Things That I Like: Cosmogonical Fiction

Things That I Like: Cosmogonical Fiction

What’s that, you may ask? Let’s start out with a few examples. Spoilers will be everywhere, so be warned.

Unknown Armies is a game that divides itself into three levels: street, global, and cosmic. In cosmic-level games, the players are trying to live their lives so as to imitate particular Archetypes strongly enough to ascend to a higher state of existence and become one of the 333 members of the Invisible Clergy. When their ranks are filled this universe will come to an end and a new one will be born under their direction.

Nexus War and its replacement Nexus Clash are a pair of browser-based MMORPGs that are about a conflict taking place after the end of the universe. The player characters are people taken from various worlds and points in the history of the last universe, and placed in a battlefield made partly of eternal planes and partly of post-apocalyptic flotsam. Their actions strengthen and weaken the various gods (and fixing things can be as useful as killing your god’s enemies, if he’s the craftsgod). The strongest god out of the nine will be the one who will exert the greatest amount of influence in creating the next universe. This will affect everything from how many spatial and temporal dimensions exist to how death works (or doesn’t) to how integral violence is to the very fabric of reality in that universe.

Homestuck is a really, really long webcomic (658,000 words and counting) that is, basically, about these kids who play a game called Sburb that sends them into another world. In the process this destroys Earth, and their actions in this other world will contribute to the creation of a whole new universe.

A Dry, Quiet War is a bit off from the others in that there is a war at the end of time— it’s literally called “the Big War at the End of Time”— but it isn’t being fought to determine the nature of the next universe. Rather, in crazy stable time loop shenanigans, the war is being fought in order to determine the nature of this universe. As Colonel Bone explains, “In the future, we won. I won, my command won it. Really, really big. That’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re all here.”

What do these have in common?

There is a conflict being fought by persons or groups. They may be fighting each other, as in Unknown Armies and Nexus War, or against the environment or another group which has no chance of influencing the universe, as in Homestuck, where the Dersites can only prevent the creation of the new universe, not twist it to their own aims.

The conflict generally involves an amount of violence, but violence typically isn’t the only factor. 

• In Unknown Armies you have to act in a way that befits your Archetype, and acting against this can actually reduce your power.
• In Homestuck, catching frogs is one of most important tasks out there, and building houses is also a pretty big thing.
• As mentioned before, in the Nexus games something as simple as repairing or building a door can help out your side.

The participants generally ascend to greater power in the course of events, whether or not they are directly responsible for creating the new universe or merely facilitating it:

• Characters in Unknown Armies gain godlike powers.
• In Homestuck, Sburb’s players have the potential to ascend to the “god tiers” and get other abilities along the way,
• The champions of the Elder Powers in the Nexus games can become angels, demons, vampires, and more.
• Those who fought in the Big War at the End of Time are almost like eldritch horrors by the end. Some of this is merely technological, such as how Colonel Bones’ nerves have been replaced by wires, but then there’s stuff like how he kills somebody so that that the other guy is plain wiped from existence.

Finally, those involved may have to destroy this universe or a part of it in the process of creating the new one. Indeed, destruction is necessary in three of the above four, and in two of those the forces of creation are apparently convinced that they are an IKEA and all universes must go.

These stories are to be distinguished from games like Mage or Esoterrorists, or stories like Fritz Leiber’s Change War series because the nature of this reality is set in stone. Even if you’re fighting for this universe’s nature, as in A Dry, Quiet War, there’s really no hope of changing the outcome. You’re just fighting because you fought, and it’s impossible to change time no matter what, or there will be other reasons for you to fight, or breaking the time loop does bad things to you but to everybody else in the timeline-as-it-should-have-happened it’s as if nothing different went down (as in Homestuck but also as in The Men Who Murdered Mohammed).

What’s the point of writing all this out?

I think that these examples represent a legitimate pattern of story. Hence why I bothered to give them a name. But, and here’s a point, I had to give them a name. It’s a real pattern, but not one that’s been recognized yet. Probably because it is, I’ll freely admit, pretty minor.

