Inception and D&D Cosmology

Rewatching Inception on blu-ray this weekend I thought of another way some of the film's concepts might inform an rpg setting. Its portrayal of descent through “levels" of dream got me thinking how that might be applied to the standard model of AD&D cosmology.

First, you’d have to take the occult/mystic view that the multiverse beyond the Prime Material is largely a conceptual or spiritual place. The macrocosm (all that is) is reflected, perhaps even encompassed, in the microcosm of a human being. This is hardly a new view, but a different from D&D’s more mechanistic approach.

If the planes aren’t necessarily physical places in the usual sense, but more like states of consciousness or spiritual planes, they’re probably mostly reachable by astral projection, mental/spirit travel, or the like. Travelers’ bodies are left behind in the semblance of sleep.

The first stop would be the astral plane. This area would be malleable (to a degree) to the mind of an experienced traveler. Maybe it also impinges on dreams so random dream stuff is here that can be utilized. The distance through here to any “outer” plane might be a factor of attunement to that planes dominant emotion/ethos/mind-set, or maybe it has to do with some other factor.

Like dream-levels in Inception, I think it would be cool if time ran different in each planar level. The further from the Prime Materal, the “slower” time runs. The astral is only a little slower than the Prime, but in Hell things seem to last forever.

Anyway, that might mean that while each outer plane has a particular theme or character, it will be filtered through the consciousness of the traveler. Everybody gets his own heaven and hell--and nirvana, or whatever. I don’t know how that would work for a party. Maybe the lead traveler would have the biggest influence, but if they split up, individuals would gradually find themselves in very different realms. Of course, maybe the planes are sentient too--iconic representatives, after a fashion, of certain ideas. Maybe they assert their own influence which establishes the broad strokes of their appearances.

Anyway, I think you can see where I’m going with this. I suppose this idea might work better in a modern occult game or something like that, but I see it as playable with traditional fantasy, too. Characters (or players) need not have a real understanding of how the planes operate for them to work this way. In fact, it might be more interesting if they didn’t.

The Night Mail

The New World depends on the timely delivery mail of over large distances. Unfortunately, large swathes of the continent are mostly unsettled, only cut by lone railways, or haphazard auto trails. Bandits, hostile Native tribes, and wandering monsters still harry travellers in much the West, while malevolent storms and ravenous zombies menace the Dustlands. The skies have often become the best option.

The Union has a postal service, but it relies on private contractors to carry air mail. Many of these companies are small operations, or even sole propietorships. The pilots are typically recruited from the ranks of barnstorming daredevils or veterans of the Great War. Their planes are often rickety and aging, held together by paint and wishful thinking.

The larger, or more reckless, operations run night and day. Coast-to-coast routes can be flown by most carriers in around 30 hours, pilots staying awake with black coffee and alchemical stimulants. Larger (and much more expensive) planes can make the trip in less than twenty. The smaller planes go from the City to San Tiburon in jumps--making deliveries in the Steel League, Lake City, and some Western cow-towns along the way.

That's assuming the planes make it safely. Aviation is a dangerous business in the best of conditions, and conditions are seldom the best. Thunderbirds hunt western skies, wings crackling with St. Elmo’s fire, riding the storms their presence invokes. Air-bandits strike from mountain hideouts, or (it’s rumored) cloud-hidden flying fortresses, to down and loot commercial planes. The whispered come-ons of slyphs seduce lonely aviators to their doom. Elemental storms smash aircraft out of spite.

Then there’s the strange fauna of the upper air. Eerily translucent, gelatinous predators, like something out the ocean depths, which drift downward in response to air vibrations, and almost certainly, magical energies.

Thamaturgical enhancements can, and have, improved aircraft engines and systems, but their use is limited for safety reasons. Magic energies tend to attract dangerous para-elementals of lightning (or electricity)--entities called gremlins or glitches by those in aviation. Their very nature disrupts electrical equipment; and their chaotic anti-potential can disrupt mechanical devices, and react with thamaturgical equipment in unpredictable ways.

Their presence interacts with the human mind, too. Pilots who have suffered gremlin attacks often report hallucinating outlandish, colorful, diminutive creatures--if they survive the encounter.

The Structures of Magical Revolutions

We’re all familiar with the advance of technology and the shifting--sometimes radically--of scientific ideas. The ether theory gave way to special relativity; the bow gave way to the gun. So why is it we seldom see any advancements in the technology of magic, or magical paradigm shifts, in rpg settings?

Not that magic isn’t shown as changing over time, but it's almost always a fall from a more advanced state, even a golden age, to its current one. Mostly, though, this seems to just a change from more magic to less. Sure, this gives a convenient rationale for ancient magical ruins and magical items laying around, but there are other explanations for that stuff, surely.

Why can’t magic missiles be more powerful today than 100 years ago? Maybe old spells have completely fallen by the wayside due to improve defenses (maybe, though, those defenses have been lost too?). Or how about old magical theories giving way to the radical new theories of a Magus Einstein? Different magical schools/styles need not be equally valid views that just add “color”, one could be more true than the other. What would that even mean: more powerful spells? shorter casting times? higher levels attainable? bragging rights in the outer planes?

Anyway, its something to think about: What are the structures of magical revolutions?

Crime & Amusement

A covert war is being fought along the boardwalk, and in the places of amusement, on Lapin Isle on the southeastern coast of the City. The war is between two lords (or one lord and one lady) of petty crime. The stakes are the illicit earnings from all the beach’s pick-pockets, quick-grab artists, petty confidence tricksters, and part-time prostitutes. Neither of these would-be kingpins are human, but are, in fact, coin-operated fortune telling machines.

