Jewels of the IndraNet

This is the first original game material I've written for my current Maximum Recursion Depth Campaign, up to now I've just been using the book or other materials I've previously written.

It takes inspiration from Gardens of Ynn and also the Mycelium Matrix guest entry in Huffa's Between the Skies.

It references Buddhabrot City, a location briefly mentioned in the module in the book. Right now I just need it to last for 1-2 sessions, it's just a vehicle for other stuff in the campaign, but it would be nice at some point to expand this further, more like Ynn, with more entries per table, more tables, additional descriptions, location-specific tables, events, rogue poltergeist and nature spirit generators, etc.; and make it something that could work either for MRD or as a standalone thing.

In addition to the Jewels of the IndraNet I also wrote a few additional locations for Buddhabrot City, and it will incorporate Dharmatics using Concept Crafting. Not including that stuff in this post, maybe in the future.

Jewels of the IndraNet Generator (prototype version)

Roll d6+layer for each (starting from layer 0)

Locations

1. Residential neighborhood.

2. Neighborhood main street.

3. Natural space (park, lake, woods).

4. Liminal space (bridge, transit area, long road).

5. Industrial area.

6. Market.

7. Entertainment district.

8. Financial district.

9. Deep urban space (winding streets, alleys, Kowloon-dense spaces).

10. Deep nature (forest, desert, ocean).

People

1. Devas going about their business.

2. Rogue Poltergeist (peaceful or mildly disordered).

3. Nature Spirits in equilibrium with their environment.

4. Rogue Poltergeist (moderately disordered or engaging in petty haunting e.g. graffiti, stealing minor objects, opening doors and windows).

5. Deva merchant (pushy hawker, shady shyster).

6. Human refugees in tension with Deva locals.

7. Derailer scouting party.

8. Rogue Poltergeist (violent) or Asura.

9. Powerful Nature Spirit.

10. Derailer caravan sabotaging a Deva space.

Details

1. Serene stillness, even mild sounds echo, movements tessellate, light bends and slows like in fog.

2. Negative spaces, visual field pop-in like a videogame.

3. Low humming and synesthetic lines of poetry or dialogue taken out of context, peaceful yet ominous.

4. Rainbow sun, 3D rainbow shadows projecting from 4D spacetime, no darkness, no black.

5. Holographic mushrooms, psychedelic imagery, anachronistic technologies and robots.

6. Lights and music and animate graffiti like a naturalistic EDM club.

7. Overwhelming luminosity and pulsing waves of liquid sunshine.

8. Everything is a pareidolic Nature Spirit.

9. Industrial waste, dinosaur poltergeists screaming in pools of flaming oil, leprous-looking plastic-men.

10. Corporate takeover, everything is assimilated into a Corporate Spirit.

Against the Grey Play Report 3: Butt-Busty Baboon Rube Goldberg Machines, or Inception but with a Mutant Squirrel Eyeball Monster

Between the previous session and this one the group did a Reach of the Roach God side adventure set in the same campaign universe, but I was not present for that game and at least so far it has not directly impacted this campaign afaik, but with Huffa's permission I might share that PR down the line as well if it becomes relevant.

Reminder that I don't write these, it's (almost*) all Huffa :), which explains why they're better than my usual PRs lol.

* I believe this PR was not written until a little after the fact so it was lighter on details, so I've tried to fill in a bit more myself. As a result Jabronsky's actions are overrepresented here.

The game continues to get better and better with each session, for real.

I will return to writing my own posts sooner or later, I've just had a very busy summer...

Previous PRs:

1. Against the Grey Play Report 1: We Did an Akira and now the Eye Panopticon is Onto Us
2. Against the Grey Play Report 2: BOB!BAAAAAAHB!BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHB! (Translation: Please Kill Me!)

Characters

Jabronski (Me)

A rock.

Vacillates between slightly agitated and at peace with the universe.

Gastrolithic neurotoxic "frog" companion.

Can sporecast from within the companion.

Hark (Gibran)

Human fighter/barbarian-type who is a gung-ho stoner. Gets up to shenanigans, but also often comes up with clever plans.

