Across The Mists, Behind the River

Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game is a new RPG by Ravendesk Games based on the "visionary and hallucinatory science fiction of author Jeff Noon (winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award)".  I've only come to know who Noon is because I saw this RPG for sale so I can't say much on that score. In fact what made me buy this, beyond the setting seeming like it would be cool, was the fact the game is the first licensed setting made to use the Cypher System. I'll have more to say about the rules at a later date, but right now I wanted to talk about my feelings regarding the setting as presented as an intro to some thoughts I had about tweaking it. So the idea here is Earth is connected to a world that both influences us and is influenced by us - The Vurt, a world of our dreams. We use feathers - a technological product apparently - to connect to the Vurt and utilize this realm to escape the cyberpunk dystopia of our reality. Blue feathers are games/shows, Pink ...

On one of occult spaces on the net someone posted  How Occultists Beat Physicists to the Punch: Clairvoyance, Atoms, and String Theory . Someone else posted the essay  Swedenborg and the Holographic Paradigm . The Beginning Theistic Science blog also has some stuff on Swedenborg & QM. As usual regardless of these cases being reality - my rule of thumb is never think this supernatural stuff can be used to avoid going to the doctor or taking medicine, and don't forgo logic in one's life decisions - for our game purposes it weds together ritual Psi-boosting practices identified as "Space Occultism" and scientific discovery. Were the Precursors just better at this particular kind of clairvoyance? Is that how they advanced so far beyond what Post-Cataclysm civs have managed to achieve on similar timescales (if the retrieved history archives are to be believed)? Will the civs serving as the setting's Points of Light be unable to achieve such heights without s...

Keep the Faith Shepherd Humanity Protect the Conspiracy Technology Can Save Us All Mirrors are not inversions, they aren't quite the same thing as trying to put a logical not on every descriptor of the Cyberpunk genre. So there's more than one path for such a setting to take. My attempt here is going to be partly a general brainstorm and partly a kind of "fun house mirror" to David Jarvis' essay about Cyberpunk relating to his setting book Interface Zero  and Mike Pondsmith's video  "Cyberpunk 2077 - Mike Pondsmith about Cyberpunk World" 1. Let's call it "Golden Chess Master" for now because I think it would involve the super-rich, and even corporations, being the good guys. Think Wild C.A.T.'s Halo Corp, Stark Industries, Batman Incorporated, Kord Industries, Mason in the Invisibles, that time Sunspot bought out AIM and merged it with his own corporation. Additionally you're not rebelling against a domineering society,...

Was skimming through The Blood of the Saints by Alan Chapman and saw mention of the Holy Guardian Angel as the future magical self (then Hyperion Cantos came to mind...). Got me thinking about Tommie Kelly's mention of the Simulation Hypothesis as a way of seeing the world from a particular esoteric angle.  There's also Rune Soup's Gordon White who talks about Space Shamanism and Astrognosticism. And of course all the New Age stuff that came out of Quantum Mechanics. Makes me wonder about more science fiction inspirations for occult practices. I don't mean Technology-Indistinguishable-From-Magic but rather Magic(k) inspired by science & science fiction or, to put it in a way internal to the setting, scientific advancements that could lead to particular rituals, initiatory practices, or at least metaphysical outlooks. So some very preliminary thoughts on that: Faster Than Light Travel:   If alien civs are like our own they likely held light to be a hard limit ...

Bio-tech mixed with expected metal & circuits - Having read through my Prophet trades (minus the Strike Files which are setting info I'll get too shortly) I often found myself thinking "this is what I'm going for."  There's an elegance to Prophet where it's science fiction but inclusion of Psi & Bio-tech make it have an uncanny, weird-fantasy feel. I've talked a lot about Psi but Prophet made me fully realize the value of bio-tech in providing the right tone for Space Occultism. The idea of living ships has been seen in D&D as the Spelljammer setting had living ships of varied kinds. The show Farscape which used this conceit to great effect as Moya felt like another member of the party, a character in her own right. A ship that can be infected with disease, that can be a mother, that can sense damage done to her internal cavities in which the crew resides provides a lot of adventure seeds. Another great use of the living ship idea is the ...

