Thy Fearful Symmetry (Arise Ye Wretched)

A poſt that has been sitting in my drafts for a while.  

 

Sword Tigers

Their coats are the white of ice floes and the black of the deep still waters that sluice between. Red-eyed, like cheetahs, with a strange solemn mien. They speak, naturally—both the crooning purrs that they use to communicate from afar, tuning the resonance of their voices just right to echo off the glaciers and dells and reach astonishing distances, and the voice they put on to speak to humans, baritone and deeply pleasing to the ear, with an inexplicable Ysjan accent. The men all sound like the narrator guy from Disco Elysium, and the women all sound like Estelle. They have no opposable thumbs, but their tails are prehensile, and remarkably strong.

They are wise animals, with a material culture and complex societal norms. Their chief cultural preoccupation is with swords and sharpness. Their central myth-cycle centers around ancestor-worship of their revered sabertooth'd predecessors, and they seek to emulate them by arming themselves with long blades and hide armor. Antemuralia's dearth of metal resources and their own limited manual dexterity forced them to work with bone, chunks of flint, and traded obsidian, and consequently they got very, very good at knapping with their tails. An authentic tiger-knapped knife is a classic luxury souvenir item in the austral parts of the Upper World.

Since the 98th century, trade and the increasing presence of humans in Antemuralia has given them access to new options. The first metal swords and fang-covers were obtained by exchanging pelts and claw-scrimshawed bones with the Dagger Islands; later, as the colony steamers rolled in, they began to take a more adversarial view. A considerable percentage of the tiger streaks adopted the practice of thrall-taking (well-educated in the matter by the colonists, who came with their own Pythian and Chthon slaves and indentures), staging lightning-fast raids on the settlers and pressing their captives into working looted metal according to their specifications. 

Certain successful guerillas amassed enough power and personal honor through this practice to become de facto warlords, and brought about such innovations as the first autochthonous-Antemuralian postal service, a standardized system of weights and measures (based on "strides"), and a comprehensive cartographic survey of Inner Antemuralia that remained the standard item of reference for hexographers until 9912. The image of these fierce tiger-lords provoked a fairly standard mix of repulsion and fascination on the Continent—newspapers ran constant articles about them, and lurid tiger imagery was a common fixation in high Exocoronal art. Indeed, the greatest of these noble and terrible fighters, a tigress known to the settlers as "Black Valorine" (for her coat was all-black, in truth because of congenital melanism, but commonly believed to have been burnt by a colonist's firebomb in the displacement of her streak from their home turf) was said to be so humble in her conduct and forthright in her conversation that many of her captives swore unforced oaths of true loyalty to her, and were manumitted to serve as huskarls and ashigaru in her irregular army.

Unfortunately, as it so often goes, martial excellence and fighting spirit proved ultimately insufficient in the face of the finest new slaughterguns from the Ballistree works. Though the tigrish insurgency was never truly defeated, the warriors were forced further and further into the hinterlands and, deprived of a ready source of new slave-labor and unable to keep their existing labor-pool in good health through the frigid winter, their metal industry collapsed and their actionism was limited to ambushing expeditionary groups and stymying cable-laying projects in Inner Antemuralia. Black Valorine herself led her “Free Army” in a final, doomed offensive against the settlers, and reached as far as Siglithe before being reportedly gunned down in a blaze of glory, though rumors of her unlikely survival immediately sprung up and didn’t really die down until her life expectancy had passed thrice over. 

The tiger-lords left behind a complex and controversial legacy. Many invoke them as symbols of unrelenting anticolonial resistance, and celebrate their bravery and their victories over the Continental settlers; on the other hand, their heavy reliance on slave-labor and the naked profiteering of some of the less-scrupulous guerilla leaders leaves an undeniable sour taste in the mouths of even the most ardent Anticontinentalist. 

Doing Classic Monsters Good: Medusa

Medusas

HD: 2*

AC: 12

Movement: Pedestrian

Attacks: Seething mass of snakes on her head can lash out and strike within arm's reach, dealing 1d4 and forcing a Save vs. Poison; -4 to Hit against armored opponents. Otherwise, as an ordinary human, using whatever tools she has available.