Maude the Badger (Onya)

(She/her) Gun lovin, bomb throwin, grumpy old lady. 

Onya: "Loosely based on my grandma, and an old weird anarchist I met as a kid. Both were kinda scary and problematic."

Play Report

We began last session with you all drifting down in the balloon into the portion of the river where the Grey were extracting their spirit distillate - which appears extremely and dangerously polluted.

Somehow you managed to divert the balloon away from the river, but were spotted by Greys at their camp (which had been largely destroyed the session before).

The balloon crashed into a big tree in the forest north of the camp. There you encountered a squirrely that had been dosed with the distillate, and gave it psychedelic therapy*

* Max Note: This is actually really underselling it lol, it was a classic Max psychonautical thing involving the Mycelium Matrix and incepting the squirrel eyeball monster (which incidentally Huffa described really well at the time, it was much creepy) to overcome its childhood traumas.

Some of the Greys that had been sent after you landed on top of the tree and Jabronsky used invoked one of his Freaky Fractals* to keep them at bay.

* Max Note: Butt-busty baboons! It involved a Rube Goldbergian chain of events of agitated butt-busty baboons cascading cacophony of chaos and violence.

You got down the tree and began heading northward toward the Sacred Cave where you know mercenaries hired by the Greys were planning a raid on the hoard the Watchers had collected there to sacrifice to the spirits of the Forest.

You all made your way to the cave. The mercs had already attempted an infiltration when you arrived and you intervened. Here my memory gets very murky. As I recall you saw some of them sneaking in and one/some of you snuck in to warn the guards inside, while others of you approached the mercs still at the camp outside?

Huffa: addendum!

just remembered this bit

You left Chord to setup shop and make bombs and repair the balloon in the tree.

Against the Grey Play Report 2: BOB!BAAAAAAHB!BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHB! (Translation: Please Kill Me!)

Previous Play Report:

Against the Grey Play Report 1: We Did an Akira and now the Eye Panopticon is Onto Us

The first session was fun, but this one is where we begin to hit our stride. Two of the players from the first group left and one new player joined. It's not until one or two more sessions where we land on what I hope is our permanent group.

This session included some improvised Concept Crafting* towards the end (during the defense of Chord's home), more Mycelium Matrix shenanigans, and The BOBs!

*My most recent Concept Crafting-related blog post, Anima Crafting, with links to previous posts.

Characters

Jabronski (Me)

A rock.

Vacillates between slightly agitated and at peace with the universe.

Gastrolithic neurotoxic "frog" companion.

Can sporecast from within the companion.

Maude the Badger (Onya)

(She/her) Gun lovin, bomb throwin, grumpy old lady. 

Onya: "Loosely based on my grandma, and an old weird anarchist I met as a kid. Both were kinda scary and problematic."

Hark (Gibran)

Human fighter/barbarian-type who is a gung-ho stoner. Gets up to shenanigans, but also often comes up with clever plans.

Play Report

The group started off at the Haunted Watermill a few days after the events at the end of last session.

While hanging out with the Rebels there, they heard about the various things that were going on in The Forest. They heard the following:

- The Greenwood-Grey Compound is currently occupied by an emergency dispatch of troops, and more equipment, weapons and people are en route from Greenwood (city)

- Some kind of apparition had been appearing in the Haunted Watermill and stealing strange items

- The maiden who was supposed to set alight the boat in the Burning Boat festival held in the Forest Village has gone missing

- Chord who supplies bombs to the Rebels has found his hut in the path of the New Road being built by the Greenwood-Grey Company

- The Watchers at the Sacred Cave have reported that Mercenaries in the Forest appear to be planning a raid on the hoard of treasure they had gathered from the Greenwood-Grey Company to sacrifice to the spirits of The Forest

- The Eye Panopticon has grown 50%

Kitsch disappeared without explanation shortly after the events at the Greenwood-Grey Compound

- Grench did not meet up with the rest of the crew after and may have been captured by the Greys 

- something glinting and golden was seen passing high above in the sky yesterday afternoon, the elders have debated what kind of omen this might on the eve of the Burning Boat festival

The group decided to travel up to Chord's Home to attempt to save him and his equipment from the Greenwood-Grey Company and their Bob - driven bulldozers. And then make their way on to the Sacred Cave to deal with the Mercenaries there.