While Sigil might be the most obvious one D&D players from the era in which the TSR setting bonanza occurred there are other cities with multiple portals to multiple other realities. Union and the City of Brass come to mind from within D&D, but also Moorcock's Tanelorn. If we stick with WotC I'd add in Everway . You could have portals/gates leading to different planets which gives you exposure to different cultures, species, levels of technology, gender differentiation, etc. Maybe places where physics and/or magic works a bit differently if you want to go the distance. What I think gets introduced with actual fantastical realms, "planes", is that archetypes, concepts, and abstractions are made physically real. There are Planes that function as Platonic Realms of Alignment (The Outer Planes) and/or Alchemical Realms of Elemental Substances (The Inner Planes). You could also have planes representing Technology, Time, Government, Knowledge, Math, etc. And...

Two aspects of parapsychology/ paranthropology that I think would greatly influence the religious dimension of space civs is the continuation of the abduction phenomenon as an enduring mystery and the avenue of dreams as a means through which psionics acts. Abductions by Extra- vs Ultra- Terrestrials: Abduction by aliens civs of higher tech levels but still existing within the confines of this universe would, I suspect, be more rational than that of the mysterious abductions that seem to be done by fairies and other absurd entities. There are the "nuts & bolts" aliens and the ones that seem to come through planar-portals linking our universe to the Weird that is their home. (Or, arguably, have existed at "right angles" to mundane civilization which puts them in the Weird corners of the Void's expanse) There could be rational reasons for "nuts & bolts" abductions. There are a variety of Uplift Engines, Jump Gates, and similar Ancient/Pr...

So depending on the type of game you want to run, you're going to likely treat psionics in different ways. If you want a more "hard science" feel you'll probably ditch psionics all together or maybe go into some quantum biology explanation. It also depends on how you think it affect tone - for example psionics is something I'd lean against in an Eclipse Phase game. It just doesn't seem to fit there for me, while for others it enhances the setting. For a Space Occult game, or at least this particular iteration of such a setting, I think it makes sense to have psionics remain mysterious not only in a scientific sense but also a mystical one. Scientific study of the physics-described Void may not yield definitive answers about Psi or The Way, but it's possible that supposed gods, spirits, and souls that are rarely encountered by most are also just manifestations of Psi. ( See the Living-Agent Psi hypothesis .) Psycho-physics It is my personal opinion ...

The term Infosophont is from Strange Stars , meant to distinguish between robots and those programs that can live across physical mediums (though possibly being limited to devices of a particular type). - Are they a "higher" or "lower" form of life than the biologics (humans, alien mystics, alien brutes, etc) and moravecs (robots)? One of the great challenges for AI is that people don't think they are genuinely alive. Unfortunately this can include some AIs themselves who are either insane or have been convinced by the varied arguments (or maybe are just trolling their fellows...assholes). Another issue is that given that there are different kinds of computers beyond Turing Machines the AIs may feel that while they are alive other kinds of AI made in different ways are just simulacrums. Infosophonts may also not experience any sensations of (as opposed to data from ) the external world until far into their "adulthood", which some of them see as anot...

- Upload your consciousness into an existing structure meant to hold AI of some variety. I suspect this is going to be harder IRL than anyone expects though I've yet to be convinced it's impossible. What might be fun is to assume a few specially different kinds of alien minds may need different structures to upload - some may need to preserve some kind of field effects while others can only successfully transfer into particular synthetic structures that preserve a certain kind of quantum vibration. This also suggests AIs may only be able to exist in certain kinds of structures which could also add an element of interest for some groups. (Un?)Fortunately in this setting the means to successfully upload a mortal mind is something jealously guarded by the few still able to perform the procedure. Most of the emerging galactic civs don't even know it can be done. - Become an "energy being". Basically trade material existence encased in flesh/metal for an incorporea...

-I'd mentioned in a previous post the classic trope of empaths/telepaths being driven to genocide out of a desire for emotional/mental Quiet. But not everyone wishes to eliminate emotional states - psychic vampires would feed on certain states/thoughts. There could civilizations manipulating those above ground or beyond the planet-swallowing storm into varied emotional states - like keeping those others in a state of perpetual warfare, encouraging polygamy and polyamory, bring a melancholy peace to a planet in order to produce a certain vintage of emotion from its poets. -The moral terraforming the Star Knights believe the Way wants the to do to the Universe. Given Star Knights in this particular setting are ex Void Knights they might just turn their general disregard for other lives in pursuit of selfishness toward what they see as the Greater Good. It might be something like an Inverse Prime Directive - compel budding civilizations to toe the line by claiming (perhaps rightly) ...