Special: Those who gaze upon the Medusa must Save vs. Petrification. This process begins as paralysis—particularly in the face and eye muscles, preventing manual operation of the eyelids—and takes 2 rounds. If line-of-sight is interrupted in the first round, the victim is restored to mobility within an exploration turn; if in the second round, they remain paralyzed until washed in spring or river water.

Behavior & Notes: The primary change or refinement here is to not turn her into a tank. The interesting thing with the Medusa is that when you realize you're up against a Medusa you're basically in a standoff position where you can't risk opening your eyes and so are limited by blindness and the resultant difficulty of coordinating, but if you stay in formation and prepare to strike anything that approaches then the Medusa can't really risk getting into weapons range. Giving her a boatload of HD as D&Ds tend to do kind of breaks this symmetry and gives the Medusa little reason to avoid close combat, which removes the most interesting part of her, which is that she's very old and very cunning and very tragic, and she knows this, and knows how to manipulate would-be heroes. 

She's also very aware of the fact that many are under the impression that her petrification only takes effect on eye contact, and will happily exploit this fact.

The mirror trick works, but she's wary of it. She will often carry bottles of ink, smoking censers, or blindfolds to counter mirror attacks. In fact, she will often strategically position mirror emplacements in her lair to project her image from afar, allowing her to petrify without putting herself in harm's way. 

A Medusa is a person-type monster, meaning she's a person. She could probably learn to become a Fighter-type or, Buddha help us all, a Magic-User. You know, it would actually kind of make sense for Projected Image to be a 6th-level spell if that image also petrified people.  

 

 

 

Notes on Hexen Fashion

 Common fabrics: linen, cotton, tweed, satin, corduroy - cords commonly used kind of like denim, a ubiquitous hard-wearing fashion perennial, common colors russet, olive drab, charcoal, dusty rose, indigo. Cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver are still in circulation. More complex alchemically treated metallics are seen as very modern, very neon—cloth-of-bismuth is a current fave amongst the urban youth set. 

Shirtwaists common - primarily worn by women, but a certain kind of metrosexual man might don one on occasion. Cravats, sometimes with lace, gauze, tulle, or satin ruffles, still rule the neckline, but are beginning to face encroachment from rising turtlenecks. Elaborately knotted ties and jewelry worn at the hollow of the throat at formal occasions.

Silk slip underclothes - dudou style. No particular reason, I just think they look cool. 

What we think of as the Western-style business suit coexists in about equal measures to the Nehru pattern, though of course it isn't called that in the Hex. Brocade and damask are still used by the very traditional and very chic.

The current style is small pant, big jacket or vice-versa, and slim-under-baggy. Earth and jewel tones are on trend. Fitted high-necked bodysuits, often elaborately printed, worn under overalls or short puffed jackets. Pants are currently predominantly slim and high-waisted; skirts pencil-thin or pleated, but stiff or padded volumizing underskirts or rag liners are still worn to give a more dominant silhouette, in the same way that shoulder pads are used for tops. The overall style leans top-heavy, but those looking to invert the form might wear tight tops tucked into flared overalls, parachute pants, or sirwal. 

Cross-collared over-robes—think kimono and kosode—were in in the '70s but are considered outdated. They were a lot more colorful back then too. Subcultural dress associated with the popular musical act The Rainbow Brigade; fans are called "brigs" and wore flowing coats and robes over cords. Now we see a lot of darker colors: maroons, forest-greens, navy-blues. 

Frogging! Frogging in all sorts of colors and lusters. I think frogging is fun. 

Hats? The alewife hat (a stereotypical pointed, broad-brimmed "witch hat") is always in style. Berets, naturally. Something akin to the baseball hat, a tight, stiff-billed skullcap with an adjustable buckle tie in the back. The plumed slouch or cavalier hat maintains a knightly and bushidic association. The gat (the Korean hat, not the slang term for handgun) is popular amongst the youth set, while the cloche and pillbox still rule high-class women's millinery. The billed kepi is strongly associated with military and the gendarmerie. 

