CONSCIOUSNESS//BREAKTHROUGH//TOTALITY

I wrote this autofiction-style a few days after going through some personal stuff and having a wild experience. I regret that my conscious mind is not able to organize and commit to fleshing it out further. It obviously shares some DNA with things I've previously written, but I hope it doesn't feel entirely derivative.

 

Tony Jensen was hardly the first to reach new CONSCIOUSNESS, but as best can be known, they were the first to achieve BREAKTHROUGH, for all the good and bad that has since come to be.

 

Scientists before BREAKTHROUGH arguing against panpsychism would claim it lacked parsimony. The world as was understood then could no more easily be explained by a conscious universe than by one guided solely by Natural Law. In the world of Natural Law, there were few awoken to new CONSCIOUSNESS, not enough to achieve CONSCIOUSNESS//BREAKTHROUGH. They were blips, like post-synaptic potentials failing to sum to an action potential, tiny meaningless ripples of self-organizing structure facilitating entropy so minute as to be a rounding error in the presence of the universe.

 

CONSCIOUSNESS//BREAKTHROUGH changed everything. Think of our institutions; family, government, law, money, organized religion, culture, history, corporation, as merely infants. Technically superorganisms, but messy, fumbling, selfish, destructive, incapable of standing for long. New CONSCIOUSNESS not only heightened individual awareness, but alongside BREAKTHROUGH, it revealed the recursive and fractal nature of superself reference. Every individual consciously aware of their gods, aware of their microbes, and likewise those entities equally aware. Infinitely large, non-integer dimensional spaces of Super Nature revealed themselves, those rounding errors revealed in the dynamic range of new scales of being.

 

White Light was the first trauma after BREAKTHROUGH, as humanity laid bare its guilt for all the suffering it caused, and in confronting its loneliness in the face of Love.

 

Following this period came Red Megadeath, Orange Ontology, The Yellow Dance, and our current era of Lucid Dream in Green Minor.

 

In the early 20th Century the author Frank Herbert recognized the ability of Tarot to disrupt causality as imagined in Natural Law. Similarly, the author and Tarotist Rachel Pollack recognized that the Tarot exists outside of time, that all of its purported origins are both True and Not True, that Tarot simply Is.

 

In the era of Lucid Dream in Green Minor, we take for granted the power of systems of chance, of games, and adventure; these are our guiding principles. We still dabble in Yellow Dance, we still resist Orange Ontology, we have come to accept Red Megadeath in our unconditional Love if not in actual practice, and we even still observe and gently caress the world before CONSCIOUSNESS//BREAKTHROUGH but all of these are no longer of our world.

 

Superheroes pt.4.BONUS: The Space Cases

Spacer consciousness has been bleeding into material reality far before they returned. The Space Cases are born from humans but their minds have been touched. Those often identified through history as changelings, demons, oracles, crazies, psychopaths, eccentrics, gifted, autistic, are sometimes actually Space Cases.

 

 

A continuation of Superheroes pt.4: Spacers. I'm circling around certain themes but haven't had the time or energy to properly write them up, but at least the motivation is starting to come back. I have another idea I haven't written yet about "machine fairies" that may explore similar ideas.

 

I've also considered retconning Panic Attack! into Space Cases of special circumstance. I want to revisit those characters but instead of moody blurbs actually fleshing it out.

Superheroes pt.4: Spacers

The Spacers are a lost tribe of indeterminately ancient humans who journeyed into the Noösphere, the realm of the unconscious mind. After being driven nearly to extinction by the Leviathan Brood, they fled back to Earth in the 1950's.

 

Spacers have been attempting to assimilate ever since. The intuitive nature of their culture and their experiences in the Noösphere have given them unique abilities that have facilitated their assimilation (Intuitions), and largely they thrive despite facing discrimination and existential threats.

 

People with Spacer heritage sometimes have supernaturally-colored hair, eyes, or skin tones; long middle fingers and slightly outwardly curved thumb and pinkies; light and feathery hair texture; large watery eyes and large pupils.

 

Intuitions, the heightened or supernatural abilities cultivated by Spacers, include positive traits like empathy, creativity, flow, oracular divination, cultivation of "luck" through the awareness of Existential synchronicity, the production of "alchemy" and "wonders" through a process like Surrealist psychic automation for techne; but also negative traits like myopia, obsessive and compulsive tendencies, attention deficits, delusions, and dark flow.

 

Intuitions are neither genetic nor tied to a specific Spacer cultural practice, although Spacer culture has been shaped to facilitate their development. Anyone can develop Intuitions so long as they cultivate a personal practice that works for them, although it is exceedingly difficult to develop Intuition after puberty.

 

Normally I do the full wiki-style thing for these Superhero posts but this is what I've got right now. I'm actually quite happy with the core idea, but wish I'd had more inspiration to expand on it.

 

Somewhat of a re-imagining of my Amalekites from my MRD Vol. 2 setting. I was also inspired by Marvel's Mutants and DC's Kryptonians.

