The US is doing pretty well compared to other places! The Migou moving into Alaska to get around their Canadian defenses is a problem, though. Vancouver, Seattle, Edmonton and Calgary are all reinforced and key to defense, and people who live there are pretty tense. The Pacific Northwest and the events of Damnation View get a shout-out. New England is contested by the Esoteric Order along the coast, particularly around Innsmouth - Arkham, Massachusetts was lost in the First Arcanotech War, btw. The NEG have a quarantine zone up for now and the Order sometimes stages raids. They're also pestering Nazza-Duhni from nearby islands, probing their defenses and occasionally raiding beaches "for breeding stock", though the Nazzadi have strong defenses now.
Cities! The LA arcology is a hub of civilisation and the city just keeps going around it, the military use it as a staging point, and it's the heart of the entertainment industry. Hooray hedonism! Chicago is the new capital and security is so tight even the Chrysalis Corporation finds things a hassle. It can be pretty decadent now that politicians hiring escorts is legal, though. The Pacific Northwest is weird because Seattle and Vancouver are both key deployment points but Portland isn't that far away, meaning there are three arcologies really close together! Weeeeeeeird! They are like sisters now.
South America (also Central America)
South America joining the NEG was a natural move because they were already pretty socialist. The powerful drug cartels weren't, though! They teamed up to try and stop it with bribes and threats and assassinations, but THE PEOPLE SPOKE and it happened. Cocaine is legal now so the drug cartels shifted to getting people more regulated drugs than their monthly allowance. Also, they still have their hooks in the government! Behold: Most of the overview.
Central America had a hard time joining up because they weren't used to stability and didn't need defense as much, but they joined up anyway and enjoy prosperity and safety. Their local culture is still pretty vivid, even!
Hot spots! It's mostly Esoteric Order of Dagon raids in Central America and the Migou on the southern tip of South America, moving up to Chile and Argentina. The Migou get supplies directly from their primary bases in Antarcia, so they might be making a push and turning this into the next major front of the Aeon War soon. The EOD holds most of the Atlantic edge of the continent.
Cities of note! Rio de Janeiro is the capital and second biggest metropolitan area (Sao Paolo wins, sorry chumps), and "a titillating place where the dancing is hot, the cosmetic surgery is cheap, and the people are sexy". Big corporations have big offices here and there's a lot of violent crime. It's the focus of NEG efforts to contain the EOD, and one of the safest beaches in the world! The third biggest city is Buenos Aires, "the governmental, commercial, and cultural center of southern South America". It has one of the biggest arcology structures, ten miles wide and twenty miles long! It is also home to a massive military presence, thanks to the Migou.
What about Sao Paolo? Fuck you, that's what.
Europe
Europe uniting was pretty hard, because Europe. The French really hated having to switch to English because French is the language of diplomacy , but they sucked it up like champs. It's also suffered near-constant conflict since the First Arcanotech War, now thanks to the Migou and the Rapine Storm. Scandanavia is gone except for Denmark thanks to the Migou - Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland are lost, and all the remaining Scandanavian dudes have united under the cause of getting their shit back. Scotland and Northern Ireland are Migou now too, and the United Kingdom had to give up their monarchy - or rather, the monarchy stepped down because they saw they no longer had a place in this modern world, as did every other monarch. Europe is taking all this war like a champ though.
Hot spots! Migou to the north and east, Rapine Storm in Eastern Europe, the EOD in Iceland and the coasts of Spain and Portugal and hassling the Mediterranean... there's a lot of war to be had is what I'm saying. The UK is trying to push the Migou back, Denmark is a major war front, and Eastern Europe is very slowly falling. Iceland was Migou territory but they lost it to the Esoteric Order like a bunch of chumps. Owned, bugs.
Overall, the NEG is slowly losing the war in Europe, and evacuation plans are ready. Not that the citizens know that.
Cities! Berne, Switzerland is the seat of power in Europe now, with a pretty small, safe and boring arcology. Frankfurt is the "center of Europe as a whole" and the crossroads of the war, and has a lot of festivals.
Mortal Remains posted:
On a pop culture note, the city is one of the originating places of the dance music style known as Trance
Volgograd (previously Stalingrad) gets a lot of words, for some reason. It's the center of military operations in the area and home to a ton of refugees, but it can't deal with all these Russians so they are working to shuttle them elsewhere. Most of its refugees were fleeing from monsters, not Migou or cultists, so the average person is "broken and distant". The military presence is pretty strong here but everyone thinks Volgograd is fucked. Speaking of,
Mortal Remains posted:
The dark side of Volgograd is more than just a victimized population of refugees. Ugly criminal activities have taken up residence in the chaos of the revolving population. Organized crime and the Disciples of Deaths Shadow have taken to nabbing refugees to become sex slaves. Such unfortunate souls are conditioned, brainwashed, or beaten into performing sex acts on command, as well as being forced into pornography. Unfortunately, in all the mayhem, many of these people are never even processed and therefore presumed dead no one comes looking for them.
Can we stop stealing rape cookies from the sex jar every time we get the evil rumblies? This is making me wonder what being an alcoholic is like.
Asia
Asia's big, most of it is fucked, Russia is crushed by Migou, the Middle East had trouble joining the NEG because it "thrived on policies of hatred and oppression" but xdznkaf'knsdf'knsf
Mortal Remains posted:
Fortunately, in the face of all that had happened, those from the Middle East began to regard their heritage as more than their religious beliefs. Digging back further into their rise to prominence in the cradle of civilization, they looked back to the amazing scholarly and scientific breakthroughs that were part of their culture for generations. For centuries, they were a learned people, more culturally advanced than those around them. This is the pride that began to fill the void that Islam left. No longer intolerant nations, they have become a fierce people who support one of the best educational systems in the world.
India was invaded by the Rapine Storm, Southeast Asia had trouble because of their dictatorships and racial hatred and has been lost anyway, China gave up their military dictatorship and was crushed by the Migou and the Ruined King, Japan is doing really well.
Hot spots! Asia is messed up. Russia, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Pacific islands are gone, the Plateau of Leng is in central Asia and where the Rapine Storm are coming from, they are moving towards Australia, most of the northern continent is Migou, etc.
India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran are the primary fronts against the Storm, and now Japan has to face them and the Migou! The Disciples of Death's Shadow are infiltrating and softening them up too so they are probably fucked. SPEAKING OF!!
Mortal Remains posted:
Furthermore, Japan has begun to suffer from an infestation of the Disciples of Deaths Shadow. Corruption has begun to run rampant through the local government and odd Japanese sexual fetishes have reached an all-time high. Forbidden sex cults have become secretly become the vice of many Japanese officials and businessmen, giving the Death Shadows a healthy amount of blackmail material with which to accomplish their goals.
Mortal Remains posted:
If its an island in the Pacific that isnt near Southeast Asia or Austria , it has been overrun and claimed by the Esoteric Order of Dagon. The sole exception to this is Hawaii, a place where the New Earth Government dug in during the early days of the war. In general Hawaii is well-fortified and the New Earth Government views it as a moral victory that it is still theirs.
Cities of note! Mumbai is the biggest city in the world and the commercial, economic and entertainment center, Tehran is a big city and very liberal, Karachi is another big cosmopolitan center with some lovely beaches, these guys and Mumbai really like cricket by the way, all three have a ton of refugees and Karachi is overcrowded, Nagasaki is Japan's primary staging point and not as "repressed or conservative" as they used to be, why the fuck are we getting another paragraph about how all four of these are full of refugees? We had one before Nagasaki! Who is editing this??
Africa
Africa was super resistant to globalisation but the NEG brought peace and medical advancements! No more AIDs!
Hot spots! Africa has mosty been safe but they have the EOD up their butts on the south and west coasts now - Guinea, Gabon, Namibia, South Africa, the Western Sahara and Madagascar are all being pestered. The Migou are avoiding Africa for now. The real probem in Africa is secret cults - the Chrysalis Corporation is headquartered in Johannesburg, and Nyarlathotep is why the Migou hasn't shown up yet.
Cities! Johannesburg is the biggest and most prosperous city in Africa thanks to Chrysalis, who basically own it. Marrakech is a trade center with lots of citizens, tourists and military dudes. THE END.
Australia was pretty chill about globalisation, especially "once they discovered that "footie" would still be the world's #1 professional competitive sport". I think they are thinking of soccer.
New Zealanders don't like being mistaken for Australians. The "aborigines of Australia" aren't a significant part of global politics but they've always had a "mystica current running through their people" so now they have lots of sorcerers and think sorcerers are cool.
Hot spots! The Rapine Storm is pushing into the northern coast and the NEG is fighting a desert war with them. The EOD are hassling the southern coasts, and the Migou are taking over New Zealand (but the NEG is diverting forces there now that China is gone).
Mortal Remains posted:
Unfortunately for citizens, the deserts of central Australia hold more than just Aborigines and lizards. Ancient civilizations have their roots here and the Migou, who remember them, have come looking. The New Earth Government really has no idea what is going on with the Migou patrols, but they are worried, as well they should be.
Cities! Christchurch is the defense hub of NZ and has one of the purest water supplies in the world and apparently cares about this for some reason, Melbourne is the seat of government for the continent for some reason and "fortunately far away from the enemy", because I know if I were running Australia I would move the capital from the inland city of Canberra to the one city that's closest to the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the Migou in Antarctica.
Antarctica
There's snow and ice and shit. Also lots of Migou, who have built major bases and cities here. The Hive Ship foats above them! Ground Zero, where the Migou first touched down over the South Pole, is home to a gigantic supply complex and so fortified the NEG can't get close. There are "those who suspect" that the Migou High Command is here and not the Hive Ship, but that is just a rumour, which is RPG book speak for "what is happening".
There isn't much left in this chapter but man, do I already regret picking this back up.
Suck butter from my ass, CthulhuTech .
Implausible and Missing Plot
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Implausible and Missing Plot
The NEG chapter ends with a few worldbuilding sections!
Seedy Underbelly
Crime! Police are the first line of defense and rely on "beat cops".
Mortal Remains posted:
However, the police of the New Earth Government have gone back to an old model that works – that of the beat cop. Police are assigned to patrol and respond to incidents in neighborhoods or beats. The police on a beat get to know the residents and businesspeople of those neighborhoods, investing the cops in the people they protect. Gone are the days when aimlessly wandering overworked police viewed everyone as faceless potential perpetrators. People know and respect their protectors and vice versa.
I swear I could replace half these quotes with "modern-day America sure sucks, unlike my left-wing utopia of the future!". Well, I guess I ate up Eclipse Phase . Police officers get body armour, grenades and assault rifles, unless they're undercover, and get to drive vehicles inside arcologies. Outside arcologies, though, the beat cop system starts to break down and it's harder to regulate people. Paramilitary neighbourhood watch groups are common out there. The FSB usually lets the police do their own thing but steps in for bigger/cult crimes. They mostly deal in organized crime - specifically the "African Mob, the Asian Mob, the Eurasian Mob and the Hispanic Mob", the organised crime groups of the future! (Gangs are also a problem for everyone, but gang-related offenses are tried as organised crime offenses with stiff penalties to discourage that shit.)
A lot of of the rest of the page is a list of crimes.
Mortal Remains posted:
• Violent crimes, representing assault, sexual assault, manslaughter, etc.
• Property crimes, representing burglary, vehicle theft, fraud/forgery, etc.
• Drug crimes, including possession or trafficking.
• Weapons crimes, including carrying without a permit, sale of illegal weapons, etc.
• Other crimes, including embezzlement, other white collar crimes, etc.
The average sentences are (not including life terms or death sentences):
• Violent Offenses– Prison 5 years/9 years max, Probation 3 years
• Property Offenses– Prison 4 years/4 years max, Probation 3 years
• Drug Offenses– Prison 4 years/5 years max, Probation 3 years
• Weapons Offenses– Prison 4 years/5 years ax, Probation 3 years
• Other Offenses– Prison 3 years/4 years max, Probation 3 years
The OIS deal with magical crimes, and their penalties are tougher:
Mortal Remains posted:
• Being an unregistered sorcerer with knowledge of only legal rituals or an unregistered para-psychic with only unregulated abilities – Life in prison, often reduced to ten years with good behavior and community service.
• Being an unregistered sorcerer with knowledge of illegal rituals or being an unregistered para-psychic with regulated abilities – Life in prison.
• Possession of a minor illegal occult volume – Life in prison, often reduced to ten years with good behavior and community service.
• Possession of a major illegal occult volume – Life in prison.
• Traffic of minor illegal occult volume – Life in prison.
• Traffic of major illegal occult volume – Death penalty.
• Traffic of illegal rituals – Life in prison.
• Repeat offense – Death penalty.
• Violent or invasive offenses perpetrated by mystical abilities – Life in prison, increased to the death penalty if the offender is unregistered.
Regardless, citizens of the New Earth Government are all entitled to basic mortal rights: the right to an attorney, to know what charges are being brought against them, the right against illegal search and seizure, the right against being detained without being charged with a crime, and the right to a trial by neutral jury.
People arrested for magical crimes don't get mortal rights, though.
Dirty Secrets
The NEG's secrets!
The obvious first! The NEG looks like a democratic and free society as envisioned by a sheltered white man but it is pretty much the opposite of that, with loads of propaganda and information control fooling its citizens and shielding them from the horrors of the world. Also, Ashcroft Foundation pretty much uses its government advisors to become the power behind the throne - they see themselves as a force for good, but they are pretty much undermining democracy. Oh shit!
Even the NEG is unwilling to admit that is happening though.
The Chrysalis Corporation also has its hooks everywhere, and they're EVIL!
Mortal Remains posted:
They spread corruption throughout the New Earth Government, as more and more officials and politicians take bribes or kickbacks (or bow to threats). They undermine things in little, but widespread ways, including contaminated food and drugs, and faulty goods and equipment. Sometimes toxins enter the water supply that cause birth defects in pregnant women, sometimes refugees die from relief food that was tainted “on the scene,” and sometimes mecha fail and guns jam in the heat of battle, because the Chrysalis Corporation wanted them to.