Flapper-type diadems and fillets? Why not. Sometimes jeweled, sometimes plain, sometimes terrycloth for sporting occasions - unisex, for sure. Sometimes with the hanging diadem. Why shouldn't men wear funny things around their foreheads?  

I think we probably see a lot of fake and real spectacles. The eye, perception and knowledge, etc... are recurring themes in the setting, so there's a lot of fancy and "interesting" designs for both shades and regulars. Mirrorshades particularly significant, militant or dangerous implication - they reflect gaze attacks back. Lots of people wearing non-prescription lenses for fashion reasons. Makeup looks center the eyes, a "classic" smokey eye with a nude lip and light contouring along the cheekbones and nose-bridge to create a gaunter, sharper look is actually quite traditional and old-fashioned, the kind of thing worn by serious people wanting to look serious. Bringing pastels, glitters, and shines into the mix makes it more modern. Color on the lips is considered a bit more fashionable and scandalous - just as in clothing, metallics are very flash and now. 

Hair is big. That's one 80s affectation we can't quite get rid of. The perm is in, baby. Pearl and rhinestone hairnets are too. 

I'm tired. I think this is enough? 

I'll add art later. 

 

 

Doing Classic Monsters Good: Dragon

 Over the years, I've played a lot of D&D, and thought more about D&D. I wanted to take a real run at making a version of classic monsters that takes what I know about how encounters with these guys tend to play out (both the theorycrafted encounters GMs imagine when they decide to place a dragon on the map, and the actual ones that players have in real games) and using that to apply a rigorous lens to monster design. 

Source: Samantha Mash, I think.

Dragons

HD: 8-12

AC: 20

Movement: Flight as a B-17 Flying Fortress with VTOL capabilities. On land, like a Tyrannosaurus Rex—a bit lumbering, but with long strides.  

Attacks: Two claws and a bite or a tail whip, depending on orientation. Saber-sharp claws deal 2d8 damage each; a bite does 3d6 damage, inflicting an elemental effect on hit if a breath attack was used in the previous rounds. The dragon can forego damage with either of these attacks to initiate a grapple; they can deal damage without fail until the grapple is broken. A tail whip does 1d10 damage.  

Special: Breath attack deals 1d6 damage of the appropriate element per HD, Save for half, usable 3-5 times, depending on type, before needing to eat to refuel—roll 1d4-1 or 1d6-1 to determine remaining uses if encountered outside of lair. Dragonhide is particularly magic-resistant, giving a +4 to Saves vs. Spells—tanned and turned into armor, it is as leather or maille +1 and gives a lesser +2 bonus. A dragon is totally immune to their associated element.

Behavior: When hunting or battling non-dragons, they will fly and strafe using their breath weapon. They will not land and will always attempt to remain at standoff range—this applies regardless of the dragon's intelligence, as they are canny apex predators and do not put themselves in harm's way when unnecessary. 

Against other dragons of the same color, they will land, perform a one-round threat display, and then pounce to display prowess with their claws and teeth. Exposure to elemental phenomena of breath-weapon proportion can trigger those instincts; dragons who have cultivated advanced intelligence may test Morale to master their impulses, but even the coolest mind can be tickled by the right blend of hormones. 

They will generally publicly defer to dragons of superior color, since a fight between dragons who are not immune to one another's breath weapons is a brief and terrible thing. Amongst intelligent dragons, the rare interchromatic disputes will typically be settled by a ritualized display of claw-and-tail combat, with heavy iron muzzle-helms used to prevent breath weapon release; dragons are very sore losers, mostly because of how infrequently they tend to lose.

Dragons, like humans, can advance their destiny by collecting loot from dungeons. This is why you see them in there—most often sables and blues, since they've got the sinuous form-factor necessary to squeeze through narrow corridors. While it's believed that their looting mediates their progression through the chroma, in truth, the vast majority of their XP goes to developing sentience. Rich dragons are also wise dragons—though whether they bend that wisdom to good or ill is just as much left to karma as it in humans.

Colors

They change color as they age, or perhaps as they collect treasure or consume enriched flesh and occulted minerals. Color determines their HD, size, and elemental affinity. 