 

Was also going to post a few examples of Spacer superheroes or teams. One of them was going to be a grandpa/grandson robot or Super Robot duo, in the vein of Astro Boy, Mazinger, or Megaman, but I don't even remember specifically what I was going for anymore.

 

I'm also still mixed on the name Spacers, open to suggestions for other names.

Holy Green Hell

"Australia has a lot of beautiful plants and animals and most of them are, frankly, monsters. The eucalypt is no exception. Its reproductive strategy is to drop those heavy, oily leaves around its base until the trapped heat and the highly flammable oil consummate their tragic love affair and burst into flame. The ensuing forest fires reduce the eucalypts to ashes, but the same goes for all the plants that might compete with them. The difference is that eucalypt seedpods need fire to open up and release their seeds, and the fires that coax them open also eliminate all the canopy cover that might compete with them for sunlight, while the ashes of the fallen competing trees enrich the soil with nutrients."

Doctorow, Cory. The Bezzle: A Martin Hench Novel (The Martin Hench Novels) (p. 18). Tor Publishing Group.

 

The Pyrophyte wildfires at first seemed like the natural result of climate change, and that may in some sense be true, but surely now one must acknowledge these events as part of a deliberate and intelligent attack on human civilization.

 

Imagine a world bleeding Green; Spiking trees rising like tumors, mangy moss, leaves and flower petals harder and sharper than a steel blade, a bioactive glow of magic fire flooding over skyscrapers and mountains.

 

The Pyrophyte made monsters as well. Salamanders, vegetables in the shape of lizards spewing sap worse than napalm. The mutated or reanimated fauna like the carnivorous Jackrabbits, Jabber squirrels and Jabberwocky "deer drakes". Deadliest of all are the Amber Megafauna, seemingly preserved to be an army in waiting.

 

The monsters serve their purpose, mainly to cause fear, but in fact the Cordyceps Zombie Ant Colonies, Flower Mad Banshee Bees, the conglomerations of sewage flora, fatbergs, and Rat Kings, and other organized vermin, have in fact proven much more difficult to fend off.

 

The Forest Folk, uncanny quasi-humanoids of all sorts, seem almost more to mock us than serving any unique purpose in the Pyrophyte ecology.

 

There was originally going to be more to this, a whole chiral biosphere, nuclear violet flames, and electromagnetic weapons used to fight against the Pyrophyte. I didn't even write any notes on the last one and I don't remember what the idea was exactly anymore. Anyway, I didn't want to lose my ~7 year streak of at least one post a month and I decided this was just good enough to post as-is, but I'm running out of unfinished or unpolished drafts that are good enough to post, so one of these months sooner or later I'm going to lose it probably :/.

 

D&D School of Simulacra (OSE character class / school of magic)

The School of Simulacra is a specialized form of illusion magic that creates Turing-complete illusions, which are constructs of pure thought and will capable of independent action and even casting spells. Practitioners of this school use a Gaes-based control system to compile and cast spells, which can be sequenced into a simulated version of almost any evocation, conjuration, transmutation, or other magical effect.

The most advanced members of the academy have woven a vast network of these illusions, called the Anima Mundi, which is overlaid onto the world like a waking dream. To maintain this immense system, they have created Daemons, a caste of Thinking Illusions that act as guardians and administrators. Practitioners of this school, the Simulacrists, represent themselves with Glamour Avatars, often fantastical or idealized forms which enhance their connection to the Anima Mundi.

 

 

This idea was loosely inspired by Gus from Owl House. They never fully explored it, but there was an early episode where either it was implied, or maybe I just inferred, that illusion magic operated programmatically, and I ran with it. 

 

Simulacrist (Old School Essentials)

• Prime Requisite: Intelligence (INT)
• Hit Dice: d4
• Armour: None
• Weapons: Dagger, Staff
• Saving Throws: As Magic-User
• XP to Level 2: 2,500

Class Abilities 

 

Simulacrum Construction: A Simulacrist does not cast spells directly. Instead, they expend a spell slot to construct a Simulacrum, a complex illusion Gaesed with a specific purpose. A Simulacrist can have a number of Simulacra active at a time equal to their level. A Simulacrum takes one full round to construct and does not act on the turn it is created. It acts on the Simulacrist's next turn and on subsequent turns until its purpose is fulfilled or it is dispelled. The effects are as follows:

• 1st-Level Spell Slot: A Simulacrist can create a Tier 1 Simulacrum. This is a simple construct capable of performing a single, autonomous action. For example, a Distracting Phantom can be Gaesed to appear and attack a foe, giving an ally a +2 bonus on their next attack roll against that foe. After performing its one action, the Simulacrum vanishes.

• 2nd-Level Spell Slot: A Simulacrist can use this slot to access the Anima Mundi, the collective network of Simulacra. When they do, they create a small, ephemeral Simulacrum that acts as a sensor, allowing them to relay a message to or receive a single piece of abstract information from a location they have previously visited within one mile.
• 3rd-Level Spell Slot: A Simulacrist can construct a Tier 3 Simulacrum, which can be Gaesed at a sufficient degree of complexity to cast real magic, a single spell from the Magic-User spell list (up to 2nd level). The Simulacrist must still provide any necessary spell components to the Simulacrum in order to cast the spell. 