All execs and key employees are (apparently moustache-twirlingly evil) cultists, illegal sorcerers, para-psychics or Dhohanoids, but they have convinced the NEG to let them police themselves and employ their own psychologists who mysteriously pass everyone as totally fine except for the occasional patsy. They're also the biggest manufacturer of pharmaceuticals through their Vantage Group subsidiary, so they fuck with people's mental health medication - apparently "several pills in every bottle either won't work or might make the user feel funny or sick", and anyone who uses Vantage Group's mental health meds has a "couple bad days every month". They're really careful about not being caught though!
Speaking of drugs, a lot of people medicated for Aeon War Syndrome take recreational drugs, but those drugs fuck with each other so some get sick, damage their internal organs, fall into comas or die. The NEG warn people about possible drug interactions but have been reluctant to do a big media push. Dirty secrets so far: Secretly oppressive government, corporations abusing their power on a worldwide scale, lazy drug awareness.
Engels! Remember when this was a game about mecha? Most people think Engels are a mix of Human, Nazzadi and animal DNA, which is totally true! If by "a mix", you mean "a little bit of that, plus "random horrific creatures that emerge from the Zone" ". Their DNA is taken from things that poured out of the Zone and got murdered by soldiers and nobody knows what the fuck they are! The NEG has decided this isn't something the public should know.
The NEG actually tried to make peaceful contact with the Migou, but it didn't work. Spy probes got trashed too, so they reinforced their colonies just in case, and then the Migou attacked! Some people in the GIA and Ministry of War think expanding like that provoked the Migou and we started the war, though. (Those people are victim blamers and also wrong.)
White xenomixes! The NEG wants to keep an eye on them, since they are all born para-psychics and harnessing that power would be awesome. They have employed their two most trusted partners to look into it - Ashcroft and Chrysalis! Ashcroft is making slow but thorough progress, and the Chrysalis Corporation is making better progress through imprisoning Whites, performing experiments that "violate, harm or otherwise victimize" them and vivisecting a few because science or something.
They are also not actually going to tell the NEG anything they find, they just want to make Dhohanoid para-psychics.
Mortal Remains posted:
However, perhaps the most painful secret of humanity’s world is that the government has been falling prey to corruption.
Those at the top are exposed to the true reality of the world, and all that grimdark and horror can make a dude give up. It isn't surprising that a lot of them take bribes or kick-backs, since it's easy to believe the world is fucked anyway. The Disciples of Death's Shadow are working on corrupting as many as possible. The Global President is an unlikely target with the layers of protection and watchful eyes on him, but plenty of other officials are great!
The NEG has a worst-case contingency plan: They are secretly building a starship designed to speed away from Earth with key scientists, scholars and politicians if extinction becomes inevitable, along with a bunch of animals and genetic code for everything on Earth they can. The ship is in a secret bunker south of Chicago, and nuclear bombs in key locations plus missiles launched directly at the Hive Ship will hopefully distract the Migou while they get away. They're not really sure where they're going to find a habitable world and it's a stupid idea, but it's better than nothing.
Aeon War Syndrome
Hey, guess who just got sick to fuck of this chapter: THIS GUY.
Mortal Remains posted:
Aeon War Syndrome is the socially acceptable moniker for all the common kinds of psychological disorders associated with the stresses of modern living. Some of the most common include anxiety disorders, which are general anxiety, obsessive or compulsive, panic, phobia, and post-traumatic stress disorders, mood disorders, which are the major depression, dysthymia, manic-depression, and cyclothymia disorders, and personality disorders, particularly the borderline, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, rage, schizotypal, and schizoid disorders. The hypchondriasis somatoform disorder and the psychogenic fugue disorder are also not uncommon. These are all classified as part of Aeon War Syndrome. There are few in the modern day that do not suffer from or have been treated for anxiety and/or depression.
The NEG buries people in counselling, which kind of helps. Monthly two-hour evaluations at a federal facility are required for everyone, and those who don't pass get mandated therapy, psych care or in-patient therapy. If you miss your eval you get a warning the first time, then police will issue a warrant and literally drag you to the evaluation, and the third time police take you away for at least 72 hours of in-patient therapy. Owned, evaluation skippers. Some people miss them anyway, either because they are criminals and don't give a fuck (oh no, a dude wanted for homicide doesn't go to his evaluation!) or they live way outside the arcology and the police don't give enough of a fuck to get them.
Those in the military or other jobs where they are exposed to true grimdark must get therapy once a week and might be scarred for life anyway - sometimes counseling doesn't help, or soldiers might be on missions in remote places where they can't get any. Those guys often succumb to jAWS and go insane. Sorry bros.
Also lots of people - almost half the NEG - take drugs, like depression or anxiety drugs or anti-psychotics or whatever. The Vantage Group are the biggest producers of phaemaceuticals, and they get away with reguarly supplying nine digits worth of people with defective medication because
Lost Colonies
The New United Nations was colonising shit by the 2050s! The Moon was first - they set up a cool place called Tranquility there. Then they set up Olympus and Mariner Bay on Mars. Neither of those worlds had much significant value except as a gateway to further planets. After that was Ganymede, "the first world colonised by man with the potential for resources". While they were there the NUN dropped a scientific outpost on Europa and started exploring other Jovian moons. Then they went to Titan, where humanity's "first attempts at terraforming occured", because a moon in the outer system smothered in hydrocarbons is where I'd start terraforming too.
Then the First Arcanotech War happened! The Nazzadi seized all colonies and cut off communications, then instituted "martial but fair rule" like they thought they were totally going to all over the system. When the Nazzadi defected they gave the colonies back, and they got support to expand and become more self-sufficient. Then the NEG set up a military perimeter and spy satellies in case the Migou decided to leave Pluto, and since the outer colonies looked safe a lot of people moved there and the colonies grew! Some of them were even pushing for autonomy as proper nations before the Migou showed up.
Then the Migou breezed through and smashed the colonies, the Moon was evacuated before they showed up, and THE END.
No, wait.
Mortal Remains posted:
Since then, there has been no communication or evidence to make the government believe that anyone in the colonies survived. The Migou have not allowed the New Earth Government to launch space exploration vehicles or probes either. These days, there are very few who wonder the fate of the colonies. Most simply mourn their loss.
I know it's an effective way of seeding plot hooks for later, but come on, the colonies making a comeback isn't even going to be vaguely surprising now.
Next time: The Nazzadi chapter! Which will we reach first, the limit of my patience or homophobia? LET'S FIND OUT!
Perfect Bloody Boredom
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Perfect Bloody Boredom
This book.
It is so boring.
I have a copy of Burning Horizon now though, so it looks like I'm going to have to press on finally.
Next up is Chapter Three: Children of Nowhere , the chapter on Nazzadi. Luckily, it is not very long!
First, a history of the Nazzadi. It's pretty much what we know with a few extras: the Migou decided to take over Earth and remind humanity of their place before they summoned something they shouldn't, but it would take decades to breed Migou soldiers, and instead they modified humans into Nazzadi and made a fast-growing clone army. Their prototypes were the Firstborn (get it?), created to lead their people and the only Nazzadi to meet the Migou. The rest of the clones were given fake memories and sent to Earth to murder everyone. They were given a fake religion, Korali (aka The Way), which basically said that they were perfect creations of the gods and their duty was to own everyone else.
So, the First Arcanotech War happened. The Nazzadi wiped out New York City (the new one was built from scratch), Arkham and a dozen other cities and things were going pretty well for them! Then, a Firstborn named Vreta (a dark-haired man who inspired respect and was generally pretty chill) finally realised that the humans he was watching in intercepted transmissions were his genetic ancestors and he didn't have to kill them if he didn't want to. Finally, on October 25 2064 (now Revelation Day), Vreta dropped some truths on the Nazzadi and blew their minds. His brother, Kyrsa (a white-haired man who ruled through fear, possible goatee?) was addicted to the power he had, though, and started a civil war which raged until he was killed in an "epic battle" in Nazzadi-occupied Melbourne and the Nazzadi negotiated peace with the NEG.
They signed the Shaumberg Treaty, which gave them Cuba to settle in and made them an official part of the NEG. A lot of people had trouble forgiving and accepting them, though, and they put up with years of segregation and discrimination until the Migou came back with their own arm to take another crack at it. As they banded together for survival, Human and Nazzadi finally accepted each other. Complete racial harmony is here!
That's followed up with a fake history of the Nazzadi. They believed they hailed from a nocturnal world called Nazzadi in the
) and a "bushido-like code of conduct" for their military, et cetera.
Soldier traditions were serious business! Once you were in the army, you joined a "tradition" based on skills and what roles you liked doing, and those guys became your extended family. Also,
Mortal Remains posted:
There was no discrimination in the Nazzadi military with regards to gender. However, the different inherent advantages of each gender were taken into account. Females are typically equipped with better natural reflexes and accuracy, so they were often encouraged to become pilots, snipers, or heavy weapons support. Males are typically stronger and more aggressive, so they were often encouraged to become infantry, special forces, or tacticians. Both genders were represented in all specialties, but tendencies are tendencies.
, CTech!
You know what, I don't care about this anime drow soldier wank and Nazzadi culture wasn't military-focused anyway. Nazzadi thought art was cool and killing was a kind of art, martial arts was cool, blood rituals were cool (some drank the blood of their enemies while treating them with respect), and all of this was a load of bullshit the Migou made up by patching parts of Earth cultures and militaries together.
Two other things nobody worked out until later: the ion drives did not actually all fail at once due to "something in the ambient radiation", they just never worked and the Firstborn stalled attempts to repair it. Also, there were a "limited number" of memory implants, so a lot of Nazzadi actually have the same general memories and never noticed. Oops!
Integration! After killing millions the Nazzadi had trouble fitting in, but their space bushido meant they didn't attack civilians or commit war crimes so it wasn't so bad (and secretly they were winning anyway, so the NEG were totally down with giving them Cuba and getting Nazzadi tech. Some Nazzadi had nervous breakdowns or killed themselves because they couldn't handle the truth, some fell in half with humans and had kids, and black people are fucking scary man.
Mortal Remains posted:
Almost four hundred million Nazzadi refugees flooded out into the world, most into the major cities. Fortunately, it was a time to rebuild, so expansion to accommodate the new population was easy. The problem came in that most Human families didn’t want Nazzadi living in their neighborhoods. They didn’t trust their “alien” cousins and frankly the jet-black skinned people scared the children.
Mortal Remains posted:
The Schaumberg Treaty called for the creation of a Nazzadi state, a place the people could call their own. Unfortunately, it was the Cubans who got kicked out of their own country to make space for the jet-black clones, while the Haitians saw their country turn into a staging and buffer zone. This furthered tensions between the two people. While some could see the legitimacy of such a diplomatic concession, others were aghast that the government would treat its own people with that much disrespect – especially for a race that had been trying to kill them. Despite the fact that the Nazzadi eventually brought new prosperity to their part of the world, most simply chose to be angry with them in the meantime.
Mysteriously, a bunch of people could not accept the Nazzadi after the war, or were bigots, or "fueled by the fires of religions who were threatened in the face of extraterrestrial life" because I guess every major religion totally forgot they already had an answer for that. Groups of terrorists started committing hate crimes and burning ghettos, Nazzadi started para-military watch groups to watch the ghettos, and tensions rose. Then a group called the Homeland Security Force killed 700 Nazzadi by blowing passenger planes from Cuba out of Nazza-Duhni out of the sky with stolen missiles, there were some riots, the Nazzadi terrorist group Lost Angels blew up a couple of schools, martial law was declared, all that kind of thing. Eventually a Nazzadi Anti-Defamation League formed and told everyone to chill the fuck out.
Vreta became the first Member of Parliament for Nazza-Duhni and became the Martin Luther King of the Nazzadi, except nobody has assassinated him, yet. There was also Terily, an ace mecha pilot who preached "a kind of racial pride" and "an eye-for-an-eye attitude". Her followers became the Unamani ("Black Tide"), a militant organisation which they're black people, okay? The Nazzadi are black people! IT'S A METAPHOR FOR AFRICAN-AMERICANS!
After a while things started to settle down. Also, the Migou came back and the Nazzadi decided to get their war on and help out, which really warmed everyone up to them. Now racial tension isn't much of a thing any more. THE END.
So hey, remember this?
Ettin posted:
Next time: The Nazzadi chapter! Which will we reach first, the limit of my patience or homophobia? LET'S FIND OUT!
Oh well. Next time: Homophobia!
Hōmō Phōbiasucks ~ Nō Nūdity Taboo no Nazo wo Oe
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Hōmō Phōbiasucks ~ Nō Nūdity Taboo no Nazo wo Oe
Themed titles are fucking hard okay? Jesus Christ .
The next part of this chapter is Nazza-Duhni, the Nazzadi state. A lot of it justifies why they kicked out Cuba - every piece of land on Earth was claimed by one nation or another already, nobody wanted to give up "what little sovereignty they had" under the NEG, and Cuba was a large island with no borders in "the background of the heart" of the NEG where they could be watched, and Cuba's economy and standard of living sucked anyway. So, the Cubans were told to suck it up and accept the Nazzadi or get government funding to move to Florida or somewhere else nearby.
Mortal Remains posted:
They were furious. There were protests and riots and movements and everything one might imagine would come from the displacement of a people much the way the Palestinians once felt about the Israelis. In the end, there was no choice. 70% of the population grudgingly left, while 30% stubbornly stayed.
The Nazzadi moved in, and immediately started a lottery system to decide which 40% of their population would get send out into the other cities to help make relations. Considering almost 600,000,000 Nazzadi still landed on an island designed to accomodate 15,000,000, that was probably a good idea. The Nazzadi had to live in shantytowns until their new home was built up. It's pretty great now, though! The cities of Nazza-Duhni are major industry and tourism hubs which increased Cuba's income and quality of life so much the remaining Cubans love the Nazzadi now. Santa Clara is now the underground arcology capital Klarra-Baki.