But these can’t be the only stories of their kind. Are there any other examples that come to mind? Or common elements that I’ve missed?

(And does anyone think that it’s an interesting enough pattern to use for a story, or am I the only one?)

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Worldbuilding Wednesday: Parasite-Concepts from Alternate or Failed Universes

Wherein I take some time to expand a concept of mine and see how far I can take it. I have something like 50 pages of story ideas (just the ones I've sorted, moreover) and this will be an exercise in seeing how much potential they have. 

This one isn't so stream-of-consciousness, since I had some time to think about it before starting. Oops. I try to not do that, but sometimes it happens anyway. 

There are things that have been destroyed and written out of reality: histories that no longer happened, colors that don't exist anymore, emotions that nobody can experience now, lifeforms that never walked the Earth... Perhaps they're what was erased from the drawing board once God decided what would be included, or the remnants of dead universes, but they existed once and now they have ceased to exist so completely that for all intents and purposes they never existed. 

Except, they sort of do. Some of them, anyway. 

Worldbuilding Wednesday: Tiger-souled humans and mad scientist werewolves

Wherein I take some time to expand a concept of mine and see how far I can take it. I have something like 50 pages of story ideas (just the ones I've sorted, moreover) and this will be an exercise in seeing how much potential they have. 

The initial idea that I'm building this from is that our protagonist is a human with the soul of a jaguar... No, let's make that a tiger. That feels better. Yeah. I don't do enough with tigers lately.

So, human with a soul of a tiger. Shapeshifting is possibly, but it is really painful and against the natural order. Of course, having a mismatched soul like this is also against the natural order, but when you break one thing it's easier to break another.

Worldbuilding Wednesday: Alien Gods

Wherein I take an hour or two to expand a concept of mine and see how far I can take it. I have something like 50 pages of story ideas (just the ones I've sorted, moreover) and this will be an exercise in seeing how much potential they have. It's all basically stream of consciousness, thrown out as it occurs to me, with only some polishing at the end to make sure that everything is grammatically correct and I didn't leave any sentences incomplete.

If our beliefs produced gods, then do alien species have gods? This is a sort of Far Future Scion or American Gods kind of story, I suppose. It's about taking a not-uncommon premise from contemporary fantasy and melding it with science fiction.

So, let's do this.

Fiction: Selections from the Time Traveler's Dictionary

Unbirthday Party noun /ˌʌn·bɜrθˌdeɪ ˈpɑr·ti/
: The celebration of the unbinding of a Parricide. Celebrated every 3,650 decimal hours, along to her, his, or zir subjective stream.
: (obsolete) any day that is not one's birthday

Subjective stream noun /səbˈdʒek·tɪv strim/
: The course of events as according to the point of view an individual observer, rather than according to the point of view of a hypothetical objective observer. The subjective streams of two individuals may not coincide, such Event A may lie in the past of Observer A but in the future of Observer B, or even never happen at all. FROM timestream.

Decimal time noun /ˈdes·ə·məl tɑɪm/
: A timekeeping system in which there are ten hours to every day, one hundred minutes to every hour, &c. Used by Parricides in place of other systems.

Parricide noun /ˈpær.ɪ.saɪd/
: (slang) One who has been unbound. DERIVED from the stereotypical, though in reality uncommon, means of unbinding (viz. killing one's grandfather before he sired one's parent).
: the murder of a parent or other near relative
: someone who has committed parricide

Unbinding noun /ʌnˈbaɪndɪŋ/
: The act of achieving apotheosis through removing oneself from history. So-called because one is thereafter moves along time only as a matter of will (or has been unbound from time).


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Things That I Like: 4 Conflicts Between Order and Chaos

“In Michael Moorcock’s universe, a war is fought by two separate yet equally important groups: Law, which provides the fundamental capability of existence, and Chaos, which provides the ability for change and development. These are their stories.”

Awhile back I wrote a post with four moral dichotomies that were not so simple as “Good vs. Evil.” I mentioned that I would probably do an article specifically treating Order and Chaos and, what do you know, that day has come.