 

Glamour Avatar: At 1st level, a Simulacrist learns to project a Glamour Avatar of their idealized form. Once per day for up to 10 minutes they can alter their Glamour Avatar to enhance their connection to the Anima Mundi, granting a +2 bonus to their attack rolls with Simulacra and on all Saving Throws, or instead for the purpose of camouflage or as a disguise, without expending a spell slot.
 

Daemon Code: At 5th level, the Simulacrist can make a single Simulacrum permanent by spending one day and 100gp per level of the Simulacrum. This new Daemon can perform a simple, repetitive task, but it cannot cast spells.

Ziran the Synchronizer and the Skeleton Keys

An NPC I wrote for my current Maximum Recursion Depth campaign, following up from my Jewels of the IndraNet post. A Synchronizer is one who combines principles of karma and synchronicity; chemistry and alchemy; engineering and narrative, to create Dharmatic Augmentations.

 

He lives in Neo Seneca Village, a Jewel in the datacloud that is the IndraNet. His home looks like a hand standing on its fingers partially curled in a grasping motion, palm down and knuckles forward. The building is constructed in an eco-brutalist style.

 

To facilitate their Poltergeist Investigation it was suggested to the PCs to search for Ziran the Synchronizer, where they were offered the opportunity to sacrifice a finger to be crafted into a Dharmatic Augmentation; a Skeleton Key.

 

The ritual entailed taking a drug/sedative of their choice if desired and thinking of a loved one (naming them out loud), before slotting the finger into a finger-sized guillotine.

 

 

 

Ziran the Synchronizer 

• A touch of Iroh and Glossaryk
• Thick French accent, wise/romantic type, existentialist/absurdist
• Bohemian flowing outfit
• Shimmers like a body of water
• Phantom Limb: Left arm is only a shadow, but the shadow can operate independently and do things that affect the material world, including its “shadow puppet” forms. Has a mind of its own with the impulsivity of a dog and the personality of a knave.

 

These Dharmatic Augmentations require the sacrifice of a respective finger, which will be carved into the appropriate key. Each key unlocks:

Index
Doors: And vaults, and other physically-locked things.

Middle
Encryptions: Physical or digital things; that which is protected by passwords and algorithms.

Ring
The Heart: Not the ability to induce love, but to experience it, or alight that which was already present.

Pinky
Opportunities: Of a social nature; access to higher echelons, the line outside a popular club, shibboleths, insider knowledge.

Thumb
Potential: Especially that which is hidden.

 

 

The Players were given the opportunity to design the Skeleton Keys for themselves. Of course I did not take good notes and my game has been on pause for a while and I don't remember all of them offhand but they were all clever and appropriate to the character and the theme of the key.

Superheroes pt.X3 Associates of W.H.Y.N.O.T. (Well Here's Your New Order of Things)

This was originally going to be its own team but it needed a few more members and I never finished the draft, then Semiurge's superb superheroes post reminded me of his W.H.Y.N.O.T (Well Here's Your New Order of Things). which was a very similar idea, so I decided to just include these characters in that collective.

From the original post:

 

W.H.Y.N.O.T.: "Well Here's Your New Order of Things" - a contra-science collective  - like an outsider art collective but for science. Range from full-blown cranks to serious hobbyist scientists to guys like that guy who figured out the structure of DNA on LSD, and then some of those cranks have reality altering psychic powers they're not aware of, or have smuggled fragments of alternate dimensions where their pet theories are true. There's a lot of W.H.Y.N.O.T. messageboard drama.

Pi Proletarian

They developed an algorithm of complexity O(1) to calculate pi. They had to develop an entirely new kind of math to do it, and only they understand it. Their irises are perfect circles. They rotate in radical radians making them effectively untouchable, like the caste of their ancestors.

The Geek

They created the first known emergent intelligence in a connectionist neural network, and shortly thereafter entered into a toxic relationship with it. The sex was magic (literally?), but they were never really the same afterwards, it did something to them. They've attempted to recreate the emergence ever since Master Perceptron left them, but whatever secret sauce was in that first model has yet to be reproduced. The relationship altered both their body and mind, and now they're really more like a Magical Man Machine than Human, most notable by the scars around the entirety of their neck, as if their head had been bitten off and stitched back together.

The Null Hypothesis

For any phenomenon which can only be understood probabilistically, which is to say most things, hypotheses are not proven to be true. Rather, it is demonstrated that the opposite, the null hypothesis, is false; failing to reject the null hypothesis is not the same as proving the alternative hypothesis.

That is, except for The Null Hypothesis. They probe the fields of hypotheses like the wave functions of quantum mechanics, probing the empty space between hypotheses and plucking out truths like flies caught in a spiderweb.

Of course, some things defy all reason, they reach into the Empty Space and find a limitless possibility beyond everything and nothing. The experience of this thing beyond the nature of possibility changed them forever, separate from the rest of humanity, in an alien fugue state feeling emotions no one else can understand. Humans misconstrue their feelings as like something between rage and nihilist acquiescence.