Nazza-Duhni is a place of hope. The Nazzadi believe anything is possible and this war can be won, and they celebrate life and chill out on the beaches like there's nothing wrong (besides the constant military presence). The place is over 90% Nazzadi, so almost everything from business to entertainment is Nazzadi-focused. Everything that isn't is for tourists. Also, this.
Mortal Remains posted:
In 2085, the government of Nazza-Duhni decided to make the city of Havana the first fully clothing-optional city in the New Earth Government. This new deregulation meant that anyone could freely go naked anywhere. The primary reasoning behind this legislation was to increase tourism during the Earth Brotherhood Festival, which is held annually in the city to celebrate the ongoing partnership between the Nazzadi and Humans. The turnout that year was outstanding as people flocked to the tropical climate of what was once Cuba to celebrate freedom and partnership while partying down without any clothes. The native Nazzadi have embraced the citys new tradition and it still enjoys an above average level of tourism something that suits the residents just fine.
Moving on, Physiology and Psychology! Aside from being space drow, the Migou got rid of their internal clock. They still need 8-9 hours of sleep a day, but it can be whenever they want. (They prefer being consistent, though.) They have sharp incisors because the Migou tried to give them a natural weapon that didn't require much gene modding, failed, then said "ah fuck it" and went ahead with it anyway. They also made them universally agile and graceful to help them maneuver in Earth's heavy gravity. On the inside, they are pretty much the same with a few minor tweaks and improvements (like "a rapid satiation response from the stomach" and "less unnecessary body hair"). Their genes have been tweaked to reduce the risk of cancer, but arcanotherapy has eliminated cancer anyway so it doesn't matter. Bam, I just summarised half of this shit.
Mortal Remains posted:
Contrary to popular belief, the Nazzadi are not more physically attractive than Humans. They too come in all shapes and sizes. This misconception comes from the Nazzadi cultural norms of keeping fit and wearing revealing clothing.
Identification! Humans love doing it, "wrapping up their sense of sense of self" in their environment, race, gender, jobs, level of income, their sports team, the car they drive... Nazzadi think this is ridiculous, possibly because they didn't really have much to identify with. Instead their sense of self is "determined by internal factors", except
Attachment! Humans get attached to things and get upset when those things go away, for example if he lost his baby pictures. A Nazzadi, on the other hand, would be disappointed but happy he got to have them at all and still has childhood stories! They still get emotional when a person leaves their lives, but a human has to "deal with the additional feelings of loss that come from their attachments".
Uncertainty! Humans don't like to be uncertain, especially about their place in the universe, which is why most of them are still spiritual. Nazzadi are fine with it and figure that they can just deal with whatever comes. Their enlightened space brains have no need for spirituality, though plenty of them still believe in something greater.
Number of players who kept any of this in mind rather than playing them like sexy humans: Probably 0.
The next section is "The Chosen Way". Culture! Let's skim it. Older, retired Nazzadi's fake warrior traditions still exist as social clubs, and they're too proud to give them up but still grateful to the NEG and sometimes burdened with guilt over their First Arcanotech War killing. The younger generations don't really give a shit about the old fake culture and are inventing their own, something the older ones respect and encourage.
Despite being taught English (that most common and American of languages), younger Nazzadi still learn at least a bit of their fake old language. It's a point of pride and a reminder of who they are (fake alien clone babies!). Other than that they didn't have much except themselves, so they focused on that! Nazzadi take pride in beauty and health, so most Nazzadi work out and groom themselves often and eat little junk food. They don't judge their poor non-sexy obese Human brethren, but openly berate other Nazzadi who "choose to be disrespectful to their bodies". They also have less addicts!
Mortal Remains posted:
Another aspect of their attention to appearance is fashion. The Nazzadi wear clothing that accentuates their bodies, in styles that befit the day. They are a stylish people and while fashion was at one time the province of women and homosexual men , it is the domain of all Nazzadi. Because they have no nudity taboo, their clothing is oftentimes revealing. Pride of fit bodies, and of distinguishing tattoos, often lead Nazzadi to show as much flesh as is practical.
Oh, but we can't dwell on that lovely little aside when we have a nudity taboo to study! Actually I think I'll just quote it.
Mortal Remains posted:
Some Humans are confused by the idea of a culture that does not regard nudity as a taboo. Does that mean they are always taking off their clothes and/or are sex addicts? These old misconceptions are rooted in a repressive culture of religious con-demnation of sexuality. The Nazzadi have no such history. To them, nudity is a natural thing and there is no shame in it. In fact, they acknowledge their form (and that of Humans) as one of the most beautiful things in creation. However, the culture in which they live is not as comfortable with nudity as they and they choose to conform. While Nazzadi may wear revealing clothing, sometimes extremely revealing, they will still wear clothes out in public. They will also wear the appropriate clothing for their environment both socially and weather-wise. A Nazzadi will wear the appropriate suit to a business meeting and will wear heavy concealing clothes when its cold, for example. However, Nazzadi who go to a safe beach (of which there are fewer and fewer) will prefer to go to a topless or nude beach and many walk around naked in the privacy of their own homes. They also are not embarrassed if another person sees them in the buff and may actually take a moment to be proud of their bodies.
They are also not sex crazed, as some mistakenly assume. As with nudity, the Nazzadi do not have a history in which sex was demonized. To them, it is a natural, wonderful, and fun thing. They dont have the same sexual hang-ups that Humans do and dont create artificial rules about when it is right to sleep with someone or regarding how many someones it is okay with which to sleep. In the end, just like Humans, most are looking for love and ultimately hope one day to settle down with a mate.
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, frankly if I had to put a nudity taboo in a game I'd rather do it like this than make them nudist sex fiends. On the other hand,
.
Fuck this though, I'll finish it later.
Next time: Did you know that religion sucks?
Nazzadi Bores
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Nazzadi Bores
Wait what last section still has an entire page to go? FFS. Fine, let's summarise.
Interracial dating is "regarded by both cultures as an okay thing" and is pretty common since both Human and Nazzadi think the other looks all exotic and shit. Also exotic to the CthulhuTech authors: Editors.
Mortal Remains posted:
However, as the Nazzadi are a people trying to establish themselves in the world, they are expected only to marry and procreate with their own kind. However, in a time of genocide where every new birth counts, mixed unions are not as looked down upon as they once were.
Their "fine art" has its own character, though! They dig crystal and metal sculptures, impressionist watercolours and traditional tools (computers "mute the artist's true outpouring of emotion"). Nazzadi dominate the fashion sphere too and these days even utility clothing has its own flair. Nobody cares.
Mortal Remains posted:
In general, they have done everything they can to be a part of Human culture. They have tried not to isolate themselves and, unlike many other immigrant populations, they have all made an attempt to learn the native language. But, through trial and error, they now have some sort of racial identity that they can call their own – born out of the gracious Human race that gave them a home – and they are grateful for it.
Fuck off.
Societal Contributions ! Here is everything you need to know about this section:
Mortal Remains posted:
One of the most immediate and lasting impacts the Nazzadi have had on Human culture is one they did not intend. Their arrival changed the face of religion forever. Though they are not technically an alien race, they were created by one, thus proving the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. Most of the religions of the world were not prepared to deal with such a revelation. Most were only centuries past the idea that the Earth wasn’t the center of the universe and few had given up the idea that Humans were the only and most important creatures in all creation. The idea that the inhabitants of Earth were not only not alone but weren’t all that special in the grand scheme of things shook most religions to their core. Furthermore, the way the Nazzadi were manipulated by the false religion created for them by the Migou did not escape notice and a lot of people awakened to the manipulations of the dogma of many organized religions. In the aftershocks, the Nazzadi helped the world form many new theological and philosophical thoughts.
Yeah, because it's not like even a simple Google search would reveal that "the religions of the world" are prepared to deal with alien life now , right?
After even more paragraphs about fashion and decoration we get some stuff about the "naturally graceful" Nazzadi making waves in football/soccer, figure skating, fencing, track and field and professional dance, interbreeding and xenomixes, how few people are racist to Nazzadi now, and the Nazzadi Entertainment Portal television network. (it's all Nazzadi all the time, some people think it's racist and some people think it's important for the "minority" population, etc.) Also, these two things. Both are amazing, but not in the same way.
Mortal Remains posted:
Of course, not all Nazzadi contributions are well-received. The oddly and wildly popular Nazzadi Elvis impersonator known as Nelviz is something many people wish the black-skinned people would have kept to themselves. If Las Vegas still existed, he would own that town. Currently based out of Los Angeles, his shows draw crowds from all over and his world tours sell out surprisingly large stadiums. There are even those who believe that he is the reincarnation of Elvis, sent back to entertain his people when they need him most. It’s almost as if the King never died.
Practical Contributions ! Two pages, both boring. Intel on the Migou, their unique fast mecha, Nazzadi lightning guns, stealth technology, helping with the Engel project, protesting against artificial intelligence and sapient robots, emergency relief efforts,
Mortal Remains posted:
Advanced Nazzadi chemistry also contributed to the cosmetics industry. Humans had never really mastered a quality white ink for tattooing. Obviously, this had been a part of Nazzadi culture from the start. Now, members of all races can enjoy white tattoos that are truly white – something that many of those of African-descent have enjoyed. Furthermore, Nazzadi principles have created longer-lasting and more durable cosmetics for women. These days, a woman no longer needs to worry about her mascara or eyeliner running, even in the pool. They have even pioneered semi-permanent make-up, which will endure up to a month unless taken off with a special remover.
Subcultures ! How many fucking sections does this book have? Jesus. On the bright side, I just noticed I'm actually half done with this book (
) so the next four chapters should be shorter. Check out these fucking subcultures though.
• Natives. "To most a derogatory term". Is an alternative term offered? Fuck no. They think they are basically Human and should just assimilate instead of making up their own fake culture.
• Purists, who think they should make their own identity by sticking to Nazzadi-only neighbourhoods, schools, etc. and interact with Humans only when necessary.
• Fashionistas (the largest subculture) who believe "their cultural standards (...) should be held to the highest standards", work out obsessively, dress well and wear makeup at all times, and come off as an author rant for some reason.
Mortal Remains posted:
Their practices would be fine, though some border on unhealthy, if they kept to themselves. Unfortunately, they don’t. They make and give often unwanted observations and advice, they verbally berate those who don’t measure up to their standards, they openly discriminate against the unattractive and the overweight, and generally make people who are not approaching an unrealistic standard of physical perfection, beauty, and fashion feel bad about themselves. Many of them believe that these standards should apply to Humans as well and are, unsurprisingly, very vocal about it.
In general, the Fashionistas are not well-liked by anyone but themselves. They tend to offend or upset those who do not meet their standards, which is almost everyone. However, there are those among the Nazzadi, especially among impressionable youths, who regard the Fashionistas as the elite. These misguided teens try to measure up in hopes of one day becoming Fashionistas themselves. More often than not, this leads to failure and upset, sometimes to eating disorders.
• Old Guard, those who were adults in positions of authority in the Migou fleet. They have trouble adjusting to the "new way" and dealing with how much of their life was stolen from them. They mostly withdraw from the world, though those in military units and warrior traditions still chill out with their social groups, but some go out there and party hard to make up for the time they lost instead.
• Voluntary Nazzadi Extinction Movement, who are amazing. Look at this fucking fluff.
Mortal Remains posted:
One of the strangest of subcultures, the Voluntary Nazzadi Extinction Movement (VNEM) believes that the Nazzadi are a cosmic accident and as such have no business continuing. They preach that Nazzadi should simply choose to stop breeding so that they eventually will die out. The VNEM is a peaceful and well-spoken movement that doesn’t seem radical in its literature or functions. It seems impractical to many, however, that anyone would want to voluntarily remove some of the few remaining mortal inhabitants of Earth at such a critical time.
Mortal Remains posted:
It seems impractical to many, however,
They think Nazzadi should get into the war effort so their "last gasp" is a courageous and generous act, though. That's nice I guess?
• Mixers, who think that Humans and Nazzadi should both die out by inter-breeding only there are only xenomixes left.
The Big Questions !
Mortal Remains posted:
What better way to control a population than through religion?
This is a section on The Way, the Nazzadi religion made up by the Migou. They have a pantheon! The gods listed are Araky (goddess of temptation who tests all Nazzadi), Iby (goddess of night who is joyful and represents the power of creation), Jyna (god of stars and the sky, a dreamer, artists and scientists dig him), Laruny (goddess of love and family), Tikara (god of punishment, weeps because he has to punish the chosen of the gods, people who are wronged pray to him), Vorety (goddess of luck) and Zaxa (god of blood, warriors like him).
Even though the Migou made them up, the gods are making a comeback in the form of folklore! People still dig the Greek and Norse pantheons, right? Some young Nazzadi parents even name their children after the gods, "Just as one might run across Human children named Orion of Aphrodite". Not gonna lie, Orion is a badass name.
Ditching their fake religion left a spiritual void and all kinds of existential questions, like "who who created the Migou?", which they mostly deal with by ignoring them because CthulhuTech is smugtheist as fuck.
Neighbourhoods ! If someone wants to read 1,400 words on what Nazzadi neighbourhoods are like get the book yourself. It's mostly rewording a lot of what's been sprinkled in other sections. You only get a peep.
Mortal Remains posted:
There are several kinds of specialty shops that draw people into the districts. Naturally, Nazzadi boutique clothing shops carrying clothes from local as-of-yet-unknown designers are destinations for the fashion-conscious. Nazzadi confectioners also draw those with a taste for something different, as you can explore oddly flavored sweets that can’t be found elsewhere. Imagine jelly beans that are meat flavored or bubble-gum flavored cupcakes and that is the first minor step towards experiencing such a place. Nazzadi strip clubs draw not only the local crowd, but those Humans who have a taste for the exotic, as do Nazzadi Red Houses.