En route they encountered some other Mercenaries attempting to make a delivery to the Greenwood-Grey Compound. Their caravan had become stuck in the mud.The caravan is pulled by two Bobs. (Bobs are turtles with human faces created by the Greys and used as a pack animals. They piteously croon 'Boooob' as they labor. No one outside the Greys knows how they are made.)

Hark decided to approach them and ‘play it cool’. Their leader Rum, a mean tit bird, sees them all and immediately tries to recruit them to help. Several schemes develop. Maud suggests using her firewater to blow up the caravan and doing it in such a way the it looks like an accident. While preparing to do this they encounter Trish a very young raccoon who has stowed away in the caravan. They also discover that the caravan is carrying extremely high quality muskets made exclusively by and for the Greys. 

At this point a revised scheme is hatched, with Jabronski suggesting that he speak to the mud via the Mycelium Matrix and ask that it take the caravan and keep it safe for them until they return to get it. Meanwhile, Trish starts crying and Rum comes over to investigate. His lackeys Mal and Mak, both join. A couple of things then happen:

- The mud does indeed take the caravan, seemingly keeping it safe

- Rum becomes so frustrated by the situation that he storms off

- Mal and Mak decide to take responsibility for Trish and take her back to Greenwood (city) . They leave under the impression that Trish is some kind of spy for the Rebels. Trish reveals that her family is fairly wealthy in Greenwood (city) . Mal and Mak leave on their ‘secret mission’.

- Huffa doesn't remember how the Bobs were dealt with here. Maybe they were just let go?

The group then travels on to Chord's Home. As they reach the clearing in front of the house, on the opposite side of the house from the Greys and their Bob bulldozers . They hear shouting between the Greys in the Forest on the other side of the house and Chord, asking him to come out. A loud explosion indicates his response was a bomb. Chord then pops up from a hatch in the top of the house and invites the crew inside. There they discuss what to do next.

Artist rendition of an experimental model of BOB, or possibly a BOB in its theorized larval stage.

They eventually arrive at a plan. This involves detaching the small second floor of Chord's Home, rigging a balloon from the bomb making (and bomb resistant) fabrics Chord has and using a series of explosions to power the flight of the balloon, with the second floor of Chord's Home serving as the basket of the balloon.

It will take about 24 hours to achieve this. They set to work, but in the midst of their work the Greys attempt to break into Chord's Home via the secret passageway underneath the first floor. The passageway is filled with mushrooms that make the Greys sneeze, making their approach obvious. Jabronski uses the Mycelium Matrix to talk to the mushrooms to make them increase their spore output, further debilitating the Greys and forcing them out of the tunnel. However, the spores also seep through the floorboards and begin afflicting the crew. Hark breaks open one of the wooden-shuttered windows of Chord's Home to let air in. The Greys now out of the tunnel and recovering in open air, start shooting, but their aim is not good while irritated by the spores. Hark decides to charge them and try to take their leader hostage. This does not go entirely well. And ends up with Hark captured by the Greys . Maud then finds/craft and throws a tear gas bomb at the whole group outside, debilitating everyone. And Hark is rescued and they are back inside.

With a few more hours time, while the Greys are recovering and moving the Bob bulldozers in place. The crew complete preparations for their plan. They launch the balloon with the Greys firing at them from below. And Maud drops a bomb on Chord's Home to blow it up along with the nearby Greys and Bobs. Chord's Home explodes. The Bobs bray joyfully for this sweet release as they are blown to pieces. The shockwave from the explosion pushes the balloon off course and they find themselves over the Radiant Pool quickly running out of explosives and sinking directly toward it.

Against the Grey Play Report 1: We Did an Akira and now the Eye Panopticon is Onto Us

I've been playing in an IRL game of Against the Grey GMed by Huffa, who is herself one of the designers of the game. I don't normally do PRs for games where I'm a player, but Huffa has written excellent recaps and does not have a blog of her own and she's given me permission to share them here :).