In the middle of the boardwalk, a penny arcade is the domain of Mister Chax, the All-Knowing Homonculus. Inside his glass case, Mister Chax appears as a ventriloquists dummy in a natty suit with dead (yet still too-knowing) eyes and a leering, plastered grin beneath a pencil-thin moustache. His communications come on cards, neatly printed and filligreed. Chax’s gang is mostly scruffy urchins who seem innocuous when encountered singularly, but sinister in packs. They speak in a ridiculous child-argot never completely intelligible to adults, without magical aide. Some of them are very large for their age.

Chax also has been known to employ inky, spider-things the size of wharf rats with almost human faces and derisive, whispering voices. Their bites cause painful pustules and nightmares.

Mister Chax’s rival can be found in a novelty shop near the entrance to Lunar Rabbit Park. Her glass case gives her name as Grisselda, but her followers--her “ducklings”--call her “auntie” or “great aunt.” Grisselda appears as an old woman, like an Old World grandmother. She tells fortunes by the use of playing cards, and this is also the way she communicates with her followers. These are mostly young girls, either in their teens or early twenties, who dress like prim young ladies, perhaps on a church trip. Their dainty purses hide switchblades, maybe pocket revolvers, and nasty, back-alley magic items. The cryptic meanings of Grisselda’s cards are interpreted by an oracle. She's a girl a little older than Auntie's standard soldier, with eyes older still, and porcelain skin. She typically dresses like an aspiring torch-singer, and smokes a cigarette through a holder. Her name is always Esme.

Chax and Grisselda try to keep their war sotto voce. They have no wish to attract the authorities, but also no wish to draw the interest of the malign godling of Lapin Isle, the dark personification of the rabbit in the moon; the thing like a man in a bunny suit that is not a man.

Warlord Wednesday: The Back-Ups Are Back

For the majority of issues 29-88, Warlord featured a back-up story. Let's take a look at another couple of the series featured there in:

CLAW THE UNCONQUERED
First Appearance: Claw the Unconquered #1 (1975)
Last Pre-Warlord Appearance: Claw the Unconquered #10 (1978)
Featured as Back-up: Warlord #48-49
Next Seen: Wonder Woman #21 (2008)
His Story: Claw is a barbaric warrior from the world of Pytharia who has the right hand of a demon thanks to a curse.  Claw recently got a revival at Wildstorm and a crossover with Red Sonja.
How He's Like the Warlord: he's a sword-wielding tough-guy in a fantasy world.

THE BARREN EARTH
First Appearance: Warlord #63 (1982)
Featured as Back-up: Warlord #63-88
Next Seen: Conqueror of the Barren Earth #1 (1985)
Its Story: The Barren Earth is really just plain old Earth--only in the far future after the Sun has become a red giant.  Jinal Ne'Comarr (our heroine) is a human from intergalatic space on a mision to reclaim mankind's homeworld in her civilization's war with the alien Qlov.  The Barren Earth graduated from back-up status to a limited series...and then it was gone.
How She's Like the Warlord: Jinal swings a sword (well, an energy blade) and carries a gun.  She's from a more advanced culture hanging out in a primitive one amid the remnants of advanced technology.

Clipped in the City

Here, once again, are a few pictures from various periodicals published in the City, and their accompaning headlines:

ROGUE AUTOMATON MENACES CITY

A novelty automaton from a boardwalk attraction inexplicably began to rob patrons at gunpoint.  Where the automaton got the gun has yet to be discovered.

ARMED GIANT ON CRIME SPREE IN FREEDONIA

Across the plains of central Freedonia, authorities are chasing an armored giant (likely a hillybilly giant, but possible a golem) responisble for the robbery of several banks and at least one train.

SORCERER PREFERS BLONDES

A cadre of adventures rescued women kidnapped by a rogue thaumaturge before he could preform the ritual he presumably had planned.  Whatever their original hair color and style, all the women had been magical transformed to long-tressed, platinum blondes.  The women were unharmed by their fifteen hour ordeal, and in fact evidenced little emotion due to mesmerism.

Ideas I Wish I'd Had First

Recent travel and conference attendance has impaired my post writing and general blogosphere presence, but has given me time to read other stuff while in hotel rooms and airplanes. In finally getting around to reading China Mieville’s latest fantasy novel Kraken, I’ve found it has several cool ideas to steal for gaming.

Kraken is set in modern London and concerns a curators descent into the city’s occult underbelly after the theft of a specimen of giant squid. It’s a Tim Power-ish set up and story (in a way, so was Mieville’s last modern novel, The City and the City), I think, but written in Mieville’s distinct prose style.

Anyway, there are several good ideas in here that I wish I had thought of first. There is a general strike amongst magical familiars, being lead by the spirit of an ancient Egyptian shabti, who took part in an uprising against the dead they were meant to toil for in the after-life. There's the menacing duo (there are a lot of menacing duos in fiction, aren’t there?) Goss and Subby, who get into a magically protected house by having themselves folded up and mailed in a box.

Best so far, though, is Mieville’s description of the “memory angels” which guard various London museums:

“In the Museum of Childhood were three toys that came remorselessly for intruders--a hoop, a top, a broken video-game console--with stuttering creeping as if in stop-motion. With the wingbeat noise of cloth, the Victoria and Albert was patrolled by something like a chic predatory face of crumpled linen. In Tooting Bec, the London Sewing Machine Museum was kept safe by a dreadful angel made of tangles and bobbins and jouncing needles...”

If there's anything the City needs its genius loci like that!