Seedy Underbelly ! There's a Nazzadi mafia called the Nuradi or the Merciless, who treat their criminal activities like a military initiative and are cool with torture and murder. In 2067 they kidnapped the Deputy Director of the Organized Crime Division of the FSB, his wife and his two young daughters and delivered their remains to the FSB four days later in 24 plastic bags. They're pretty efficient too! They deal in trafficking drugs, guns and explosives, identity theft, credit fraud, counterfeiting, and assassinations. Mortal Remains call this "a laundry list of anti-social behaviour" which I find hilarious for some reason. They used to be outlaw heroes to the downtrodden, but now they deal in the Nazzadi slave trade and nobody likes them any more.
Dirty Secrets ! This section is basically just the Helasi section from Damnation View only it suggests that Kyrsa, the leader of the loyalist forces the rest of the Nazzadi wiped out, might still be alive, and there are rumours that an aged Nazzadi Field Marshal helps the Migou with their battle plans. So basicaly Kyrsa's not dead.
Optional Rules ! New traits and stuff for Nazzadi! Aw yeah!
Mortal Remains posted:
Since the Nazzadi were designed to function at night and their skin is jet black, your Storyguide may allow Nazzadi Characters to receive a +2 bonus to Stealth Tests at night. If the Nazzadi is heavily tattooed, the whitework reduces this bonus to +1
Aw no.
The only new Asset is Firstborn (4) . It means you're an honored member of society, must be at least 60 years old, and any additional skill points you get from age must be spent on "skills related to military use". Also you need the new drawback Limited Memory Implant (4).
Drawbacks! First up is Aging (2-4) Finally, rules for being a geezer.
Mortal Remains posted:
2 – Your Character is between 40 to 50. He gains an additional five skill points, though he suffers a -1 to his Agility and Tenacity. Though his age isn’t necessarily against him, he’s too old to hang out with younger crowds.
3 – Your Character is between 50 to 60. He gains an additional ten skill points, though he suffers a -1 to his Agility, Perception, and Strength, and a -2 to his Tenacity. He moves one full category slower than normal. His age is not yet against him in social circles, but it is starting to creep in.
4 – Your Character is between 60 to 70. He gains an additional fifteen skill points, though he suffers a -2 to his Agility, Strength, and Tenacity, and a -1 to his Perception. He suffers an additional -1 to his Reflex and moves one full category slower than usual. He is regarded in most circles as past his prime and cannot pilot military vehicles of any kind.
Limited Memory Implant (1-4) means you have one of those Migou fake memory implants.
Mortal Remains posted:
The 1 – Your Character was a child in the fleet, and only his earliest memories are false. He must have been between one and ten
when the First Arcanotech War began, so he must now be between 28 and 37 years old.
2 – Your Character was a teenager in the fleet, so all memories of his family and childhood are fake. He must have been between eleven and twenty when the First Arcanotech War began, so he must now be between 38 and 47 years old.
3 – Your Character was a young adult in the fleet, so all memories of growing up, maturing, and gaining his own identity are false. He must have been between twenty and thirty when the First Arcanotech War began, so he must now be between 48 and 57 years old.
4 – Your Character was a full-grown adult, so at least half of his memories are fake. He must have been between thirty and fifty when the First Arcanotech War began, so he must now be between 58 and 67 years old.
Oh goody, it's a pure roleplaying drawback! Also known as free points! Yes please.
Firstborn specifies you need this at (4), so I guess the Drawback with no actual mechanical penalties cancels out the expensive Asset with no mechanical benefit.
Finally, there's Nazzadi Achromatosis (2) . You are a Nazzadi albino (not a White xenomix) and suggest a -2 Test Penalty to actions requiring sight while in bright light or -4 in "blinding direct light, like sunlight on a cloudless day". Albino Nazzadi are rare. They still tattoo themselves, just in black and colour inks, and they dye their hair! Here is a meaningless sentence.
Mortal Remains posted:
While there are those that will react to the oddity of the albino Nazzadi, there are many among their own species who find them exotic.
And finally, I have escaped the Nazzadi chapter.
Next time: Chapter Four: From The Vault ! Gear, Dr. Miyakame confirmed best NPC, and Pokemon.
Double Sperger
Original SA postMasiakasaurus posted:
(This is not to say you should stop Ettin.)
Happy Holidays!
Mortal Remains: Double Sperger
So back in February (JESUS CHRIST) Dr Miyakame came up in Damnation View :
Ettin posted:
All this messing around with Engel brains and invasive medical experiments on civilians has given Dr Miyakame a great idea, though - maybe if they made smaller, less powerful synthorgs it would be easier to keep them on a leash! After what the book describes as "a four-day sleepless bender of lab-quality amphetamines and booze," making Dr Miyakame literally the best character in this series, he created the Nephilim Project - smaller genetically-engineered monsters enhanced with cybernetics and controlled with the Nephilim Synthesis Interface andErotic Roleplay ImageboardERPI by para-psychic handlers.
So yeah, this dude owns.
The fluff piece at the start of this chapter is Dr Miyakame sitting around his lab looking at some Nephilim in stasis tubes, and musing on how far he'd come and what he'd do next. I just want to quote a couple things:
Mortal Remains posted:
What was next? What was the thing that would solve this problem? He couldn’t alter the creatures any more without compromising their utility. He couldn’t do much more to the telepathic handlers, either – at least, not legally. Hmm, there was a thought.
Perhaps a thought for another time. Anton supposed that it was best not to bend any more rules than he already had, at least for the time being. True, times called for a loosening of rules, but Anton would prefer that there were none.
Mortal Remains posted:
At first, his eyes saw them as brilliant aberrations, oddities to be mastered. The more he delved, however, the more he came to see them differently, as doorways into a greater natural order. They were children of the cosmos, not just something that crawled out of the mud on one small world. They were his link to something far greater.
And now here in his lab, he sat with monsters that were not evolved from any natural order. Instead, they were his children, part of Anton’s order.
His problems forgotten, a feeling swelled inside him. It was the closest thing to love Anton had ever felt.
So yeah, this dude owns.
Anyway! This tech chapter can be rubbed out in one go. We are almost halfway done. Hold on to your butts, we are doing this at lightning speed and then you can wait a few weeks while I work up the drive to make another post in my free time !
We get some fluff that mentions the Rapid Field Supply Initiative (RFSI), a plan to deliver military equipment where it's needed by "mobile supply naval ships" instead of supply depots. This is disappointing because those things were pretty useful for blocking off ramps, but whatever. Then it tells us about the Modular Tactical Combat Vest (MTCV), which protects the torso and groin while offering extra protection against energy weapons, and the MCH Combat Helmet which adds extra armour (but only if you have the MTCV, because Reasons) and comes with communications gear. They cost 1720 and 1245 Terranotes each. Riveting stuff.
The first page also has a sidebar of prices for "Miscellaneous Equipment", and now I am curious how they worked out these prices. A folding shovel is 30 Tn, and a flare gun is 37. Why 37? I guess I am used to seeing rounded numbers in RPG books. Also, since for the most part starting characters can just pick whatever gear the GM will let them have, a pricing system seems superfluous except to coat an thin veneer of "realism" on everything. Yes this is what I am picking at, shut up. Here's the table so you can be as bored as I am.
Pages of vehicles! And vehicle stats! This would be useful and good information if I were running an actual game, but I am not, so instead I'm just going to list them off and spice it up a bit by telling you about my own CthulhuTech game.
• M-115A4 “AMEE” AAMEV: Treats and evacuates casulaties. Basically an airbourne clinic. Has an "onboard nanite programming unit" but nanotechnology doesn't affect this setting, no sir. Did I mention I run my own CthulhuTech game? It's in FATE because fuck this system.
• M-127A1 ARK ARCS: This giant ACV carries a ritual space around. It is basically the future tank version of a wizard tower. Kind of cool, actually. I changed a bunch of things about the setting too, it's in the year 2118 and Mars is colonised and I replaced the Nazzadi with the Akathar, still basically space drow but less creepy. Also, created by the Yith. Long story.
• UCH-87 BANSHEE: A hovercraft that carries a dozen sets of powered armour around on mag-locks, ready to go. Also pretty great. I talked to my players about what kind of characters they'd like to make and we ended up using this anime mecha setting to run a detective game. Go figure. The party wizard has powered armour though.
• M-867 PROWLER LSV: A lightweight, mobile vehicle designed to be dropped from an airbourne vehicle and handle fast, less explodey jobs. Has a swivel-mounted gun on the back. Special forces love this one. I toned down the Aeon War into a cold war with the Migou for now for the kind of tense atmosphere where people build bomb shelters and it's worked out pretty well.
• ACV-4 SILHOUETTE: Designed to take an insertion team and a couple of Prowlers to their destination all stealthy like. Pretty alright. There was an adventure where they got sent back to the lost continent of Mu in 23,000 BC by stolen Yith technology and had to help a bunch of multicoloured people I mostly stole from Barsoom enact an uprising against the Serpent Men and that sort of broke the atmosphere for a bit, but that made total sense in context.
• SS-7 STRIKERFAST: A rapid-deployment underwater vehicle. Carries a party's worth of aquatic mecha, a squad of powered armour or a bunch of light infantry, and has a bunch of guns too because why not. I just ran a Christmas adventure where they fought the Children of Chaos version of the Yule Lads . That was pretty good.
Alright, that's done! Next up is mecha and nephilim (yes!). The mecha section is just two new bits of tech - a limited stealth system that makes pilots a little harder to detect, and a mimic system which is pretty much a stereo that makes the sounds animals (or some Mythos creatures) make to lure idiots into traps. Then we get to the Nephilim!
Mortal Remains posted:
The Nephilim, as first presented on p. 29 of the Damnation View, are an experimental application of the technology behind the Engel Project. They are, essentially, smaller synthorgs, filling the gap between man and powered armor. Nephilim handlers are para-psychically capable people who are implanted with an arcanotech chip called the Nephilim Synthesis Interface. As with the Engel Synthesis Interface, each handler is attuned to only one Nephilim at a time.
Mortal Remains posted:
Handlers, when controlling their Nephilim, enter a dissociated state where much of their consciousness is transferred to the creature. They remain roughly aware of their surroundings, so they are not entirely helpless. However, a handler may either be in control of the Nephilim or in control of his own body – not both at the same time. If he breaks control of the Nephilim to take control of his body for any reason while the Nephilim is in a dangerous or threatening situation, it will cause an instinct feed-back loop. The creature will then do everything it can to leave its situation to come and kill its handler, with haste.
While in control of the Nephilim, the handler senses through the creature’s senses remotely, as far as his telepathic abilities will allow. He issues telepathic commands to the Nephilim, which it is compelled to follow to the spirit of the letter. However, if the Nephilim and handler are ever separated by more than 50 feet, an instinct feedback loop will occur and the Nephilim will again turn and try to kill its handler, with haste.
Furthermore, instinct feedback loops occur randomly. Your Storyguide will have you check for one at random intervals, from once a week to once an hour. Roll one die – if you roll a one, a loop occurs and the Nephilim turns and tries to kill you. Fortunately, all Nephilim are designed to be locked down and handlers can do this by pressing a button on a special bracelet. Once locked down, it takes days for a Nephilim to recover from its rage and be useful again.
Handlers also carry a special electronic tablet that displays the Nephilim’s visual and audio sensory input for others, with a range of 200 ft.
Use the rules for Engels when determining how long it will take for a Nephilim to both heal and be repaired.
So, you are basically switching between two characters - your Pokémon and your para-psychic. Also, if you stop controlling your Pokémon while it's in combat, say if you are also in combat, it will freak out and try to kill you. You probably will also be in combat, because if you're not close by it will try to kill you. Also, sometimes the GM will roll dice to see if it tries to kill you. You can stop it trying to kill you by pressing a button, which will probably make it useless for the rest of the adventure. The upside is this is definitely not a dirty narrativist swine storygame.
To be a Pokémon handler, you need a few things: be an erupted para-psychic with access to manipulative talents, take telepathy, and either Authority and Duty (3) (if you're from the military or law enforcement) or Duty (3) and Watched (3) (if you're a criminal "volunteer"). You also need to take the new Pokémon Synthesis Interface (1) Drawback, which forces probably-not-that-hard Insanity Tests once a month, and Engel pilots, Tagers and sorcerers aren't allowed to have it.
I found this on the CTech website with the filename "nephilims.jpg". I don't know why that makes me giggle.
• Emim: A big, strong Pokémon with a special howl attack that forces those within 50 feet to succeed at a Challenging Fear Test (or Average within 100 feet) or suffer a Fear Effect. Can't be used in combat. Comes with a bite attack, claws and a Deathmaster 2000. Holy shit, I did not see that coming. Why yes, I would like to equip the Pokémon that will sometimes try to murder me with a grenade launcher and place myself in firing range. That sounds like wicked fun!
• Rephaim: A swift Pokémon with naturally electrified skin. Under the armour it has an unnaturally skinny torso connected to four legs, long multi-jointed arms, a long neck and a small head. A little creepy. Anything that hits it or gets hit in close quarters by it has to make a Hard Tenacity Feat Test or lose 2 Actions for 1d10 minutes. It can reduce someone's Actions to 0. It is always Tenacity. Why are you not bumping Tenacity? Oh yeah, and it has a flamethrower, and yes, it can totally reach its handler. Good times!
• ...
Wait, that's it?
You teased these things in a previous book and gave us only fucking two of them? What, were you going to publish more later? Well good job on that one chums!
There's a page with a couple of new sets of Nazzadi powered armour but fuck it: The Brushfire is an interceptor even faster than fast Nazzadi mecha and the Sunspot hides and uses the Mimic and Limited Stealth Systems to lure
Next time: Two chapters to go! Both of them are about the Migou, and the first has the
Super Migou Galaxy
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Super Migou Galaxy
That's スーパーミゴウギャラクシー if you're not a baka gaijin.