White dragons are the least of their kin - they have HD 8 and prefer subarctic climes, where it is easier to cool the ferocious internal heat generated by firing their breath weapon. Their breath is a Cone of Cold with 3 uses which strikes in a 30' wide, 80' long cone—roughly 20°. They are chunky and padded, with almost leopard-seal-like heads. 

Black dragons are the ugly ducklings - they have HD 9 and wallow in bogs. Their breath is an Acid Arrow with 3 uses which strikes in a 5' wide and 120' long line, penetrating unproofed solids. Somewhat uniquely, their breath-effect is reversible, like some spells—fen-dwelling specimens have been recorded using Alkaline Arrows instead. They are coal-dark and sleek, fronds of external gills flapping at the edges of their long, dripping, crocodilian maws.   

Green dragons are the first "mature" stage, preferring to dwell in forests and plains - though, in truth, at HD 10 their superiority over their lesser cousins is only a hair's-breadth. Their breath is a Cloudkill with 5 uses which creates a cloud 50'x50' wide and 20' tall. The cloud can drift up to 10' forward per round in absence of wind; it may only damage any particular target once. They are raptorial and fierce like a long-limbed dinosaurus. Their scales finally acquire a more familiar reptilian quality, along with a subtle jadeite luster that make this beast's hide a kingly gift.  

Blue dragons are the most esoteric, and most perplexing to draconologists - they have HD 11 and prefer environments conducive to the accumulation of static electricity - they love dusts, sands, clouds, and odd meteorological phenomena. Their breath is a Lightning Bolt with 5 uses which strikes in a 60' line between two points within 180'. "How can this be,"  you may ask, noticing that their "breath" doesn't have to actually come from their mouth. Well, it's a bit of a misnomer - they actually grow spiraling coppery horns, each serving to designate the origin of one end of the bolt. Besides this, their bodies are indigo and aventurescent. 

Red dragons are HD 12 and shoot Fireballs. 

An Aside

I decided to unify the dragon breaths with the standard range of 3rd-level M-U scaling damage options, taking some liberties of course. Cone of Cold and Acid Arrow are conceptually taken from AD&D; Cloudkill is an existing spell that fulfills a similar purpose (AoE massacre) but with a different mechanic. I don't see any reason why they can't all be unified under a standard Xd6 system. 

Incidentally, I'm very focused on these spells because, with some close examination, it becomes apparent that Fireball and Lightning Bolt are some of the only sources of pure level-scaling damage in some of the old D&Ds. Being able to do 5d6 damage in a B/X type context the moment you get the spell is pretty insane—that kind of damage roll is usually monster territory, and high level at that. I don't think it's bad that magicians get this kind of firepower, but I think this should kind of maybe be the pinnacle of what an offense-oriented mage should be able to bust out at a moment's notice. I also think there's a strong argument to be made that Fireball is much stronger than Wall of Fire in the text, making the latter's traditional higher level perplexing. In any case, if they're already getting that kind of firepower, you might as well give them more spells to choose from so that you're not just seeing the same two big blasts over and over.

There's a lot of oddities around this kind of stuff that is traditionally ignored on the basis that "balance" is for corporate shills and losers or whatever, but I like to think of it more as refinement. It's nice for the system to make sense, and decisions made by the original creators are not always better than the ones we make with the benefit of retrospect. 

That isn't to say that I endorse the whig history narrative of D&D where each subsequent edition is "more evolved"; far from it. I am not saying that Monte Cook or Jeremy Whatever can improve on D&D, I'm saying I can improve on D&D. My sin is hubris, not teleological historiography. 

In any case, were I to use these dragons, I'd also define the spells Fireball, Cone of Cold, Acid Arrow, Lightning Bolt, and Cloudkill as creating an instance of the dragon's breath.

Other Stuff 

Thanks to my childhood playing Runescape and the ubiquity of the dragonfire-resistant shield in that game (though in that case it was because you could get it for free from the Dragon Slayer quest giver and, unlike most shields available to low-level players, had no penalties to missile and magic combat), I tend to think the idea of such a specialty defense is pretty neat.   