CYOA brainstorming: Fallen Paladin

What is this about?

Fall: God is Dead
Weapon: Vampiric morning star
Powers: Necromancy 2, friend to animals, charisma, resourceful, favored by demons, unholy strength, serpent's reflexes
Companion: Engineer
Residence: Airship

When a god dies, its paladins feel the agony. They feel its loss, and the abandonment. They know, intimately, the difference between the world as it is and the world as it once was and never will be again.

CYOA brainstorming: Evil Controller

What is this about?

Cause: Persistence
Favorite food: Bonds
Realm: Small town
Minions: 1 Individual, 6 Weak, 12 Shadows
Powers: Truly Alien, False Creation, Figments, Corruption, Ghost Sounds, Minor Telekinesis
Bonuses: Nomadic Realm
Drawbacks: Untouchable (may only feed on the innocent), Strong Victims

The Dragon goes to and fro across the face of the Earth. It insinuates itself into small towns and spreads to fill them up. And then, it feeds.

CYOA brainstorming: Otherworldly Land

What is this about?

You awoke in: Deep space
Its two hazards are: Unstable ground and anomalies
Your boon is: The nanite cloud
Its malfunction is: Diabolus ex machina
Your friends are: Automatons
Your two enemies are: Ascendants and cultists
Your escape plan is: Get to the exit
The problem is: Upheaval

Our protagonist awoke in a space station of some sort. A sprawling affair that seems to go on forever. Physical laws are prone to being bent or even broken here, and the superstructure is beginning to decay, so that floors may suddenly give out, walls collapse, or doors jam.

CYOA brainstorming: Battlemage (undead & acoustic)

What is this?

Abilities: Soul Seeker, Soul Companion, Soul Drain, Summon Undead, Empowered Undead, Army of the Dead, Aria, Hymn, Legato, In Rilievo, Elegy of Fragility, Staccato, Marcato
Skills: Charmer, Bocca Chiusa, Cappriccioso, Soul Ripper, Martyr, Thrall, Soul Gaze

Right off the bat, this is a necromancer who controls the dead through sound. Ze can't ever sleep. Ze can't ever talk, it's sign language only from here on out. Because ze must always, always be making the binary-like code that raises and controls the dead, a series of clicks with tongue and teeth that can never end.

CYOA brainstorming: Spooky Adventure

What is this about?

Form: Everyman (face in a crowd)
Immortality: Rebirth
Domain: Person
Powers: Cult, Extra Sustenance (Joy), Paralysis, Wanderer, Unbound, Durability, Voices
Weaknesses: Nocturnal, Monster Hunter

The Woathman has been hunting for a long time. Its origins, even its original sex, have been lost to history. The Brandons do not remember how it started, the first transformation from human to Woathman. A deal of Faustian proportions... a ritual gone wrong...

CYOA brainstorming: Mage

What is this about?

Mana Blue (wood & death)
Ideal Golem (petrified wood, bone, &c)
Order Illusionist
Specialties Celerity (primary); prestidigitation, necromancy, alchemy

Our character is alone. If there is magic elsewhere in the world, there are no other mages. Not even our character knows how this happened, and ze's long since given up on explaining zir existence.

CYOA brainstorming: Battlemage (flame & frost)

What is this about?

There are three of these sets, actually. We'll be playing with each one.

Oh, and let's ignore the cost for unlocking elements.

Abilities: Proximity shards, wall of ice, flash freeze, hydromancy, frost familiar, blaze, bonfire, molten flames, dragon fire
Skills: Frost weapons, obsidian ice, ember drinker, frost armor, heart of ice, beacon of cold, ice wings, kindle, flame armor, conflagration, phoenix

Alright. Interesting being this character is. Let's sort things out, shall we?

Equipment-wise, our character is outfitted with magical armor that is coated with tough ice. The ice adds weight but grows back over time, essentially repairing the armor. But another one of the skills grants increased agility, so let's rule that the armor makes the wearer faster but is a greater drain on stamina.