So, it's time for Chapter Five: Abominable Snowmen . It's the Migou fluff chapter! The fluff piece at the start, "Animals", describes a Migou known as 808 operating on the brains of Humans to turn them into Blanks. 808 does it live and just deadens their vocal chords so they can't scream, because that's how Migou roll. Some think that blocking the pain might actually speed the process up, but fuck those guys .
It's a long chapter. We'll do most of it later. I have to show you this fucking thing - the history of the Migou, with the irrelevant parts cut out so I'm not pasting two pages. See if you can guess what makes this the good bit!
Mortal Remains posted:
HISTORY
The story of the Migou begins millions of years before anything resembling life as we know it existed on the Earth. They are an ancient species, who have long had access to the things the mortal races of this planet are just beginning to understand.
The dwarf planet we have come to know as Pluto is home to the Migou and has been for millennia. However, Pluto is not the planet on which the Migou evolved. It is not their true home. The place that birthed the Migou is far, far away, a world that would take hundreds of years to reach, even with advanced space travel technology. The Migou in this galaxy are colonists, sent millions of years ago. The Earth is the planet that held the resources they needed, but it was Pluto, though mostly barren, that most closely resembled the atmosphere and gravity that was comfortable to them. The Migou of this galaxy dont often communicate with the rest of their kind, as it takes years for messages to reach the nearest colony. One or two large messages, containing news and research breakthroughs, are sent and received each 200 days (about four years).
The Migou arrived, fortunately, after the reign of the Old Ones, at a time when the dominant lifeform of the galaxy was a species we have come to know as the Elder Race. The Elder Race had survived the predations of the Old Ones and once again spread out over most of the planet. They were, by most accounts, a primarily benevolent race that kept to themselves. The only other sentient species on the planet was the Great Race, who dwelled in their empires in the southern hemisphere.
Though they had chosen Pluto as their first colony, the Migou found there were resources they needed on Earth. The first Migou scouts made their way to the planet and discovered a world filled with minerals and other needed things, a place that would fill the gaps in the Migou colony machine. It was a relatively peaceful moment in the history of the Earth, so the Migou felt that it was a safe thing to create their own outposts on the planet to fulfill their needs.
No one is entirely certain how the war began. Migou stories claim that the Elder Race was panicky after being nearly wiped out by the Old Ones and their minions and struck first out of fear. What little remains of the Elder Race points to the Migou arriving and aggressively taking whatever they wanted, with no regard for who was already there. What would have been a simple territorial squabble to other species ignited something in both the Migou and the Elder Race and things quickly escalated into all out warfare.
[...]
However, instead of staying, many of the Migou left for Pluto. The racial consciousness that governed Migou breeding would kick into overdrive on Earth and their population would explode. They would have much more to manage and would come into serious competition with many of the lifeforms, both developing and developed, on the planet. It made sense to take the core of the race back to Pluto, where all would be comfortable and manageable, than it did to stay here. Besides, the Migou had already settled into the barren rock quite nicely.
And on Pluto they have stayed, for millions of years. Their race has flourished in this galaxy, although in the moderate population afforded by the planetoid they now call home. They have been very content to do all the things they do on a daily basis, using the Earth as a depot and a place to experiment with whatever they choose. That is, until recently.
[...]
For better or for worse, the fate of the Migou in this galaxy will be determined by the Aeon War, a war fought on a lush planet that they hope to keep in their possession, regardless of what other usurpers claim it as home.
Here, let me fix it:
Mortal Remains posted:
HISTORY
The story of the Migou begins millions of years before anything resembling life as we know it existed on the Earth. They are an ancient species, who have long had access to the things the mortal races of this planet are just beginning to understand.
The dwarf planet we have come to know as Pluto is home to the Migou and has been for millennia. However, Pluto is not the planet on which the Migou evolved. It is not their true home. The place that birthed the Migou is far, far away, a world that would take hundreds of years to reach, even with advanced space travel technology. The Migou in thisgalaxysolar system are colonists, sent millions of years ago. The Earth is the planet that held the resources they needed, but it was Pluto, though mostly barren, that most closely resembled the atmosphere and gravity that was comfortable to them. The Migou of thisgalaxysystem dont often communicate with the rest of their kind, as it takes years for messages to reach the nearest colony. One or two large messages, containing news and research breakthroughs, are sent and received each 200 days (about four years).
The Migou arrived, fortunately, after the reign of the Old Ones, at a time when the dominant lifeform of thegalaxysystem was a species we have come to know as the Elder Race. The Elder Race had survived the predations of the Old Ones and once again spread out over most of the planet. They were, by most accounts, a primarily benevolent race that kept to themselves. The only other sentient species on the planet was the Great Race, who dwelled in their empires in the southern hemisphere.
Though they had chosen Pluto as their first colony, the Migou found there were resources they needed on Earth. The first Migou scouts made their way to the planet and discovered a world filled with minerals and other needed things, a place that would fill the gaps in the Migou colony machine. It was a relatively peaceful moment in the history of the Earth, so the Migou felt that it was a safe thing to create their own outposts on the planet to fulfill their needs.
No one is entirely certain how the war began. Migou stories claim that the Elder Race was panicky after being nearly wiped out by the Old Ones and their minions and struck first out of fear. What little remains of the Elder Race points to the Migou arriving and aggressively taking whatever they wanted, with no regard for who was already there. What would have been a simple territorial squabble to other species ignited something in both the Migou and the Elder Race and things quickly escalated into all out warfare.
[...]
However, instead of staying, many of the Migou left for Pluto. The racial consciousness that governed Migou breeding would kick into overdrive on Earth and their population would explode. They would have much more to manage and would come into serious competition with many of the lifeforms, both developing and developed, on the planet. It made sense to take the core of the race back to Pluto, where all would be comfortable and manageable, than it did to stay here. Besides, the Migou had already settled into the barren rock quite nicely.
And on Pluto they have stayed, for millions of years. Their race has flourished in thisgalaxysystem , although in the moderate population afforded by the planetoid they now call home. They have been very content to do all the things they do on a daily basis, using the Earth as a depot and a place to experiment with whatever they choose. That is, until recently.
[...]
For better or for worse, the fate of the Migou in thisgalaxyFUCKING SYSTEM will be determined by the Aeon War, a war fought on a lush planet that they hope to keep in their possession, regardless of what other usurpers claim it as home.
CthulhuTech , everybody!
So: The Migou hail from another galaxy, and their homeworld takes "hundreds of years" to reach. The nearest galaxy is Andromeda, 2.4 × 10 19 light years away. If we're generous and pretend "hundreds of years" means "a thousand years", they can travel at 2,500 times the speed of light. It takes light about five and a half hours to get from Pluto to Earth but the Migou in Damnation View take a year to close the distance. Either they are taking the super deluxe scenic route, or all the young pilots are on Earth, leaving only the very elderly to move the second Hive Ship.
Also, the Milky Way has hundreds of billions of stars , and a fucking planet bonanza can be found around them, but the Migou still need Earth for its "minerals and other needed things".
Actually, I asked about both of these on rpg.net a while ago, and here's a response I got from a CTech writer:
martian_bob posted:
Here's the relevant passage from HPL's "The Whisperer In Darkness":
Apparently, our planet is the only one they found that had what they needed. We're just running with what Lovecraft gave us.Lovecraft posted:
The Pennacook myths, which were the most consistent and picturesque, taught that the Winged Ones came from the Great Bear in the sky, and had mines in our earthly hills whence they took a kind of stone they could not get on any other world.
So, a dodge on the galaxy thing, but at least we have an explanation for why Earth specifically. One that isn't actually in Mortal Remains that I can see - every section that talks about what the Migou want with Earth just says "natural resources" - but hey, maybe they were saving a reveal for later. Unless you count this:
Mortal Remains posted:
The Limitations of Human Understanding
This section will reveal truths about the alien race known as the Migou. In order to do so, we have had to describe who they are in terms understandable to a Human. This does not do them justice. They are truly alien creatures who experience the universe in a very different way from us. Please keep this in mind while reading the Migou sections of this book that this is not an entirely accurate description of these creatures, but instead the best possible approximation.
This is a good sidebar, because without it, the stuff coming up sure would make the Migou look like idiots!
Phantasmigouria of Boring Screed
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Phantasmigouria of Boring Screed
Okay, Migou chapter for real now.
You read most of the history. The Migou showed up looking for resources, the Elder Race shoved them back to Pluto, blah de fuckin' blah. When the humans learned arcanotechnology and became a threat, the Migou decided to subjugate Earth. The problem was the Migou hadn't fought a war in millions of years, so no Migou designed for combat had been born and it would take decades for "the super-organism consciousness of the race" to make some. Instead, the Migou just made the Nazzadi, and as we all know they just cocked that up and made the Human threat worse. Luckily the Migou super-organism was already producing soldiers, so they built a gigantic Hive Ship and armed up and went and started a bunch of shit.
That was two pages! Let's see if we can't keep that pace up.
Physiology & Psychology
Migou are a combination of insect, crustacean and fungus. (A lot of this will probably be familiar to Lovecraft fans.) They have hundreds of cilia on their head, and "speak" through moving them around, body language and the buzzing of their wings. Their fungal nature gives them a limited ability to change shape, and they have three long limbs which end in whatever tools the Migou needs. Their wings are only good for low-or no gravity and they are clumsy on Earth.
Migou have no gender, which is good news because I won't have to put up with CthulhuTech 's creepy sexism thing. They reproduce by budding new Migou (it takes five months) and raise their children collectively. Reproduction happens whenever the super-organism fucking feels like it (deal with it) but the Migou have worked out medical ways to try and induce budding. It is not guaranteed.
Mortal Remains posted:
When a Migou wants to breed, or the community wants it to breed, it goes on a dietary regimen designed to induce budding. It is not guaranteed and is essentially the equivalent of Human or Nazzadi parents trying to conceive. It can take time and is not guaranteed.
Migou DNA mutates and adapts easily so they are not all clones, and Migou practice eugenics by trying to induce non-guaranteed budding in those who have desirable traits and talents. They have no racial diversity, and to other races they all look alike, unless you are Sanctified (more on that later). They have genetic memory, so young non-guaranteed Migou know how to communicate, socialise, move around and ace history tests.
Psychology! Migou are individuals, but are deeply invested in the community and understand they have a place in it. They seem emotionless, but that isn't entirely true - they just have shitty emotions! They have no feelings about things they need to do like eat and sleep, they don't know love, desire, ambition, anger, rage or guarantees, but they totally have a desire to do well in their community, loyalty and a sense of pride - they basically attacked the Earth because humans challenged their feelings of superiority.
They are also super efficient, but don't actually have a hive mind, they just don't have egos or identities in the same way Humans do. If it's more efficient for a Migou scientist to do menial jobs then they'll do it. They are also very patient, and if they have time they will totally sit down and spend forever planning. Maybe they can even put up with this fucking book.
Physical needs! They drink an alkaline liquid of almost pH 13 which is a bad idea for humans to drink, but they can live off other alkaline liquids like they were space coffee. They make it with a machine that processes other liquids, or with special just-add-water pellets. Migou grow their own food, and mostly eat a kind of three-foot slug and a kind of bacteria they brought with them. They eat food by spewing a fungus-like substance at it to break it down and licking it up with their cilia. It is kind of gross. They absorb any gasses they need this way and don't need to breathe.
Migou dispose of waste products through silent farting.
They need to sleep! On Pluto they stay up for ~108 hours and sleep for 45, and on Earth they've adapted to four days awake and two days asleep. They dream, but their scientists haven't worked out what the deal with dreams is yet.
Their body is tough and they have a sense of touch, see with photoreceptive organs on their head, hear by sensing vibrations through their body and smell beneficial/hazardous substances with chemical receptor. Their organs are decentralized and adaptable and even their brain is split up through their body.
Reading this book is like sitting in the back room of a fancy restaurant while a chef very slowly opens and closes a bread roll in front of you.
Government
They don't have much of one! This section is still a page long.
They have no economy. Migou just do what they can to contribute to the greater whole and are "an example of perfectly functioning socialism". Oh FUCK, Obama's prepping us for a Migou invasion!
Societal groups based around needs (raising kids, researching weapons, etc) replace businesses. Nobody really has a "job" and as long as the Migou contributes to society and doesn't fuck it up nobody gives a shit, but most Migou come from a lineage known for certain talents and most of them roll with that.
Since everything just kind of works, the government's role is distributing resources and monitoring production. They don't really have authority but the community respects them anyway. The race is more or less coordinated by what the NEG call the High Council, a group of a dozen specially-bred Migou who make the big-picture choices.
If a Migou needs something they just get it, even for stuff like hobbies. They have a basic barter system for things like art to decorate their personal spaces, though. On Earth they roll with a more structured life and actual bosses because that is what war needs. SPEAKING OF!
Military
As you can imagine Migou military is some confusing bullshit. They are one unified force, and at the basic level they are divided into squads of up to ten Migou who fill some specific function. A platoon is "one to four squads", so I guess a squad can also be a platoon for some reason. A company is 2-4 platoons, so two squads can be two platoons and a company or half a company or half of half a company. A battalion is 2-5 companies, so four squads can be four platoons and two companies and a battalion or a platoon or two platoons and a company. A brigade is 2-5 battalions and a division is 2-3 brigades, so eight squads can be eight platoons and four companies and two battalions and a brigade, or up to eighty Migou but maybe sixty or even thirty-two. Eighty Migou could also be a division. A corps is 2-3 divisions, which makes sense to me.
There are no obvious ranks, instead whichever Migou is the most qualified takes charge of the squad/platoon and the rest roll with it. New leaders only take over if they are better than the last guy.This fluid command structure means taking out Migou commanders doesn't work, unless you are gunning for the Migou High Command, which are still fluid but at least they are made up of The Best Migou.