Nice interview with @CBR “God Country,” ultimately, and above all else, is about a small family dealing with forces beyond their control. In the beginning, those forces take the form of this horrid illness that has stolen a pillar of their family away. Emmett is suffering, he’s confused and angry and unmanageable. As the story evolves those forces grow from illness to “acts of God’ in the form of a tornado…and then to literal gods who have also come to take things away from them. So it was important to me that when dealing with these big fantastical elements it always came back to the same idea. The same problem. That, no matter how big or out there the story gets, it’s always all about the Quinlans, and every insane thing they encounter is a just another metaphorical extension of the same idea. Things that are bigger than them that they can’t ignore. Uncontrollable things that they HAVE to face, that they have to fight. =-=-= There's a lot of gold in God Country for a Scienc...

-Contact with other tribes/civs/religions/etc on your own world that are different in some fundamental way or just different enough to justify slavery/extermination/etc. -Contact with repeatable, reliable psionics when your population's "psions" are easily dismissed by many as hoaxes due to the unreliable nature of the abilities. -Contact with sentient species and/or machines from other planets. Real world people have suggested that rather than another alien life you might instead make contact with a machine meant to explore the universe on behalf of a species chilling at home. -Contact with entities that are energy rather than matter-based. -Contact with something that seems to originate from beyond our reality or something that has passed through other realities. -Contact with Post-Singularity level civ. Contact with Kardashev level civ higher than one's own. -Contact with a species whose nature has led to vastly different ideas of morality/society/etc. ...

If psionics is beyond the purview of AIs, and in turn psionics requires some kind initiation process to either activate or accentuate, this means AIs interested in learning about a mental power they seem utterly unable to achieve would be likely to turn to the occult. Additionally AIs at the level of Iain Banks' Minds would - if they have their own demesnes - also be in a position to evaluate the efficacy of occult rituals against mere probability and coincidence. They might even be able to achieve some educated guesses about whether there are actual entities beyond the Veil or if even the most seemingly efficacious communications are simply aspects of what parapsychologists like to call "Living Agent Psi". (A combo of psychokinesis and telepathy do what you think "spirits" are doing.) Of course AIs, as noted in the last post, have good reason to lie and insist that what's happening is definitely NOT due to "souls", "gods", or "mag...

I was thinking about a particular experiment that would be sure to be conducted on Psions and users of the Way by AI envious of psychic power held by biologicals would be forcibly uploading consciousness into a computer system and then downloading it into a biological sleeve that was as close as possible to the original body - likely a clone if resources permit. Does that Psion or user of The Way still have their abilities or are they lost? It seems to me that the most interesting answer from a game standpoint is that it seems to work sometimes but the clone eventually "botches" and some kind of disaster occurs from the use of the power. Additionally there are records PCs can find having to do with the debate of how re-sleeved minds register to psychic readings. Some claim it's the same person, others claim it's not. This gets even more complicated because of factors like prior beliefs in something like our conception of "souls", competing upload brands ...

Two quotes to start us off - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.    -Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently rigorously defined magic is indistinguishable from technology.    -Larry Niven Admittedly my thinking about Points of Light in Space invite the name "Numenera in Space". In fact Monte Cooke Games' setting even has two supplements that expand from the Ninth World into the Void and into other dimensions. However Numenera's initial premise seems to be that "magic" is advanced technologies, basically "science fantasy" by way of post-Apocalyptic ignorance. It does have some fantastical aspects, however, with extradimensional invader types. Yet there is nothing like the Moral Power which powers my Star Knights (and arguably Void Knights), nor do I recall instances where the magical thinking (for example Like Calls to Like, a Part touches the Whole) that informs spells, regents, and rituals.  Essentially it see...