Against the Grey description from the itch.io page:

A system agnostic adventure about anthropomorphic animals taking up arms to defend their forest against the greed of the Grey.

We're using an extremely rules light WIP system by Huffa called Being and Time which you can learn more about by following Huffa.

Images all taken from our discord server...

Setting

We are a heterarchical cell of rebels fighting against a Dutch East India Company-like organization called the Greenwood-Grey Company colonizing an Early Modern-ish Forest society.

The entire world of Against the Grey is itself just one hex of a larger "hex crawl" including material generated with Between the Skies and various elements created by us as a group. For instance, in our campaign, The Mycelium Matrix is integrated into the setting. It is part of a larger connected universe of campaigns and one-shots.

Characters

As is typical, we had some turnover in the first couple sessions, but I believe/hope we've settled into a regular group. For the first session, the following characters were present:

Jabronski (Me)

A rock.

Vacillates between slightly agitated and at peace with the universe.

Gastrolithic neurotoxic "frog" companion.

Can sporecast from within the companion.

Grench (Russ)

Kitch (Adasah)

(they/them). A two-tailed fox. Somewhere around thirty years old – seventy short of the hundred two tails is _supposed_ to take. Never left the forest. Thinks technology is dark magic.

Can transform into people (with fox-like faces)

Flying squirrel companion, Walnut (scout)

Poorly-kept sword

Acorns of healing

Maude the Badger (Onya)

(She/her) Gun lovin, bomb throwin, grumpy old lady. 

Onya: "Loosely based on my grandma, and an old weird anarchist I met as a kid. Both were kinda scary and problematic."

In typical Session 1 fashion we were still figuring things out, and we very much derailed things by the end of the session, but it was fun. Later sessions we hit our stride, but hopefully this is still entertaining. The Eye Panopticon was one of my inclusions to the setting ;).

Play Report

The PCs' cell is just outside of the Grey compound on a mission to steal a sample of the Spirit distillate. The Spirit distillate is in a locked shed at the opposite end of the camp, and can not be touched during transport lest one become Eye-Monster'd. 

There are two guards moving in rotation around the perimeter of the camp. Tax, a badger known to Maud, is overseeing some workers at the center of the camp. Recon by Kitsch's squirrel Walnut determines Tax has keys, probably to the shed.

The group split up, with Maud and Grench staying where they are and Kitsch and Jabronski heading around the perimeter to the opposite end near the shed. 

...

During this time a light from the Eye Panopticon shines on a small building near the shed and a window in the building appears to glow red in response. 

...

Grench decides to capture(??) one of the guards by...eating his head. The resulting screams alert the rest of the camp. Maud at this point throws some self-igniting fire oil to hold them off, which, unfortunately, also sets Grench's pants on fire. Grench ripped off the guard's head and doused the fire in blood. Tax and two workers run to the scene. Maud, still hidden, sees her old friend Tax was distracted by this madness, and shoots him in the head. 

...

Jabronski scouts the shed. They notice Spirit distillate is leaking out, convenient perhaps, but also dangerous. The shed's door, where the leak is occurring also faces the glowing red window. After his return, Kitsch throws Jabronski through the glowing red window. The light disappears and is replaced by two owl eyes. A matte black owl emerges, holding Jabronski, ready to fly away with him. The owl is not paying attention to Kitsch. Kitsch bashes the owl, which grabs them, throws Jabronski away, back towards Maud and Grench's side of the camp, and starts flying away.

...

Maud takes Tax's musket, murders a worker and scares the other off. More Greys are running over. Maud and Jabronski head around the perimeter of the camp, taking advantage of the confusion to get to Kitsch. Grench decides to stay behind and try to change into one of the guard's uniforms to blend in. 

...

Kitsch transforms from human form into fox form and slips out of the owl's grip and scurries under the shed. The owl begins tearing the shed apart in an attempt to get to them. 

...

En route to the shed, Jabronski goes into his frog companion's mouth and enters the mycelium matrix to discover that the owl, the Eye Monster panopticon, and a third mysterious point far to the northeast are connected via glowing threds of mycelium info transfer.

...