They also have efficient means of communication that can't be listened in on, awesome technology and an R&D department that will win the war through sheer technological might if it goes on long enough (but they couldn't invent the D-Engine), but those paragraphs are boring. They don't like biological warfare, don't want to wipe out humans and would have trouble with the many complex monsters of the Storm, so they don't bother using it, except when they say "fuck it" and use it in a later book. They also use magic because why the fuck not.
Migou really like planning and take their sweet time coming up with lots of them but they can improvise if they have to. They know how to use their enemies' weaknesses against them but they are predictable enough for the NEG to sometimes guess that strategy they'll go for. I just summarised half a page, why don't I do this with every fucking page? Ugh.
Society
Let me work some of that summary magic:
☆★☆ COMMUNITY! ☆★☆
Also, in this integrated community there are fewer reasons to stress. Migou don't have to worry about many social things humanity does, and are asexualOH MY GOD IT'S ALIEN TUMBLR.
Alright, I just ruined this sub-chapter didn't I? I will just shotgun the rest: Thanks to racial memory Migou are born knowing how to use their bodies, where they fit in and what they'll be doing with their life, and don't give a shit about sex. That is pretty efficient. They have individuality and personal time, though. There are Migou sports, games and art that are pretty obscure and we probably wouldn't understand them. Their hobbies are mostly weird shit too but some of them practice genealogy as a hobby so they have a very complete history. Even Migou soldiers have time for hobbies and sports.
There's not much need for law, theft, police, et cetera. Worship of "dark entities" is banned, though, and Migou cultists are executed.
Basically, the Migou are a utopian socialist society except for the part where they are incomprehensible alien tumblr douchebags.
Religion
The Migou don't really have a formal religion and figure the best way to serve a higher power is to live to their fullest. Also, reincarnation. They tried out Old One worship for a while but that just led to horror and degradation so they kicked the cultists out of this galaxy. System? One of those. It took centuries to go back to normal, too. Damn cultists shitting all over the carpet. They oppose the Old Ones now, though humanity can still get fucked.
They still have cults, but they are private and secret. Most cultists are down with Nyarlathotep, because a deity associated with entropy is super interesting to the orderly Migou and sometimes they just need some comfort from the horrors of war. Sometimes Nyarlamigou fuck up Migou plans to "facilitate evolution". There are also cults of Yog-Sothoth, but those guys are pretty cool and can see lots of things (like the future!) so the Migou put up with them, even if they are kind of distant.
Mystical Power
The Migou have been studying the occult and parapsychology for millennia (but didn't come up with arcanotechnology) and are used to that stuff.
Their main magic force are the Sanctified, a special kind of Migou created by selectively breeding Outsider Tainted. Instead of random mutations, the Taint has stabilized and they are sickly-looking Migou who have lots of
There are rare non-Sanctified mages but they don't get any of the bennies Sanctified do. Mostly they just run backup for Sanctified.
Migou magic is focused on not getting dark gods involved. They take extra time to protect and ward ritual spaces and don't intone the Old Ones or entreat powerful deities unless they have to (except for Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth, because instead of interfering they just don't give a fuck). Since they don't get power from powerful beings they practice a lot of blood magic instead, usually by sacrificing fallen enemies or willing Migou.
Most para-psychics are Sanctified again, and thanks to their method of reproduction they have entire lineages of them. There are a few latent para-psychic lines too and they still have regular Migou going Akira sometimes. Usually they find a profession their powers are useful in. Right now they have three times the magic-capable units the NEG does, but that could change.
Sometimes Sanctified feel the way Migou roll is holding them back, turn into douchebags and start cults. The most common of these cults are devoted to CthulhuTech 's shitty homebrew deity Gurathnaka, and this worship always ends poorly for the community. The second most common is Sweet Shub, though only because she's not present and the Migou don't know she almost showed up recently. Sweet Shub's "wild creative energies" complement blood magic well, but cult presence tends to fuck up non-guaranteed Migou breeding and mutations so they get hunted down.
That's an entire half of the chapter, and also my limit for now.
Next time: Cities, the Hive Ship, Pluto and some other bullshit.
Mountain of Lame
Original SA post
Oh hey, it's the Cthulhu-has-an-unfortunate-boating-accident debate again. Looks like it's time for...
Mortal Remains: Mountain of Lame
I can do Touhou-themed titles all book long, baby.
Migou Cities
Specifically, Earth cities the Migou have taken over. This section describes the process in detail!
Once they smash the city's defenses and secure the area, they assess the place to make sure it's theirs and hunt down any remaining defenders before they continue. Humans are rounded up and processed - military personnel are assimilated first, civilians are kept in comfortable internment camps until it's their turn. Nazzadi are rounded up, executed and buried in mass graves because fuck Nazzadi. Once everyone is squared away, they take stock of the remaining NEG military resources (mecha, comms etc), and put the first round of Blanks in charge of them. Bam, defenses!
This whole thing can take months, which gives the NEG a window to take the city back. This doesn't happen often, though. Also, the Migou themselves tend to settle in the coldest part of the place, even if it's actually a nearby mountain like Juneau. Eventually they'll adapt to be comfortable anywhere, though.
Once the city is "theirs", they build! Human buildings get repurposed and patched up with some metal supports and weird Pluto crystal, the Migou build their own shit, and utilities like power and climate control are fixed and optimised. The end result is a mix of ruins, Human and Migou buildings that's a pretty nice place to live if you are an alien fungus crab-bug or a Blank. The civilian Blanks help run the city so the Migou can focus on important stuff, and they actually arrange for the Blanks to have free time, places to hang out and a good quality of life, aside from the "brainwashed and rewired into willing inferiors" thing. Blank operatives abroad can't wait to get back home, and the Migou themselves wonder why humans wouldn't just queue up to get to live in this awesome utopia.
The rest of this section is just places Migou hang out: Antarctica, some cities in Northern Canada, Greenland and Alaska, like half of Asia, Scandanavia (except Iceland and Denmark), Scotland, northern England, they really want Iceland back, the southern tip of South America and northern New Zealand. The End.
Hive Ship
It floats over the South Pole and is nearly the size of Charon. Unsurprisingly, giant moon ships are pretty tough - normal human weapons have trouble with its armour, it's self-healing and it's covered in weapons. It smashed through every ship the NEG posted to stop it, then parked by Earth and destroyed all the satellites. It is still there, intercepting anything that goes into space.
Nukes could probably damage it if they got close, though obviously that isn't happening. Tacticians theorise that the only other way to assault it is to infiltrate it, but obviously the Migou know that and have planned for everything. They don't even let blanks or Nazzadi loyalists on board.
The inside is a massive warren designed for flying creatures, with a mostly Pluto-like climate. It has artificial gravity pulling towards the outer shell, using "a superconductor to generate a gravitic field". Its main purpose is to control Earth orbit and supply the Migou war machine with giant nano-forges that pump out weapons and mecha. Other than that, it's where Migou soldiers are raised and the High Command works.
Oh yeah, and there's a second Hive Ship on the way! If it gets here, the NEG is boned. Unless...
Mortal Remains posted:
However, as one might expect, sending two ships that size would severely deplete the Migou population on Pluto. The truth is, now that the second Hive Ship is en route, there are few Migou left on their home. If someone were to discover this weakness and have the capacity to exploit it, they could hit the Migou where it hurts. The Migou, on the other hand, are pleased that there is no one left in this galaxy that could get to Pluto, much less harm it. Their strategy is, as always, calculated.
Hmm, I wonder what happens.
Hmmm.
(Incidentally, since this book is boring as hell and I've taken forever to finish it, Burning Horizons has come out. If you've read it please don't spoil it for anyone who gives a shit about that. I will get to it!)
Pluto
Just in case someone sends their PCs there, we get a page and a half on Pluto. There's a lot of dry astronomy stuff, and then...
Mortal Remains posted:
The Migou first arrived in this galaxy countless millennia ago.
For fuck's sake, guys.
So, the Migou have spread out across the stars to explore the universe. The Pluto colony lives in a gigantic tunnel network carved out of the dwarf planet's interior, and the Migou have adapted to it. The colony is divided into districts, some of which have a certain purpose. All buildings are communal and need no privacy. Migou sleep in holes in the wall, the only private spaces they have.
Charon was actually nudged into its current orbit by the Migou, and is used entirely for industry. This is where the Nazzadi were made, and their forges still work off what resources the Migou can feed them. If the Migou could travel back there quickly they would have an unlimited stream of supplies.
So, hiding. The Hive Ship could be hidden in the shadows of planets while the NEG was busy rebuilding, but before that they had to build a fleet of Nazzadi warships. Instead the ships were hidden in the Kuiper Belt, along with the Hive Ship when it was mostly done.
The Migou like having the Kuiper belt around, because it's "hard to navigate". Since even TVTropes knows that asteroid fields and such are actually really spread apart because physics and the best way to "navigate" one is to just fly through it like you would every other region of space and maybe casually move around an asteroid once if you're unlucky, I am going to go ahead and assume every other starfaring race in the
Pluto is protected by a LAI-run automated defense grid. Pluto's other moons Nix and Hydra are used as storage sometimes but nobody really cares about them.
So, why don't the Migou stay on Earth? Earth might have lots of resources, but it's a contested planet where other races keep showing up to PvP and nobody bothers them on Pluto. Also, if they settled on Earth the Migou super-organism would have triggered a population explosion and they'd have to bother conquering the planet, and fuck that.
And why do they stay at all? The answer is basically that they are lazy. At first the colony was exciting, but now they have found a comfortable place to stay and just laze around all day, not really thinking about moving on or doing anything great with their life and reblogging other Migou's pony memes. They would have left a colony behind anyway, though.
Slaves & Lab Rats
More on what the Migou have in mind for Earth!
First, Nazzadi get genocided. Seriously, fuck Nazzadi. They let Loyalists who manage to contact them work for them, but when the war is over they plan to exterminate them all.
Humans get to be obedient slaves! Unlike the original Nazzadi, they are going to take their time and assimilate them. Assimilation relies on technology the NEG can't understand, but here's the secret recipe:
• Get a human.
• Brainwashing! Keep the human sleep-deprived and surrounded by stimulus designed to cause a nervous breakdown until they are reduced to barely functional infants with no identity.
• Invasive neuro-manipulations! Cut open the human's skull and fuck around in there, hard-wiring feedback loops to ensure loyalty and removing things like sexual arousal and the ability to enjoy drugs. Erase any memories you don't like and sprinkle some false ones in there.
• Re-education! Use new kinds of brainwashing to make your human fanatically loyal to the Migou and hate everyone else.
• Tada! Now you have a human who will kill his loved ones and then himself if a Migou asked him to. Here's one I prepared earlier...
Assimilating a human usually takes six months, though they can be done in batches. That is why they didn't bother doing it with the Nazzadi. If you can rescue someone during the brainwashing stage they will be fine with intense therapy, or maybe during the first week of second stage. Anything after that they are pretty much Blanks. Not even magic can reverse Blanks.
Blanks are used as labor, spies and pilots. Their spies are near-perfect but can be busted with a brain scan, which is why the NEG do those all the time. Blank pilots are also great because the Migou can save a ton of money on their mecha insurance by scavenging human ones.
Plans For The World
This section is mostly covering what's already been said and explaining the Migou's in-character reasons for their strategy. The Migou attacked Earth because they feel humanity is challenging their place in the universe and because they think arcanotechnology is too dangerous in our hands, blah blah.
Also, they think the Earth is theirs . They want their giant green lump of resources back as intact as possible. So they don't use nukes, because that would be fucking it all up. Phew! They don't bombard the planet with anything else because the NEG shoot down the Migou's weapons satellies and the Hive Ship can't get too close without being shot at, so so far they are stuck in a stalemate.
Mortal Remains posted:
Many have also wondered why the Migou, with their advanced understanding of Human and Nazzadi DNA, haven’t just engineered a virus that will kill us all off. Again, the Migou don’t want us dead – they want to enslave us.
I am starting to get the feeling this is a response to fan speculation, but whatever. They can't make a virus that only targets Nazzadi because their DNA is too similar to humanity's, and in the face of the Deep Ones and the multiple horrors with alien physiologies in the Rapine Storm the Migou just throw up their hands and go "fuck it". So, no bio warfare.
Right now the Migou are working to fight literally everybody. They fight the Esoteric Order, they fight the Rapine Storm and research a way to banish Hastur's avatar, and they even have Blanks working against the Children of Chaos. Cultbusting is serious business. (No, they're not going to tell humanity about the CoC, they would just fuck it up anyway.)
So, that's their plan. Enslave everyone, murder all the Nazzadi. If it looks like they are going to lose the Aeon War or the Old Ones are coming back, though, the Migou have a doomsday plan! They will unleash a bunch of viruses and bacteria on the planet while using nukes to plunge the planet into nuclear winter and wipe out the ozone layer, ruining the Earth like Homestuck fans ruin Homestuck.
Dirty Secrets
Oh man, plot secrets!
Why don't the Migou just clone themselves? Because their complex bodies and swiftly-mutating DNA are so complex that they can't without budding. Even replacement organs and limbs are hard. Cloned tissue basically becomes cancerous almost immediately, and the Migou have just thrown in the towel. Cloning other creatures is possible but after fucking the Nazzadi up they probably won't.
Why don't the Migou make their own Engels? Because they can't work it out. They can clone monsters and give them cybernetics but the Synthesis Interface humanity designed is something the Migou just can't figure out, because they don't have "the wildly creative thinking that occurs when sliding down the slippery slope of insanity" or whatever.
Like the Mi-Go, these Migou harvest brains! These become the core of their computer systems, and while they don't torture the poor humans or anything it is understandably hard to deal with being part of an alien network. The sane ones have formed communities and bond with each other to try and keep their life bearable and explore the Migou network. So far the Migou have been letting them and watching with interest.
AI! Like humanity, the Migou think true AI would be a huge problem and stick to limited AIs. They also think robots are "distasteful" and use robotics as tools only.