Also, the armor is the source for all these powers in the first place. Yeah.

The growth of the ice not only allows for repairs. The ice is also capable of sprouting tough, heavy wings. They're kind of feathery, save that the feathers are sharp icicles.

The ice can coat weapons as the armor-bearer desires but can also be used to create weapons. These are very thin and very lethal, not least because they drain heat from whatever they come in contact with.

The armor also sheds "droplets" of ice that grow into small spheres and float behind the armor-bearer. They can be directed to stay behind as well but fall apart if they are left too far behind. They can be made to explode with a thought or under specific circumstances (such as when touched), or be fused together to create walls or even sentient elemental servants.

Finally, the ice can be broken into fragments and "infect" bodies of water." Splinters of ice can control small amounts of water so that, with enough ice, the bearer of the armor can control even entire lakes.

The armor's ice is almost impossible to melt, having no difficulties even in temperatures of up to eighty degrees, but proximity is important. Ice that is left behind becomes more susceptible to heat, as normal.

The armor is a means for long life, above all else. The cold feeds the armor, increasing stamina, so that in sufficiently cold circumstances the bearer doesn't have to worry about getting tired. But heat sources (that are not created by the armor) can do the same thing. It's mild temperatures, ones that are no more than "a little uncomfortable" to others, that are disadvantageous for one that wears the armor. And should the bearer of the armor die, zir body will be burnt to ashes, from which ze will be reborn on the next day. But that should generally be unnecessary, because this same regenerative quality can be made manifest with healing flames. Or, you know, the armor can just make ordinary burn-things-up flames that are much, much hotter than normal.

It can uncomfortable to be around the armor-bearer. Temperatures can be raised or lowered with little effort.

Okay. I'll be the first to admit that parts of this feel a little forced. The other two Battlemage CYOAs aren't so adversarial, so those should work out better than this one.

CYOA brainstorming: The Island (Candid version)

What is this?

Island CYOAs were (are?) a fad on /tg/. I know of almost a dozen, and I come across a new one every so often. The idea behind each of them is the same (you find yourself on a spooky island thing, GO) but they differ in the options that they give. They also differ in how many options you can pick before you have to start taking penalties.

This one is not particularly forgiving.

Shelter: None
Companion: The Necromancer
Artifact: The Amulet, Possessed Sword
Covenant: Abominations
Nemesis: Fear and Madness, The Other

Oh, and The Other gets some choices too, dang it:
Shelter: Gypsy Caravan
Companion: The Other (a different one), the Blackbark Faerie
Artifact: The Sarcophagus
Covenant: Island Guardians
Nemesis: The protagonist

So what have we got here?

Our protagonist has been displaced to some horrible Otherworld. It matters not whether it's an actual island or not, though we'll refer to it as such for convenience's sake. It's a very dangerous place, inhabited by all kinds of horrible things. There was apparently a magi-tech kind of civilization based here, but it's anyone's guess what happened to them.

Perhaps the Island got them. It has a will of its own, certainly. And it's out for the protagonist's blood.

To that effect it has also plucked up two of the protagonists friends. Perhaps the protagonist's appearance here is a fluke, but theirs was certainly not. They have been told that the protagonist is a very, very bad person now, and that killing zem is of the utmost importance. Letting zem live will do nobody any good, but will mean the deaths of millions.

It may hurt them to believe it, but they've been thoroughly convinced that ze's somehow gone down a bad road.

The statuesque servants of the old civilization are at their disposal. The faeries of the Island, who may be connected or have simply moved in after the original inhabitants left, are responsible for conveying the Islands orders, and one of them is accompanying the protagonist's friends to help them on their quest. They are traveling with other humans (who, unlike the faeries, are definitely latecomers to the Island), who are not noteworthy for their combat skills but know the roads of the Island. And one of them has slight precognitive abilities that should be of help.

Should they die by anyone's hand but the protagonist's, the Island will be able to revive them.