The owl is making slow progress getting to Kitsch and becoming increasingly covered in Spirit distillate. Jabronski and Maud arrive. Jabronski can see the Spirit distillate infecting the owl in the matrix. This is clearly _bad news_. Maud throws fire oil on the owl. The owl becomes more enraged and tears the vats of Spirit distillate open. Kitsch barely escapes. The owl is drenched and goes full Akira/Eye-monster abomination. 

...

The compound is in an uproar. 

... 

Grench is putting on pants.

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix

Huffa and I have been working on something called The Mycelium Matrix, like a psychedelic animist cyberspace (perfect for my animism setting whenever I get around to properly writing that up besides anima crafting and the appendix-n).

Part of the Mycelium Matrix are the Freaky Fractals, these weird micro-events that are like psychedelic incursions, augmented realities layered on top of one's perceptions, crossing the boundary between physical reality and dream.

As part of the full set of tables and features of The Mycelium Matrix, we're planning on chopping up these writeups into bullet-points that will hopefully be a little more obviously usable, but I still like these writeups as-is and wanted to share them, so here they are.

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix

Within the Mindscapes of the Mycelium Matrix, reality and rumination intertwine in a synesthetic transposition. What at first appears as mundane reality infinitely unfolds into a kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings, each layer replicating onto the subsequent layer like a rainbow. Imagine any one (or two, or three…) illogically interweaving with reality like a dream.

1. A red sky and portents of crisis. Red-faced anger and shame on incongruous faces. Butt-busty baboons bawling incessantly; nagging and distracting and out of place. The baboons are really getting in the way of things. Individually they are not too powerful, but they multiply through murder. For every baboon murdered, two more fall butt-first from the red sky like little bright red comets. The baboons have the taste and nutritional value of cinnamon candies. An incorrigible chaos, at best its proliferation may be aimed before being set loose.

2. Avaricious ASMR anteaters, long tongues licking orange juice slime and nuggets of gaudy gold glitter from unsuspecting ears. A deliciously disgusting smacking sound. The more polite anteaters will trade treasures for your delicious ear stuff. For every nugget of ear stuff dug out, a chunk of perceived reality is replaced with orangeness. Battalions from the fire ant military industrial complex pour from the orangeness with a mission to colonize cleaned ears.

3. Streaking yellow arrows guide you along clear cut paths bending over the horizon. While traversing the yellow arrows, you never grow tired, hungry, thirsty, or taller. The sun shines brightly. Everything is soft, round, bouncy, smiling, and everything sings. Heatwaves burst like bass beats from Mr. Sunshine Man, everything vibrating in a heat haze. Mr. Sunshine Man is a font of knowledge, but will never tell you anything you don’t want to hear. For every truth he shines a light upon, another truth becomes a saturated parody of itself, a clearly misremembered memory, a crisp mirage seen through a polarized lens. The yellow arrows guide you down a path that could neither be more clear nor more clearly wrong.

4. A lush forest of deep time folded around the present moment like an emerald ring. Glittering mineral richness, neon bioluminescence, absinthe dew and chartreuse ponds; floating freezing superconductor monoliths, geometric patterns on circuit board forest floors. Glutinous mossy flora, fatty fauna feeding on fruits and each other, full of life and vibrancy and danger. An algorithmic maze where monsters hunt the ignorant as easy prey, stalked in the shrouding shadows of their own minds, their small worlds closing in around them. A mathemagical forest, predator and prey, man and monster. Those seeking only an exit will fail to find one; this is a survival game that must be played, but the clever define the rules for themselves.

5. Beyond the fourth wall, the world reveals itself to be a stage. Structures made of flimsy paper diorama and cardboard cutout character collage. The sky is lapis lazuli, the stars periwinkles, streaking petal comets inducing visual snow and CRT static. Like a paper fortune teller or a game of he loves me / he loves me not, frivolous premonitions and portents alike reign from the whims of the astrological astronomical Witch Qing. The Silly Stage is a duel, dance, and discourse between the Witch Qing and their audience. Who rules and who fools? Only those who do both receive a standing ovation.