Food for thought, and maybe the next post - Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress have proven that games where you fuck around with tunnel-type environments on a square grid are pretty fun. We tend to design dungeons on a square grid. What would a game with more abundant access to map-manipulation look like; it could be as simple as making Passwall and Wall of Stone lower-level spells than they presently are. Honestly, this whole spell levels thing is kind of stupid. I have been applying a similarly critical eye to the spellcasters available in your standard D&Doid thing, and am cooking. Watch this space, I guess. 

Resurrection Magic (GLAVGVST)

 For my lovely Purple.

Having recently finally graduated in the humanities, I find myself experiencing a curious atavistic upswell of my old STEMbrained interests kicking in. Along with trying to figure out how to make Minecraft datapacks (despite the fact that I don't actually play much MC at all and never have—it's more of a hubris thing than anything else) I've been dusting off my old physics education a bit. You may have read my previous brief ramblings on the subject of just how sophisticated the modern basic sciences have gotten and how much wonder and terror can be mined from that. 

Dark Matter Sidebar

 

This was initially a sidebar in a larger post about Hexen arcanophysics and the current state of resurrection magic, but I realized it was far too in-depth to be a functional aside, so I've split it into its own thing. I've recently been having a bit of a STEMgirl renaissance, dusting off my old physics education and catching up on what's new in the inhumanities, and this is me making a post addressing one of my personal bugbears that has been poking at me for years now.

I've heard comparison from multiple people over the years between dark matter and the crystalline spheres hypothesis. A common sentiment I've heard from various people who I respect very much intellectually is that dark matter is probably just the physicists having the math wrong or thinking of the problem in a reasonable but fundamentally flawed way that won't be cracked until some big-brain lady makes the necessary correction. I guess I see the logic, a lot of intractable problems in physics before turned out to be resolved with a big paradigm shift (c.f. relativity, quantum mechanics, etc...). 

The problem with this line of thinking, in my opinion, is that physicists do not claim to know what dark matter is, or even that it exists. "Dark matter" means that we have this system of physics called General Relativity, and it's really good, and it solves nearly all large-scale phenomena we plug into it with stunning accuracy, and where it's wrong it can often (usually? I'm hedging my words here but 'usually' sounds about right) be made to agree with observations by inputting extra mass into our equations that cannot presently be observed with telescopes. This mass behaves like mass in most ways, including being found in different densities and quantities in different galaxies like you might expect physical stuff to be, but our telescopes can't see it. 

We mostly use light in various forms (including radio, infrared, x-rays, etc...) to look at outer space so the notion that there might be some actual physical stuff there that just does not interact with the electromagnetic force (and by extension photons) is pretty popular just by, like, Occam's Razor, but it's not a conclusive claim anyone is able to make. Particle theories of dark matter are popular because particle physics has been remarkably successful in the past century, and particle colliders have been a very successful, albeit expensive, type of experimental setup which opens the possibility that if dark matter really is some kind of particle we might just be able to make it at home and see what it does, and because GR's failure at the particle scale and the Standard Model's failure at the interstellar scale is an open question in physics that everyone wants to solve. But also, it's important to remember that the Standard Model is largely a theory of very very very small things and General Relativity is a theory of very very very big things, so the disagreements are more of a theoretical problem than a pragmatic one, since their areas of strength don't overlap very much. 

So what about the crystal spheres thing? What if the math is just wrong and everyone's barking up the wrong tree? Well, there's physicists who argue that too, and are currently working to try to "correct the math" and find some new formulation of gravity that will account for dark matter without needing to actually posit the existence of extra invisible stuff. The thing is that when someone just says "I bet the physicists are all wrong" on Discord they can just go on with their life, whereas when a physicist says that they have to actually prove it, and unfortunately it turns out that the idea of inventing a new math that explains all our previous results and the "dark matter" observations is very easy to just say aloud and very very difficult to do in a way that stands up to scrutiny. If someone makes a sweeping observation to their friends about the state of the hardest unsolved problems in the field right now they just have to sound right; if you are a physicist making that claim professionally, you actually have to be right. 