And finally, the Nazzadi! Ever wonder why the Migou didn't just build in "some kind of biological kill-switch" into their creations? Someone must have, otherwise it wouldn't have been brought up. Was it you? Well, whatever. The point is, they totally actually did this, but it didn't work because Reasons.
Mortal Remains posted:
Once it became apparent that the rebellious Nazzadi weren’t going to come to their senses, the Migou triggered the kill-switch. Theoretically, the entire Nazzadi armada should have been dead within days. Nothing happened. The Migou double-checked their trigger, but still nothing happened.
Now that the Migou have had a chance to dissect modern day Nazzadi corpses, they have discovered that the kill-switch is simply gone. No one knows why. It appears that once the Nazzadi were sent out on their biological steam, their systems began to take their own course. Mutation of DNA is unpredictable, as the Migou well know from experiments on their own tissue, and is seems as if the Nazzadi DNA rejected the kill-switch and mutated to eliminate it. It is, for lack of another term, a miracle.
REASONS!
We finally have all the boring fluff out of the way. Two chapters to go: The rules for Migou tech and Migou PCs, and running Migou games.
Shoot the Migou
Original SA post
Looks like I have a DEADLINE.
Mortal Remains: Shoot The Migou
Time for
Chapter Six: From The Hive Ship
! I hope you like Migou tech, but not enough to mind that it's a short chapter. Really it's just a couple pages on how Migou tech works and then a bunch of stats.
Before we start, though, the fluff at the start of this chapter isn't bad. Check this shit out:
Ganked from his DA because I'm lazy!
That awesome fucker is a Migou attempt at making their own Engel. They're having problems, though, for
plot reasons
some reason:
Mortal Remains posted:
This is what had come of the Migou’s attempt to create their own version of the Humans’ Engels. They had cloned superior specimens and created fierce cybernetic monsters.
The problem was that there was no way to control them.
Migou intelligence had gathered enough information to know that the solution to this problem for the Humans lay in a set of twinned arcanotech chips – one that was implanted in the brain of the pilot and the other in the brain of the creature.
No matter what they’d tried, even reverse engineering the Humans’ chip, the Migou could not get such technology to work.
Perhaps it was in the nature of the Migou brain, which was not a large central organ the way it was in Humans. Perhaps it was something in the DNA they were using to create the creatures, having come from stores of things ancient and forgotten. Perhaps it was just because they weren’t doing it right.
It's not bad! once again, one of the best parts of a CthulhuTech book is the art stuff that has nothing to do with the actual game.
(The best part is the end.)
So anyway, Migou tech.
To aid production and distribution, the Migou sort everything they make into three categories:
• Common items are things like rations, standard weapons and armour and other necessities, which the Migou mass-produce the shit out of.
• Special items are for special units with special needs, like heavy/specialised weapons and scientific equipment.
• Select items are reserved for elite units and high-ranking Migou and hard to get around here, like kickass weapons and good game design.
Remember how the Migou wanted D-engines for themselves?
Mortal Remains posted:
The Migou have, up to this point, utilized their own device modeled from a different version of non-Euclidian geometry to provide a multi-dimensional power source. However, their solution has failed to match the sheer elegance and raw power potential as the amazing arcanotech model developed by the Ashcroft Foundation. Though the Migou are appalled to admit the superiority of the Human application of arcanotech theory publicly – what they refer to as “a lucky accident.” Nevertheless, Migou versions of Human D-engines and D-cells have begun to emerge among some of their newer devices and weapons.
This is, at least, less silly than "the Migou couldn't figure out arcanotechnology and got super mad when humanity did". It doesn't jive with the core book's claims that the Migou had to "steal the secrets of arcanotechnology for themselves", but let's be real here: That version was stupid as hell anyway.
Where the Migou really shine is bioengineering! They made the Nazzadi, they can grow new substances and materials and make technology out of them... like Substance 91A7, a "bio-mechanical superconductive material" they can grow into any mass or shape. They're used in weapons, and this paragraph is nearly 200 words about the exact way 91A7 is used to make guns shoot people better and I can't be bothered.
They also have high-power microwave (HPM) weapons, the size of a combat rifle at the smallest, which hits people with a laser and then something something particles and the target is fried with a blast of radiation. I have a degree in Physics, and I can't stand reading this. I am not a gun porn guy, though. I can quote these sections if someone wants to know how these guns work exactly!
Another weapon: Null ray! It disintegrates matter with a bit of antimatter and a "wide beam laser set to a harmonic frequency relevant to the antimatter contained in the power core" which the antimatter interacts with to break down anything touching the laser into energy. That one actually interested me because antimatter is cool. Null ray weapons are usually mounted on vehicles and rarely come in hand-held form, because antimatter is hard to make.
Almost done! Migou use their knowledge of genetics (I have no idea why this wasn't with the rest of the bioengineering stuff) to create bio-mechanical computers that use bacterial DNA as information storage and are far more advanced than human computers, which the Migou can access with a mere thought. That comes in handy for coordinating mecha pilots! The neuro-interfaces are adapted to Migou genetics, though, so no hijacking Migou systems for the NEG.
Migou medical practices mostly rely on nanotechnology. They have a probe shaped like a taco that pokes Migou with little needles to see where they are wounded by analysing their DNA, then uses organic nanites to heal the injured party.
That is pretty much it for
. Aside from that two pages of Migou tech, most of the rest of the chapter is weapon tables and new mecha. Skipping the weapon charts (though anti-matter rocket launchers are amazing) and diving into the vehicle section, we have:
• BG-24 Jellyfish: A biomechanical ("a hybrid vessel of both organic and technological construction", said an author who was paid by the word) medical support vehicle. It has tentacles that grab wounded soldiers and bring them inside for healing. They are designed to treat Migou and not blanks or loyalists because fuck those guys.
• BG-19 Kingpin: Handles weather surveillance, command, communications, etc. It's a huge tactical command aircraft, and I have no idea what it's supposed to look like.
(By the way: There's a sidebar here which outlines rules for piloting Migou vehicles, and naturally it can't be done without a Challenging test to jury-rig it which would only let you do basic stuff at a severe penalty.)
• BG-07 Stalker: A stealth recon craft which can fly and swim, mostly used for surveillance or inserting strike teams. What does the number mean anyway?
• BG-45 Tripod: An amphibious ACV that can transport troops!
Okay, that sucked. Mecha time!
awwww
The metaplot has progressed and the Migou have new mecha tech!
• Earwig: Really? Earwig. Well, whatever. These are basically stealth powered armour after the Migou figured out how to stick a null ray on powered armour. The lil' cutie sneaks up on mecha and tries to atomise them.
• Mosquito: An air-based stealth mecha to round out the Migou's stealth mecha team. It makes surprise attacks with a null ray because when you've got a good thing why not use it? It isn't as agile as other Migou mecha, but it's fast and deadly.
• ... Actually, that's it!
look at the lil' earwig
The final section is a page on magic. Aside from some
about Migou brain tubes that can mostly be skipped ("Many brains go insane in the first few years, the rest learn to chillax for hundreds of years!", that's about it) and Migou blood magic (it's basically regular magic but the Migou make a fresh kill for every Second/Third order spell - at least dog-sized for Second and human for Third) we have two new spells:
• Speak & Be Heard lets the targeted Migou communicate flawlessly with any other sentient living creature. This is how they communicated with the Yith and the Elder Race, and they can use it on Humans too. It lasts 24 hours and the ritual takes 5 hours, but don't worry: You can recharge it with a two-and-a-half hour ritual! Worth it, or totally worth it?
• Wisdom of the Stars is their version of divination, an "enhanced version of astrology" where they "tap into the celestial mechanics of the universe from which to gain wisdom". It lets them see possible futures by looking at the rules of the universe really hard, basically. It is actually a pretty cool ritual. Takes three days to prepare and cast though.
Next time: The final chapter. Playable Migou.
Migou Project
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Migou Project
The last chapter is Chapter Seven: Alien Alter Ego .
Mortal Remains posted:
Now that you’ve had the opportunity to peek behind the Migou curtain, you may want to explore their world more fully by playing a game where they are the Characters and focus. That’s what this chapter is all about – designing Migou or Migou-affiliated Characters and playing Migou stories.
Playing a Migou game can be challenging in the extreme. If your Characters are all blank Humans or loyalist Nazzadi under command of Migou that are supporting cast, things will be a lot easier. Any game involving the portrayal of Migou Characters is going to require a dedicated group that is willing to do a little extra work. It is not for the faint of heart.
Brace yourselves!
Mortal Remains posted:
First and foremost, anyone wishing to portray a Migou needs to understand that these creatures are not just Humans that look like alien insects. They are truly alien creatures. You will need to get inside their head to think like one and study its physiology so you can behave like one. The very least a player needs to be familiar with is the material in this chapter, combined with the information on p. 88-90.
Preferably, anyone wishing to portray a Migou will become an expert on all the Migou-related material in this book.
IMMERSION!
Let me summarise:
• In a Migou game, Humanity is the enemy. Hope your players are comfortable with that!
• The Migou don't have a language humanity can understand, so don't call them Steve.
Mortal Remains posted:
However, this is just a game. There’s no reason that you can’t decide to call things by the same things you’d call them as your Human self, simply acknowledging that the Migou have different “words.” Migou Characters will, on the other hand, still need to something to call each other. The communication the Migou use for individual designations don’t really match anything in the Human sphere. Calling Migou Characters by Human names such as Steve or Carol seems foolish. We recommend that you use something simple to differentiate your Migou Characters, such as numbers or letters. Some find that numbers don’t communicate enough individuality, so feel free to create your own unique alien naming convention. In the end, do whatever works for you but that also still satisfies the requirement of matching an alien mind-set.
• You don't have to be Migou! You can play Human blanks, or Nazzadi Loyalists. Just remmeber the Migou are in charge and can order Blanks to commit suicide. Also, you can maybe run a game where Blanks and Loyalists work with the Eldritch Society against the Children of Chaos. (If you are crossing your fingers hoping you hear much more about this idea, I have some bad news for you.)
• Migou still follow the rules for Fear but ignore certain sources, like Deep Ones and themselves, because they are used to them and don't give a fuck.
• Result #3 – Lose Bodily Control still applies, but there is no discomfort or embarrassment as the Migou only discharges its odorless vaporized waste.
• Some of the other Fear Effects are changed because Migou don't scream, drool, sob, etc.
• The Migou "do not often suffer from despair or consuming hatred, both of which are Human emotions". CthulhuTech doesn't know what "often" means.
• The Migou don't suffer from quite a lot of the same disorders. This section on how the Migou use Human insanity rules with things cut is long and boring and I feel like if they wanted to make Migou seem alien so bad they could bother to write up some new and actually interesting disorders but whatever.
• MY VERISIMILITUDE:
Mortal Remains posted:
Migou Characters In Other Games
You may be tempted to come up with some kind of reason that a Migou would have a change of heart and go over to some kind of non-Migou group, specifically so you can play a Migou Character in a New Earth Government or some other kind of game. Just so we’re clear – this never happens. The Migou are organisms that are deeply tied to their own species. They will not, under any circumstance, cooperate with or join up with members of other races or affiliations. If you want to play a Migou Character according to canon, you must play a game that revolves around the Migou.
I think my favourite thing about these asides is it doesn't even matter. People can and will make these Migou anyway. The writers just want everyone to know it's not real CTech if a Migou teams up with non-Migou.
Blanks and Loyalists working with the Eldritch Society to accomplish mutual goals is totally A-OK though.
Rules for making Migou characters work off the usual creation rules, only they have more free skills, some skills are changed or useless (they don't need Bureacracy because they are dirty communists, they're asexual so don't need Seduction, etc.), there's a list of Assets that get changed or dropped (Ghouls get Sexy Voice but not Migou? I see how it is), same with Drawbacks (they all start with Duty (3), which continues to be a Points For Doing Your Job trait), etc. It works. They bothered to make some new Assets too:
• Sanctified (3): Instead of Outsider Taint, the Migou have specially bred a line of Tainted Migou. Sanctified get triple Orgone, always appear wasted or sickly because the line has been Tainted too long for random alien bullshit and the Migou don't mind them. You also suffer penalties which aren't listed here because they are in the Sanctified racial template.
• Swift Winged (3): You can fly at full speed on Earth, instead of half speed.
• Vivid Genetic Memory (1-4): All Migou have some genetic memory, but yours is better. They aren't complete memories, it's up to the
• Blank (4): A Drawback! You are a brainwashed human, and completely loyal to the Migou. You cannot refuse an order from a Migou, even if they order you to kill yourself.
After that are two racial templates - regular Migou or Sanctified. All Migou get genetic memory, flight, the ability to turn their hands into tools and some other frills that get repeated on both pages; the main difference is Migou get +2 Agility, +2 Intellect and -1 Strength, while Sanctified get the relevant Taint asset and +1 Agility, +2 Intellect, -2 Strength and +1 Tenacity. Oh, so the spell-caster's drawback is that he is bad at physical stuff. How innovative, I'm sure that will hold him back.
There are more Profession templates too! Battletroops, Mecha Pilots, Para-Psychics, Sorcrerers, Specialist (Arcanotechnicians and other experts) and Vanguards (Stealth
Mortal Remains, "NEG Infiltration Stories" posted:
The interesting thing about this kind of game, as noted earlier, is that it is a way to mix Characters loyal to the Migou with other kinds of Human or Nazzadi Characters. Perhaps they team up with agents of the Eldritch Society to fight the Children of Cha-os, or perhaps they team up with arcane investigators against the Esoteric Order. It can be an interesting and effective way to mix Characters from radically different worlds.
Not gonna lie, I still want to see how this works.
Themes! The themes of Migou games should be Desperation (as far as the Migou are concerned, whether the Cults or the NEG win the Old Ones will screw everyone over), Efficiency, The Group vs. The Individual, The Plan and Righteousness. If you squint really, really hard maybe you can play Alien Monaco.