6. Ultraviolet ultraviolence in a blinding white light discothèquenological mosh pit. Physically demanding freedom, free-form destruction, fertile frenetic femininity in ballroom vogue. No grudges are kept, even those are destroyed. Spiral-shaped primordial anti-monsters ambulating in non-integer dimensions like plants in hypertime, meta-rainbow mantis shrimp mod squads, a genetic sequence unhinged in the universe for good and ill, solidarity through singularity, and other such things. The only escape is through destruction. When you return to reality, something is missing, but the gaps have not been left unfilled.

Appendix-N for a "Weird & Wonderful" Animist Setting I haven't Written Yet: Pariah by way of Maximum Recursion Depth(?)

I've been slowly conceiving of a "Weird & Wonderful" Animist setting, percolating over the last couple years or so at least. I've probably posted other versions of this idea that I'm forgetting, or at least there are other ideas I've posted about that feed into this. It's probably reductive to solely refer to it as an Animist setting, but I don't know how else to do so that isn't rooted in or going to provoke preconceived notions that I don't mean to provoke, that was the best I could think to do.

In it's current shape it's not connected to the shared setting of Maximum Recursion Depth Vol. 1 and MRDVol. 2 directly, but I see it as spiritually connected. Whereas MRD Vol. 1 uses as a metaphor Buddhism and the satire of Journey to the West, and MRD Vol. 2 uses as a metaphor Judaism and my thoughts on Jewish American Identity, this is more so inspired by Animism and Humanism from paleolithic, neolithic, and indigenous cultures both historically and in modern times (acknowledging modern indigenous cultures are not "living museums"). But just as with MRD Vol. 1 and 2, spinning those metaphors into something distinctly and unambiguously my own. I don't want to hew too closely to any specific belief or culture, because I don't want to misrepresent them (I'm already worried about some of my terminology and explanations here, but hopefully the intent comes through) nor risk appropriating them. They are inspirations in a distilled sense, and if you've read anything I've written before, hopefully this is all clear. Anyway... 

The single-sentence pitch might be: Pariah by way of Maximum Recursion Depth(?)

The Appendix-N ended up being so long, and the setting itself still so nascent, that I'm actually going to post this first, you all can digest it, and then later I'll post about the setting and you can try to interpret it from this lens.

It might be a fun exercise to consider what world you might create for yourself from these disparate inspirations.

Appendix-N

I already feel guilty if I forget someone or chose not to include them, but so it goes :/. Also, if you're reading this in the future, hopefully I've since read some of the things here that I reference but acknowledge I have not read yet. And I bet by the time I actually do anything formally with this setting, there will be many more inspirations.

PARIAH (Alone in the Labyrinth). Brilliant setting and arguably the beginning of some of these ideas, from my interview with Semiurge (Archons March On) and subsequent interview with Sofinho. One day I will get back to doing interviews...

Semiurge: To go back to Pariah's setting, it's hit home a bit of what is conventional wisdom for osr settings that didn't previously land for me. The post-apocalyptic, social order has broken down sort of stuff. But in kind of the opposite direction, pre-civilization rather than post-civilization. Smaller cast, smaller world, no big powerful states to exist in the shadow of. More room for weirdos and weird doings.

As discussed in my interview with Sofinho, I also found the Realms and Entheogens in particular deeply inspiring; this weird psychedelic blurring of reality, and defying the preconceived notions and categorical thinking of most kinds of magics, planes, and elements found in many other settings.

Sapiens by Harari and The Dawn of Everything by Graebor & Wengrow. Despite the fact that the latter frequently responds to the former and people seem to put them in mutually exclusive boxes, or perhaps because of that, I include these two together.

Sapiens provides an impressively comprehensive and coherent look at the history of humanity, with some big picture ideas around superorganisms and the nature of religions and ideologies which strongly resonated with me.

Dawn of Everything provides deep and detail-oriented insights into various indigenous and historical cultures, arguing for how things were and how things could be in ways that, while I have some qualms or open questions, I nonetheless find compelling and aspirational.

Ènziramire of On a Majestic Fly Whisk. A brilliant newer TTRPG blogger and academic thinker exposing me to so much more about Africa's cultures, and his own thoughts and ideas. An OSR Aesthetic of Ruin, Have you Met My Ghoulfriend, and Mantismen come to mind most immediately, but all of his posts are amazing.