There are people working their hardest at that, and I wish them the best of luck, but unfortunately they have yet to succeed in a way that outperforms vanilla General Relativity w/ dark matter corrections—they can explain some stuff, but not all the stuff, and to be able to conclusively say you're right rather than just that your research is promising you need to be able to explain everything - or, at least, everything we can already explain with our existing theories. These guys are usually able to make equations to explain observations from like one or two galaxies, and don't get me wrong that's really cool, but nothing close to a working universal theory of gravitation that does away with dark matter has been invented. Maybe something will come up! Who knows! But the people in the field are by and large not chasing that as the most likely possibility, and it's not because of a failure of imagination. 

I'd bet my bottom dollar that like half of all working theorists have some wacky personal theory of dark matter that they only ever bring up when deep in their drinks and shooting the shit with friends about the big questions, but they also generally have the good sense not to stake their professional reputations on it unless they have a very good reason to believe it's anything other than a hunch. That's not just them being risk-averse and uncreative and refusing to look out the telescope like Galileo etc..., it's a very reasonable precaution against becoming the next cold fusion guys. People come up with zany ideas all the time, it's just that 90% of them get filtered out once you do the back-of-the-envelope calculations, and 90% of the survivors get filtered out once you realize there's no experimental setup that could possibly test it, and then 90% of those get filtered out when people realize that if they talk too much about it in public they run the risk of Twitter picking up some noncommittal statement about their research and running it into a boom-bust hype cycle with a huge media circus around some big breakthrough that predictably fails to produce any usable results because of a lack of applicable experiment or a failure to replicate. 

I probably won't go around posting this on blogrolls and will just keep it in the back pocket for if I ever get into this discussion with someone again. Hope you enjoyed my little science hour :) 

By ESA/Hubble & NASA; D. Carter (LJMU) Acknowledgement: Nick Rose - http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1402a/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30673266

 

HEXBOL

 What do the lumpen masses like? What silly gadgets and hypnotic amusements draw their attention away from the Great Works to be done? Where, you ask, is the mass moving?

In honor of the conclusion of the World Cup and the failure of football to come home for the fifteenth consecutive time, I give you:  

Football

This one is pretty much the same as the existing one, actually. Given the mass popularity of the existing game I can only assume that it was a matter of time before someone invented it on the Hex and it probably got about as popular. 

A brief digression on football: the game was not built for VAR, it is an abomination and it is the devil's work (when not used in moderation). The rules of the game were built by humans with eyeballs for other humans with eyeballs. When the rule says "you can't be offsides" the thing it is trying to prevent is a degenerate (in the math-y sense) strategy where you just park your best striker in the opponent's box and feed them long passes. If you were allowed to do this the scores would be really high I bet, football'd become a high-scoring game like basketball, which would be interesting but not really the thing we're going for usually. 

 What it is not particularly intended to prevent, though, is a guy's hand being outstretched past the line of the last defender. Like, be so for real right now, if you're reading this blog you're a game nerd and like to think about rules and what purpose they serve—do you genuinely think that there is enough "unfair" advantage garnered from a guy's hand being outstretched such that it is slightly closer to the opponent's goal than the furthest-back body-part of the last defender that it's worth revoking a goal over? 

The thing is when you have a human referee with human judgment then these kind of things aren't as relevant because these tiny little fractional differences are neither detectable nor really worth pursuing. It's like how cops almost always ignore you jaywalking even though it's technically illegal in most places, and we're all better off for it. By the way, "jaywalking" was a psyop by the millionaire robber baron automobile clubs who were responsible for the conquest and depopulation of the streets to make way for the automotive. Rules designed for the eye actually break down when enforced with machine precision. I guess this is broadly the same thing that prevents CRPGs from achieving what TTRPGs do.

Anyways, on the Hex it's played in 12-person teams, internationally gender-desegregated (though adoption of that particular reform has been patchy at the club level), and in addition to yellow and red cards there are also green, blue, black, white, and the dreaded infrared card, only issued for the most heinous of infractions and enough to warrant you a lifetime ban in all but the seediest leagues.

It's often colloquially called the hideous game. This isn't because people find it aesthetically unpleasant or anything, it's just that at the time it got really big "hideous" was a really big youth culture slang term, like how we call things "sick" or "ill" or say we have "landed a baddie," etc..., and it stuck. Oops! 

I can't find my tablet pen so picture a guy kicking an orb or smth