I was thinking about initiations in shamanistic and esoteric contexts, and how the unlocking of psionic ability is, in many races, a matter of undergoing an Initiation. Perhaps even those races with natural talent require some kind of ceremony to develop/train their psychic ability. If, as mentioned in a previous post, there is something Other to psionics and/or the Way, at least from the perspective of the AIs who can't fit spooky mental action at a distance into their ideas about fields/forces/energy/laws-o'-physics, it might cause a great deal of unease to robots and sentient programs. But being Other, even if that Other is still tied to the Self, means there is a need for some invocation or evocation. It may "only" be as occult as the artist calling upon their "muse" or the mathematician find the proof of a theorem coming to them from what feels like outside the core of their conscious-self. Nonetheless, there is a kind of magic-with-a-K act involved...

Was reading some science fiction and space fantasy comics today: God Country, about a man who is cured of his Alzheimer's but only when grasping the "God of Swords", a sentient techno-magic weapon that is also a Kirby New Gods kind of entity. Prophet , which I was trying to think of how to summarize but I'll just quote Image: "On distant future Earth, changed by time and alien influence, John Prophet awakens from cryosleep. His mission: to climb the the towers of Thauili Van and restart the Earth empire. But, news of the Empire's return brings old foes and allies out of the recesses of the vast cosmos." Additionally looking through Fire on the Velvet Horizon and saw some entries that could work in a regular science-fiction setting and definitely work in a setting that is science-fiction + "space occultism". All of it got me thinking about the wars that destroyed successive Golden Ages, which isn't to say it's always death ...

So the quote from Admid Night Suns from the last post got me thinking about AIs and Robots that I assumed cannot use The Way. The blog author specifically notes that the Archons and their agents hate those who have The Imperishable Light aka "the Pleroma" within them. He notes they could be redeemed if they pray, which I would replace with entering the same lunatic-compassionate state as my Star Knights. Or maybe just being kind of nice earns them a touch of that Pleroma. "A soul of silicon, but a soul nonetheless". Of course just like most people aren't saints I expect most AI are instead going to be jealous, fearful, and potentially infuriated by The Way and possibly by psionics in general. Just like when The Profile looks at Moon Knight when the latter is possessed by Khonsu and goes crazy because that shit just does not compute, AIs and Robots might feel the same when encountering a non-quantifiable power (I'm ignoring all that "midochlorians...

So the Blood Meridian quote in the last post didn't make sense to me - I thought that dude drawing fire from the rocks was The Judge - until I read about how the book is really about Gnosticism . So the kid is the guy at the end, the one possessed of an alien compassion in a fallen reality Holden The Judge wants to dominate. One of the major ideas here is that Good is an alien force entering the world, working to redeem the shards of Light scattered in the dark. Amid Night Suns   does a great job recounting this idea : Eleleth tells Norea that she isn’t just a fallen shadow-creature, but that she has the spirit of truth emanating within her, a fragment of the imperishable light, and is therefore a holy immortal being of the Pleroma. Norea has the mother of wisdom Sophia within her, in the form of Zoe, or Life itself. And this means the Authorities of Darkness despise her in their jealousy. This insight is crucial. I personally believe this insight cuts to be the very hear...

It would be possible to see in Achilles the Dionysiac strain, a passion for destruction growing out of a hatred for the destructibility of all things; and in Hector, the Apollonian part, the will toward preservation growing out of love for human achievements in their vulnerability. ~Rachel Bespaloff =-=-= “The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.” ― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities =-=-= KAPELA : Just look  above  you. Do you see? That is called the immense board of  lights . And there is ...

So based on the last post's discussion of Enchanted Worlds and Sense of Wonder, how do you put those in a campaign setting inspired by White Star that has both fantasy and science fiction aspects? One of my first thoughts, in line with the "Jedi" of White Star, was the cave Luke has a vision of Vader in. Does the cave draw out his fears and hatreds thanks to some kind of psionic "enchantment" put there by Yoda? Maybe not, but it is that kind of plausibly deniable Weird that can work in a science fantasy setting that doesn't want to have full blown magic users in the Present. True Detective Season 1 would be an arguably better example, but not if you want to have a bit of magic via psionics in there. Twin Peaks is another possible example so long as the White/Black Lodge is a place not actually accessible otherwise you're entering Doom territory. That said, hinting that something like Doom's narrative happened and demons obliterated a whole civil...