Ubuntuism the African humanist philosophy. I still have read very little into it unfortunately, since very little of it is readily available, although Enziramire has pointed me to some of Samkange's other works. If Cartesian Rationalism says "I think therefore I am", Ubuntuism says "I am therefore we are". Given the interconnectedness of all people, any one's existence is confirmation of the existence of all others, and the acknowledgment of our collective being. An elegant synthesis of ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Amazing. Another book on African philosophy I hope to read that Enziramire turned me onto: The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing. 

I assume many of the ideas in that book would fall into the subsequent category below, or outside of either of these categories, which is of course the problem with trying to discretely categorize things like this. I apologize in advance if my categorical scheme between these paragraphs implies any ignorance on my part, but anyway I am not taking these categories as Truths of the universe.

Animism. This is such a broad category that I don't even know where to begin pointing to, and frankly I have not done nearly enough formal reading. I used to be one of those people who thought of animism along a linear spectrum of "progression", but I realize now how mistaken that idea was. As with Ubuntuism, or the Panentheism I see in Judaism, there is an understanding in Animism of the interconnectedness of things, a kind of graph theory by way of spirituality. Some Animism or indigenous culture-related books I hope to read eventually:

• Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs
• How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova
• Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World (Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity Book 12)

Very much open to other suggestions! I'd also like to read more about Shintoism and the Shinto/Buddhist interaction, indigenous Japanese animism such as the Ainu, and the Jomon era (I am somewhat knowledgeable on some of these things already); Australian, Polynesian, Pacific Island indigenous beliefs (and also the math of their astronomy and naval navigation, if known); Inca, Maya, Olmec, Teotihuacan, Hopewell, and other civilizations of the Americas; Celtic Animism; the list goes on...

Somewhat of a tangent, but I'm also interested in the Animist/Dualist interaction, like the recurring Hero Twins in relation to an otherwise Animist schema in many Native American mythologies, the Ondinonk / soul desires concept of the Wendat which I can find very little about online but read about through Dawn of Everything; some of my thoughts around the Philosophy of Games (see that section further below) intersect with these spiritual and cultural ideas. Likewise, the way DoE describes the historical trade practices in the Americas as being rooted not in market / barter economics as we think of it, but in heroic adventures, art, and spiritual wellness; I believe the interaction between these ways of thinking with various aspects of systems or quantitative thinking is profound and vastly underexplored in modern culture, even among more radical countercultures that I'm aware of. Also interested in the dualism of Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Yazidi mythology, but I'm not sure if any of that fits into this so that's entirely a tangent...

Poetry, Manifestos, and Countercultural Literature. A broad category and I'm not sure how to describe it's influence necessarily. Perhaps inspired by my interview with Ms. Screwhead of Was It Likely (and Iconoclastic Flow!). Much of what appeals to me about poetry is its synthesis of structure and aesthetics. Listen to this episode of the Ezra Klein podcast, they explain it better. I've been thinking about numinousness, specifically through a conversation with Semiurge, and I believe that ties into this as well. I've been reading things like James Baldwin and the Beat Poets, and some of the manifestos like The Dada Manifesto, The Manifesto of Futurism, and hopefully soon the The Surrealist Manifesto (I'll also get around to properly rereading The Communist Manifesto some day...). It may not directly influence the setting, but it's influencing how I'm thinking about things generally. All of this talk about numinousness and poetry reminds me that from Semiurge's suggestion, I really need to read Novalis as well.

The Philosophy of Games. I've been thinking about "games" for a while. Inspired by Kondiaronk and the Wendat people (by way of aforementioned Dawn of Everything), the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen (he had a great Ezra Klein interview as well, and he also has a book, Games: Agency as Art which admittedly I have not read yet), Genetic Algorithms, and TTRPGs in the abstract. I also need to read Homo Ludens. In the same way that language and writing have been transformative technologies that meaningfully influence society and individual human consciousness, I believe other transformative technologies have existed, or could exist, and that the pursuit of such is no less worthy than that of any other cultural pursuit, or at the very least is a worthwhile pursuit within the context of creative endeavors, the arts, fiction, gaming, etc.

