Ian Absentia

Again, from the blog (Part 2)... Ha, ha, ha! This is really good stuff. !i!

Nice. Which of the shovel-tusks did you refer to as a model? Gomphotherium? !i!

Yeah, exactly. I even meant to make that explicit. The nature of Lovecraft's cosmic horror is that humanity is to the universe at large as a culture of bacteria is to the bottom of a shoe. That sense of cosmic indifference and nihilism leads some of his characters to do some inhumanly awful things, either in an effort to get the attention of greater powers or just because there's no moral authority to stop them. Alan Moore takes that a little further in his mythos-based comic Providence. The coming of the strange new aeon is mind-blastingly awful because we lack perspective to reconcile it with our current reality. Once the monstrous paradigm shift occurs, though, the characters look back at our current reality and see how awful it was. Welcome to the new normal. All that said, I meant to say that it's fortunate that this isn't the premise of Nephilim...necessarily. Andrew Montgomery cited the Hermetic paradigm in his blog post. It's not antithetical to humanity, but it's not anthropocentric, it doesn't explicitly promote the human condition. But humanity is part of the equation of what emerges on the higher plane. That's been hard for people to wrap their heads around over the years, particularly how certain passages of the book were written to suggest or state otherwise (p.83, I'm looking at you). A lot of the old wags used to liken Nephilim to playing Call of Cthulhu as the monster. I reckon, if we're allowing that stretch, it's like playing Call of Cthulhu as the monster, but with the monster playing the role of the Investigator and everything that entails. !i!

Which reminds me... !i!

Assuming that humanity is the epitome and recipient of a universe and supernatural reward created specifically for them? Assuming that anything "higher and beyond" would be antithetical to human nature, either purposely or inadvertently? Yeah, I can see how that'd be a bummer. Fortunately, that's not the premise. !i!

From the blog post: Wow! I'd say he put a pin squarely in that one. Bravo. !i!

Oh! Well, sky's the limit, then. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may! !i!

Mmm...I'm still seeing roughly a 6-to-20 ratio of hands to wangs. Assuming the skirt of hands continues around the back where we can't see, let's make that 10/20. That's still twice as many wangs as one might expect. And presumably some of the hands might originate with women, which should skew the ratio back toward hands again. What I'm trying to say is, that appears to be a lot of wangs and a lot of wasted hands. My thought is, to conserve space (there's only so many hands one can fit on a skirt, depending on the length and functionality) yet still provide appropriate representation, one might simply trim the fingers and use them as accent pieces. Thus the necklace. Of course, with ten fingers per foe (assuming a human standard), at that point one could expand into an entire stunning ensemble to complement the skirt. !i!

Hunh. You'd think the hands-to-wangs ratio would be higher. You know, like, closer to 2-to-1. As such, I'd assumed those were fingers around her neck, apologist that I am. !i!

I actually appreciate how the situation in gaming mirrors the real-world occult. Myriad different systems and recursive derivations thereof to model something that defies explanation. The fact that the creative team on Mage: the Awakening has links directly to Nephilim is a case in point. Sooner or later, someone has to get occult roleplaying down just right. !i!

Cheers to Dave and the work he did best. Thanks to you all for rolling this out again! It feels like taking a walk through my favorite old apartment from my 20s. !i!

Enh, you don't have to roll randomly on the Family History events tables, so, really, don't let the geas tables stop you. !i!

Take the deep dive -- an exploration of the Triolini. Ludochs, malasps, murthdryami! At the very least it'll be a an opportunity to put your stamp on what the Waertagi look like, and an excuse to draw mermaid boobs. !i!

... ... ... Nope. I'm not going there. I started to, but...nope. !i!

Squint as I might, I see no drowned pigs. !i!

Le sigh. You managed to cite quite a few things about it that are problematic. !i!

Too true. Back in the day, I generally accepted Luise Perrin's art c.1978 as inspirational of a loosely-defined gaming background, rather than anything defining "canon". Gene Day's work, on the other hand, was some trippy exposition of campaign events viewed through what seemed to be a very personal lens of early-70s apocalyptic Sci-Fi* -- again, highly inspirational, but hardly canon. I like where we're at with art direction and world-building -- distinctiveness and congruity are the order of the day. This is canon. But I still like a lot of what's gone before, and from personal experience I expect things to change in the future. This was and will be canon. !i! [*Guys -- pantsless, helmeted Argrath? That's clearly a reference to Zardoz. If you've never seen it before, you will not be able to un-see it.]

And let me just say, when I think of any kind of summer fruit that I really want to enjoy, I always, always, think of giant wasps. Here's a good one for you -- it's half God-damned scorpion! !i!

So sayeth the Wood Database! In a world where giant insects don't die of suffocation or collapse under their own weight, I reckon a coconut-sized tagua nut is downright reasonable. Behold the coco de mer at up to half a meter in length. !i! [Edit: Right! The tagua nut is the source of "ivory" used in carving Japanese netsuke.]

Terminology has, understandably, become more sophisticated over time. This is generally a Good Thing. !i!

Sooner or later, the <take any naval raiding culture engaging in cattle herding and non-irrigation farming> have to move inland where timber is more plentiful. So, yeah, Orlanthi! Or Sartarites. Or Theyalan Manirians of Dragon Pass. !i! [Edit: Honestly, I'm going to push the popularised use of "Orlanthi" out well past the late-80s. Even in the AH sources, I'm seeing "Sartarite" used as the prevalent cultural term well into the '90s.]

...as opposed to "Sartarites." Orlanthi as a religious group, Sartarites as a cultural group. !i! [Edit: Never mind -- I see @Nick Brooke made that distinction. Thanks!] [Re-Edit: Wait, no, I see what I did there. Sorry, @David Scott. What I meant to ask originally was, "When did the term Orlanthi begin to supplant the term Sartarite in reference to a cultural group?" And after digging through some of my books, I think my estimate of early- to mid-80s was a little generous, and that mid- to late-80s is more on the mark. And then there's the term "Theyalan" -- a racial rubric -- to throw into the mix. We clearly need a good Wenn diagram.]

I keep banging this drum every time the topic comes up, but my personal nomination for the RW stand-in for the Zola Fel valley and the surrounding plains in Prax is the Channeled Scablands of Washington and the Palouse of the Pacific Northwest. !i!

Lacking access to my earliest RQ materials at the moment, I'm trying to recall when I first began to read about "Orlanthi" as opposed to "Sartarites" in published books. To my recollection, early- to mid-80s? The term didn't hit it's popular stride until the AH boxed sets. The world was evolving as quickly and as malleably as it was being revealed. !i!

HQG provides a handy and largely compatible shorthand for NPCs that aren't going to need a full complement of stats for combat and magic. Just the primary personal characteristics and the runes that influence them. Most of the things you'll want or need for an NPC in RQG. !i!