But the worst thing is... our protagonist can't be totally sure that they're wrong. The protagonist has fallen in with some potentially bad company, an amoral necromancer whose reason for tagging along is unknown, and has explained the situation to the protagonist. The necromancer is definitely not popular in these parts, though, especially among the undead (of which there are many). And... there are horrible Lovecraftian monsters that like you. Which is probably not a good sign.

Finally, the protagonist is in possession of a thinking sword. It can steadily improve the protagonist's skill over time, but it is also the source of a growing compulsion to kill. The amulet, which confers both physical and mental health, is keeping its influence at bay, but the amulet will be effective for only so long.

CYOA brainstorming: Undead abomination

What is this about?

Type Tinker
Seal Holy circle
Phylactery Amulet
Nemesis Merchant

I like the combination of the first two. "You tried to augment yourself with machine parts bridging the gap between living and unliving matter through necromancy," but there's something about holiness, something of Heaven or something celestial, that works against you.

So there are two questions we've got to ask here:

How does necromancy cross with machines? And what does the Celestial Power have to do with machines?

While I'm afraid that we might fall into some unfortunate implications, let's say that there's an industrial element to Hell. Necromancy and the Infernal Power go together like a charm, I guess, and it's because this is some devilish kind of machinery that holy magic works against it. Why don't we do a bit of a biopunk/cyberpunk dichotomy here, and make Heaven a genetic engineering/flesh-shaping kind of place? Like the elements of H. R. Giger's artwork got a divorce and half of them went off to Heaven and the other half to Hell, and then they both got contracts to redesign the places.

Yeah.

And our humble character made a deal with Hell to rework zir body into some half-machine thing that would never die.

Its phylactery is a small object. Let's make it a battery. The character will keep on going so long as it has power, so you have to destroy its (basically unlimited) power source. Maybe, to go beyond the bounds of the CYOA but also make things more interesting, the battery is charged by dying. It can conceivably run out, but if somebody dies in its vicinity then the character will start running again.

And some silly merchant holds the battery. For now.

CYOA brainstorming: Domain Master

What is this all about?

Affinity Technology/Acoustics

Size class Giant

Race Monstrous/Construct

Boss perks Vitality prowess, charisma prowess, arena manipulation, phylactery, hybrid, empowerment, shapeshifting, enchanted armor, enchanted weapon, perception prowess

Minion races Humanoid, celestial 

Minion size classes Human, Colossal (only celestials)

Mooks Soldiers (100), clerics (25), slaves (50), recruiters (25)

Elites Warriors (10), craftsmen (10), agents (20), battle mages (20)

Lieutenants Chosen, Hunter

Minion perks Sustenance, training, faction

Realm perks Expansion, hidden

Complications Benevolent, whispers

750 Words Fiction: After Olympus

"I saw Zeus dead on his throne at Olympus. His eyes had been eaten out, his belly was torn up."

The stranger was like a pile of rags. He spoke with an accent not from this country. In fact, his words were not like anything that the other men had heard before, a stream of strange and foreign syllables, but somehow they could understand the sounds regardless.

A hand shot out. "A coin, please. Any make or size. Gold or lead it does not matter."

One of the men gave him a pouch of coins. They disappeared beneath the shadow of his hood, where they saw the suggestion of movement and heard metal clinking and crushing together.

"I am the light. Was the light," the stranger muttered. "My arrows were purity, purifying, and my words are now a plague."

"They were not a plague, good stranger. It was by your words that the rat-men died. We don't claim to understand it, but when you spoke they died. What plague is that?"

Some of the men were old enough to remember the coming of the rats that were like men, many decades ago. They had come in a small number, sweeping the whole world before them, but their numbers grew rapidly. For every rat that died, it seemed as though five more came up to take his place.

They did not always conquer, and they fought against each other as much as any of true man, but where they held land it was turned barren. They tore up the trees to eat the green and burn the brown, and they ate up the brush, and all the beasts of the field, whether mouse, vulture, cattle, or lion.