The Aquarians of Aquarian Dawn. Yes I'm referencing my own setting. I still think there's more to explore with that, and I'm better equipped to do so now than I was a 4+ years ago when I was running that campaign. Mike of Sheep & Sorcery described The Aquarians as like a Fantasy version of the Tau from WH40K. While I'm referencing my own ideas feeding into this, I'm also working on something called The Mycelium Matrix with Huffa, which conceptually feeds into this setting well.

The X-Men Comics, specifically the Krakoan Era, and the Cerebro Podcast by Connor Goldsmith. I've always been a fan of X-Men, but the Krakoan Era has really been exceptional (note that I'm still like at least a year behind and very slowly catching up while simultaneously reading through the Claremont era and other classics...). I love how Krakoa picks up kind of where Grant Morrison's New X-Men left off philosophically, trying to not just fit the X-Men into a metaphor of the status quo, but to elevate them, to explore how the interaction of spiritual, intellectual, scientific, and queer ideas might create something radical and powerful and new, something Weird and Numinous and technomagical, while acknowledging flaws and failings and the ways in which they might be undermined or might undermine themselves. It's one of the most interesting takes on the Superhero Mythology that I've ever seen, and it's amazing how consistent and organized it has been across the entire line of books, many creative teams, over a span of years, which is in itself a testament to the narrative they are telling. There's just nothing else like it afaik; even despite the corporate constraints it tells a more interesting and profound story than most anything else of its kind. It is a profoundly honest attempt to explore a new kind of society. I find it inspiring and aspirational in the same way I find the ideas explored in Dawn of Everything, or those explained below.

Charles Stross' Accelerando and Glasshouse, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of series, and Quipu, or the importance of numinousness, and considering alternative STEM frameworks and the interaction of philosophy and STEM through science fiction or other cultures.

A reductive explanation of Stross and Tchaikovsky, and why I group them together, is that they each explore in a brilliant, imaginative, and at least semi-plausible way, transhumanist worlds, through AI/singularity and animal uplifts, respectively. Return to my quote from Semiurge on Pariah to hopefully at least understand in part the circular relationship between any meaningful exploration of the past and future. I am still reading Glasshouse, and have not read Children of Memory yet.

Semiurge also recently suggested an idea around reconceptualizing our categorical frameworks of knowledge, i.e. the semi-arbitrary distinction between humanities and STEM, suggesting as one possibility the idea of numinousness as a better dimensionality reduction (that's my own paraphrasing of it, using Principle Component Analysis as a metaphor here). Some of this I believe is expressed in his Random Numbers, itself inspired by my Weird Colors. This also gets back to the poetry stuff.

As someone who values STEM / systems-thinking, I also want to explore alternative frameworks of doing so, either from science / speculative fiction as explained above, through poetry and spirituality and in the numinous, or through indigenous or historical cultures. I find ideas like the Inca Quipu's knot-based encoding system and other historical or indigenous maths and sciences absolutely fascinating (including modern indigenous maths [EDITED: Hyperlinking this post from the future (it's lower down in the post...)]), and beneficial to humanity as a whole both in a one-dimensional sense as the net effect of its application, but even more so in the multidimensional profundity that comes in having multiple frameworks from which to think about things, and all the ways one may combine them. Below are a couple books that I admittedly have not yet read but that I hope to read eventually. My exploration of Gematria would also fall under this category.

• Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)
• Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu (Dover Books on Mathematics)

Norbert Wiener

While he is more so an inspiration for MRD Vol. 2, I continue to think Norbert Wiener is someone more people should be reading. He is the originator of the concept of cybernetics, and also someone who clearly thinks critically and philosophically about the world, with generally leftist/progressive views which he was very frank about, and an excellent example of the numinousness found in the intersection of STEM and philosophy. The Human Use of Human Beings, and God & Golem, Inc. are both fairly short reads and geared towards a general audience, and I would recommend both of them (the former especially).

Finally, many of these ideas have been coalescing through my ongoing conversations with my friend Dr. Flux.