Penultimately, we get some adventure hooks. Assimilate This is about Migou trying to assimilate Rapine Storm creatures - a Shabus Morgo and a Gug. A Desolate One might show up to attack the Migou (please come back, Doctor Cheng , you were the best), and fun times are had by all. Deep Trouble is about destroying an Esoteric Order manufacturing facility, and Not Giving Up Just Yet is about raiding an Engel training facility so they can capture ESI chips for study. (It also goes out and says that Migou will come up with their own Engels eventually, though I guess that is necessary to ramp up the danger in later books if they ever come out.)
The last part is an adventure. It is not very long, but it's definitely something . I'm going to go ahead and write it up today and finally close out Mortal Remains (almost a year after I started, fuck this book). I can't use Athena and co. here, though, so someone give me some Migou PC ideas.
Unidentified Immersion Object
Original SA post
Mortal Remains: Undefined Immersion Object
One of the big complaints I've heard about my reviews on rpg.net (behind "You can't make fun of game designers YOU WILL REGRET THIS!" and "that adventure where the PCs are abducted by rape furries doesn't count because if you interpret the rules like this it means the PCs are immune to their rape aura. See, that makes it okay!") is that they are hyperbolic , and all those posts where I directly quote the book aren't accurate or something.
So I just want to be clear that the Migou I've made based on suggestions here and over IRC probably wouldn't be approved in an actual CTech game. Just saying.
Mortal Remains posted:
NOT YOUR ISLAND ANYMORE
Presented here is a ready to run story for a Migou game. It should require little effort on your part to prepare and is designed to give you someplace to start a new story. It follows a group of Migou who have been assigned to infiltrate Iceland, a place taken from the Migou by the forces of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. It gives new Migou players a chance to fight against a familiar threat, instead of turning the tables right off the bat. This way, you can ease them into battling the New Earth Government, who up until now have most likely been heroes for your players.
For purposes of this story, Migou will be given numbers to designate them as individuals. You can feel free to substitute whatever representative naming conventions you’d like to use in your game.
Characters can be of any sort, including Blank or Loyalist, but those whose primary vocation is as a mecha pilot may feel under-utilized. This is a mission of infiltration and sabotage, and straight up fights will be discouraged – and dangerous.
For the purposes of this adventure, we'll be running the following Migou PCs (I can stat them if you want but otherwise nah):
• N01RR15: A Migou Private Eye, genetically tweaked for optimum hardboiled. Actually on a job to recover the legendary Scroll of Heroes, a heinous scroll that nobody likes, but that investigation is going nowhere so it's working another job. Also a Vanguard. It carries copies of its resume around and gives them to everyone it meets.
• 900-N: 900-N the Battletroop has a bad case of migoutism. It is also the most effective member of the group, because disorders don't define a person or stop you from accomplishing great things. It is also a brony though.
• Athena Darkroad: The put-upon Shadow Tager cop from the other adventures, because I was told the Eldritch Society and the Migou can unite against common enemies. Athena has agreed to help in exchange for a null ray to shoot Children of Chaos cultists with, but to stop other Migou freaking out and trying to assimilate her she is wearing a Migou suit.
• Himigo-chan: Himigo-chan is a para-psychic here on a week-long internship as part of an assignment at Azumigou Academy. She is incredibly tsundere, and also an NEG turncoat (she just thinks they're too kawaii to kill.) She drinks alcohol and is here to score some space mead.
• Mak: A Blank. Even before his assimilation Mak had trouble with basic social interaction; now he is so incomprehensible his comrades think he is a Migou. Only Athena calls him out on this. Earnestly believes that the NEG are Tipper Gores out to censor the galaxy.
The characters need to start near Iceland, so Act I: In The Land Of Lutefisk puts our team in Bergen, Norway. The Migou in this captured arcology are part of the supply chain to the British Isles and get attacked by the Esoteric Order sometimes.
Mortal Remains posted:
Here is a good place to create the routine of your Characters’ lives. What is the average everyday run of their vocations? Where do they live and what kind of recreational activities do they enjoy? Migou lives aren’t all work and no play, but they will be dedicated to an efficient routine.
900-N connects to the Something Pluto message board and posts a thread about how it is not in the place it wants to be in its life right now, and it's girlfriend wants to know if it's cool with her seeing other Migou. Seven people tell him to switch jobs and sever, and one person calls him a faggot. 900-N does the exact opposite of both of those things. N01RR15 mails people copies of its resume, Himigo-chan gets into a crazy love triangle with two other Migou, Mak does regular human things but in a shitty way I guess, and Athena goes around in her googly-eyed Migou suit telling everyone that she is definitely a Migou.
Eventually, they get a call in their living quarters from another Migou, 166 ("It is a thing that is known for taking young Migou under its wings and guiding them through the rocky days of their first missions"). 116 has a job for them!
Mortal Remains posted:
It is here that the Characters should begin to feel the strong Migou community. Where new soldiers in the New Earth Government are likely to be barked at or even insulted, new Migou soldiers are cared for and properly guided.
Baka humans!
So anyway, Iceland. Sometime in the past the Esoteric Order of Dagon surprised the Migou at night and forced them off the island, and the Migou left some of their shit behind. Apparently they left behind some null rays in a research facility outside Reykjavik, and as the Migou see the EOD as an actual major threat, they don't want them reverse-engineering the null rays. The PCs are assigned to infiltrate the place, destroy the null rays and get the hell out of there.
Mortal Remains posted:
Once the Characters understand the mission, 116 will be available to answer any questions they may have. Unlike New Earth Government briefings, the young Migou are encouraged to ask questions so that they are fully armed with the knowledge they need.
I can't even tell if this is more sheltered white guy social commentary or just setting fluff any more. This book has just run into a big hot mess in my memory. Fuck it, whatever. After pausing to give the
Act II: In The Land Of Ice begins. The PCs spend eight hours flying a slow, circuitous route to avoid the Order (Mak spends the entire time telling Athena how "trannies" and people who people who think assimilation is terrible are secretly trauma victims who should be committed. Athena considers aborting the mission and choking him) and eventually sneak into the city:
Mortal Remains posted:
Iceland, as part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, is an ideal place for the Esoteric Order of Dagon to occupy. There are miles of underwater mountains around, plenty of place for the Esoteric Order to build aquatic bases and house troops.
The mountains around Iceland are a) only on the far south and far north of the island and b) all active volcanos. I guess the EOD wants to house their troops in volatile active volcanoes because they're fucking hardcore.
Mortal Remains posted:
When they finally get there, they’ll most likely realize that Reykjavik will not be an easy nut to crack. It was the biggest city in Iceland, home to a couple hundred thousand residents and the only arcology on the island. There’s a lot of ground to run into trouble on and who knows how the Esoteric Order has moved in.
Why would Iceland have an arcology? Who builds an arcology (a housing solution designed for incredible population density) in a city with a couple hundred thousand people? Did Reykjavik have a sudden population explosion or something? Actually, who cares?
Anyway, this happens on the way to the facility:
Mortal Remains posted:
Along the way, you may want to expose them to some of the reality that is Esoteric Order of Dagon occupation.
Mortal Remains posted:
Don’t be afraid to expose them to bizarre cult rituals, ritual cannibalism, and the ever-popular rape camps. You might even throw in a dirty, disgusting hospital converted to the birthing of Hybrids.
Mortal Remains posted:
Perhaps for the first time, your players may realize that the Migou, from the right perspec-tive, aren’t such bad guys.
A dirty hospital for alien births: Worse than rape camps.
The group proceeds as quietly as they can. Athena throws up in her suit and ditches it for now to go full Shadow Tager. Mak gushes about how this is all super edgy and mature and he can't think of anything scary to do with a penis before Himigo-chan orders him to shut up.
Soon, they stumble on the real reason the Order captured Iceland: Migou research! The Dagonites have captured thousands of bugs and have set up experimental facilities to experiment on Migou and see if their genes can be used to improve Deep Ones. This is pretty much impossible, but they don't know that, so medical experiments ahoy!
Naturally this tweaks the Migou a bit, and they
can
do something about it if they want, but they need a plan. N01RR15 gives everyone a short (only eight hundred word) monologue on his talents before admitting he doesn't have a plan. 900-N suggests they sever. Athena actually does some scouting and discovers the place doesn't have very good security, and:
Mortal Remains posted:
if they watch carefully and succeed at a Challenging Observation Test, they may overhear that the lead researcher in this experiment is a Deep One male named Il’eran, who appears to be the underseas equivalent of Josef Mengele. He will hopefully become a target for later violence.
Luckily this won't be like the sex club and the PCs can actually kill this guy.
... Not yet though.
Mortal Remains posted:
A Complication
The biggest unknown of this mission is that Iceland is the perfect place for the Esoteric Order to hide an army in and among the underwater mountains. The bad news for the Characters is that since Reykjavik is a coastal town, it wouldn’t take much for such forces to respond if there were trouble. Anyone operating in Esoteric Order territory should always expect that there are more enemies than intelligence suggests.
As the Characters make their way through this horror show, they will eventually hear the sounds of something arriving. On the coast, something is afoot. The Characters may be in a position to witness it, or they may have to backtrack to discover what the commotion’s all about. As it turns out, they picked the exact window to infiltrate the island during which time the Esoteric Order is being reinforced.
Out of the ocean begin to climb fresh troops, including Deep Ones, Spawn, powered armor, mecha, and the like. Further-more, these are only the reinforcements they can see, the ones that are moving into the area on land. There are undoubtedly more hiding below on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. If the Characters didn’t have the idea that they shouldn’t engage in any kind of conflict before, they most certainly should have it now. The is-land has officially become a death-trap should they be discovered. The Characters will have to tread even more carefully than they did before.
So, I guess they're railroaded into heading for the research base. The Migou complain and Athena gets to be the one to tell them to suck it up this time. Mak asks Athena if she's read his friend Joe's Blank blog. Himigo-chan steals some Dagon Brew and gets hammered somehow.
The PCs "restrain themselves" and make it to the facility. It's in the basement of a plain-looking former bank and hard to spot, so nobody's found it yet, and N01RR15 has the codes so he lets everyone in after giving a short speech about it. This part is pretty easy - get into the empty facility, drop explosives everywhere (Athena stuffs a null ray in her suit) and runs like fuck.
Mortal Remains posted:
Now they need to make their way out, so that they can be extracted by 224. However, they should have enough of a desire to destroy as many Esoteric Order research facilities as possible on their way out. They hopefully will have the luck to take out Il’eran while they are at it. However, the landscape is now crawling with enemies.
But oh shit, a complication! Somehow the Esoteric Order figure out someone is here and start spreading out to search. Time to run!
Mortal Remains posted:
Now is the time for violence, but with a twist. Have your Characters encounter small groups with just enough power to make the fight worthwhile. They should feel like they’re having to fight for their lives, as well as make their way through great stretches in a stealthy fashion, in order to get to the rendezvous point. If they didn’t plant explosives before and want to now, it will be doubly hard. In any case, things should be dangerous, but not lethal, for the Esoteric Order is herding them into a trap
In Act III: In Harm's Way , shit goes down, explosives go off, and the group flees - right into a group of Deep Ones and Hybrids! Don't worry though, it's just for dramatic flair. The
Mortal Remains posted:
Just as in any good horror movie, the last gasp comes after everyone thinks the action is over. As the Stalker turns to fly away, something bursts out of the water into the air. Several somethings, in fact – two very upset Spawn. Remember to have everyone, including 224, make Fear Tests, as these are creatures that scare the daylights out of just about anything.
If 224 and at least one of the Characters can keep their cool, they’ll want to fire on the things. If not, the Stalker will be batted about like a mouse on a string. Now is the time the Characters should panic.
Or maybe not just yet. Perhaps when the Leviathan, followed by two Hydras, fly up to join the battle is a better time. The Characters are terribly outnumbered and outgunned.
Choreographed chase scene GO!
The Migou panic and open fire. Athena buys everyone some time by putting on her Migou suit and ordering Mak to throw himself out and at the Spawn, and Mak does it because he's an idiot. Himigo-chan confesses her love to 900-N too and creates another love triangle. In what he thinks are their dying moments, N01RR15 decides he just wants Himigo-chan to be happy and lets her go with 900-N, or something. That cliche always confused me to be honest, it sounds dumb as hell, but whatever. The point is the Stalker gets slapped around a few times and then they escape:
Mortal Remains posted:
If the Characters can manage to win this harrowing Contest for five consecutive turns, they will finally break free. The Stalker’s top speed is way beyond anything they’ve been dealing with here, so they should be able to get away quickly. However, give the Leviathan and the two Hydras one turn of shooting at them first.
However, in any event, don’t let them get away unscathed. Bat them around at least once or twice, in addition to a turn of shooting at them, or the ending will be anti-climactic.
And... that's basically it! There's the usual "PCs get rewards" stuff, except Migou don't really hand out awards so whatever. 900-N and Himigo-chan start a serious relationship, N01RR15 lights a cigar and flies away into the sunset like all good Noir Migou, and Athena absconds with her null ray to get it reverse-engineered in America and take a six-hour shower.
Mortal Remains took almost a year to review and holy shit was it not worth it.
___
New book time!
It's been a while, so instead of going in publication order, I am putting it up to a vote. If you want to go in publication order just vote that.
• Ancient Enemies: The Eldritch Society and Chrysalis Corporation! Basically Guyver Knockoff: The Book. It has metamorphosis and all kinds of other cool things. Not gonna lie, the new Dhohanoids are super bad.
• Unveiled Threats: An equipment book! This would probably be the shortest review, I'd just be skipping pages and pages of guns and posting only the highlights. Oh boy, are there some fucking highlights.
• Burning Horizon: A metaplot sourcebook for 2087. This one came out just recently. It is the sequel to Damnation View , and I have been asked about it a lot. It sure is a book, I tell you what.