"My poetry does not kill them. It... reclaims them. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with me, and... the Word was myself. And it would be a lie to say that this Word was a darker side of myself, of which I was ashamed. There are no sides to us, only the wrath of our fancy and whims. We think, we act, we do, we are, and the whole world suffers. For are we not Olympians? Restraint was a dirty word in those days."

"We are still grateful to you. Sit and eat with us tonight, and then tomorrow you can go your way or remain with us. But if you will do that then you must live as a man. The gods condescend to sup with men from time to time but do not remain therewith. So you will not live as a god, if you live among us."

"No," the stranger agreed. "I am the last of the gods, and in that I have died. There are no gods left in this blighted land. A demon, maybe. But only myself. I cannot blame my Word for having done as it was spoken."

"And what did you speak for them?"

"I was angered that I would be forgotten, for this is what I was told by one that was wise, and would know such things. Not the Oracle, but one like unto her, and she is nameless and without shape. And she said to me that I would be discarded, that this would be the fate of all the house of Olympus. And so I cursed in my anger."

"What curse did you levy out?"

"That the sun would be carried out before all men and beheld without end. That all men would see it, and weep, because of the blindness and the brightness and the scorching heat of endless summer days. All these things I said and more, or else I said only one word, which was 'Destruction. Each son is surely greater than the last, if we measure things by the strength of their wrath. Whatever crimes my father committed, and Cronus and Uranus before him, I have surely exceeded these."

The stranger sighed. He grew silent for a little while save for the clinking and chewing of coins, and the men that were about let him be.

"They are called Uert-Heket. This is the Word that they are. So I must issue a new Word against them, my deadly poetry, words that are arrows to them."

"And what is your name?"

"The name by which I was born, it is dead to me, for I am dead to it. But I am Smintheus now, Rat-Killer, and I shall not rest until I have repented in full and taken back the Word which I have spoken."

"Then it will be well with us. As a god you were fit to be overthrown, and so you cast yourself off the heights in your folly. But as a man you will find your way again."

"Even so," the stranger agreed.

Word count: 801 words
Time: 10 minutes (research), 39 minutes (writing)
Prompt: Rat warlord-rangers and sprites in medieval South Africa. The world is beseiged by rodent-related cataclysms, zombie animals and pollution. 

So some of this is off-screen, but it's still all stuff that exists, and this is in South Africa. Didn't know quite how to work the sprites into it, but they're definitely also there. Maybe they're even present here, just invisible to Apollo. 

Now that I think of it I like the idea of a brief slice-of-life kind of episode where someone is tending to cattle or something and has to deal with and experience a few of these things. Maybe Apollo is one of the servants now here. Or is passing by. 

Idea: The man who stole a bit of time

A fellow has stolen nineteen days, four hours, eighteen minutes, and fifty-seconds of time. How it happened isn’t too integral to this idea. Decide on your own. Or don’t explain it at all. Perhaps he was Father Time’s janitor and then he decided to nick some neat hourglasses.

But he plans to put it to good use, especially because it wasn’t a clean theft. There are things coming after him, with the sound of shifting sand and spinning gears marching on before them. He’s only ever seen them briefly, because he knows enough to know to run.

Idea: The Once and Misremembered King

Heroes have a tendency to be foretold by prophecy in fantasy stories. It sometimes seems to be few and far between that a hero worth his salt won’t have at least a single prophecy foretelling his coming or his return. But those prophecies can sometimes be centuries old, and we all know how accurately things get passed down through the ages, and that’s without considering the problems which arise when you’re translating from one language to another.

The Journeymen [D]

The Shifting Spirits

The Shifting Spirits are liars who are the sole survivors of a now-dead realm which was torn apart by outsiders— or they themselves are outsiders who have learned to coexist with Creation— or they were exiled from a prosperous series of timelines for their grave crimes— or they have achieved time travel and are working to ensure that the course of events which led to their existence will come to pass— or they are the servants of the Powers Major. Their forms are as fluid as water and revert to solidity with a thought, taking on any form which they would like.