Patrick Stuart's Blog, page 12
November 2, 2022
Six Crimes of an Analog Future
There is a post under the image bit first BACK MY KICKSTARTER AT LEAST CLICK THIS LINK!!!
A regular large volume transfer between Bank Suisse and the Bank of England was interrupted yesterday as Concorde was boarded mid-flight.
The encryption keys representing the funds to be exchanged are always transferred with the greatest possible security but it seems a group of international criminals discovered a weak point - the Supersonic flight between Geneva and Gatwick itself!
Sources close to the British Government yesterday admitted "we were caught out". When originally conceived, the sheer speed of the Concorde itself made the transfer impossible to interrupt, in the air at least, and all security was based around the ground stages. But long term developments in low-earth satellite jet messenger services have lead to a small, but unregulated, market in very high-speed high-altitude rocket Jet engines.
The criminals intercepted Concorde over the English Channel and, matching speeds, managed to board the supersonic jet. They then took the solid brass cryptography keys, each individually engineered in extreme secrecy by Swiss masterminds, and purloined them. Apparently unable to return to their rocket the gang leapt from Concorde and were allegedly picked up by a hovercraft in the channel below.
Evidence of the complex planning for the crime was traced to a 'film set' on the French Riviera in which a scale-model of the Concorde jet had been constructed and apparently used to rehearse the heist under the cover of producing a motion picture.
The 'air wave wars' turned hot yesterday as a fleet of Pirate Radio Station boats clashed with Royal Post Office security forces over the Sealand Transmitter. Allegedly shots were exchanged and some injuries have been reported.
'Fans' of the Radio Pirates claim that the governments own policies, in particular the 2023 'Air Wave Security and Regulation Act' have forced smaller and non-regulated stations into smaller and smaller ranges of the transmissible spectrum with more and more complex and expensive circuits needed to decode the transmissions.
"This is the slow strangulation of a free Press by legal means" claimed the head of the Pirate Party yesterday, "information wants to be free and the People want direct news sources regardless of government control. Whomever controls the wavelengths controls the truth."
The Royal Post office issued 'regrets' about the use of force and denied any deliberate intensification of the situation on their part. "Pirate Radio boats have only grown more dangerous" claimed the Post Master General "both paid security forces and, we regret, the possibility of lethal force, are needed to preserve the security and stability of the public air waves for the good of all."
The American Secret Service yesterday claimed that attempts had been made to 'bug' the recent Camp David summit by use of an all-metal bicycle containing rare earths. The Sketchy Scooter they said, had been precisely constructed to absorb and record vibrations in the wavelength of the human voice. This creepy contraption apparently slipped through the U.S. spooks net as it contained no electronics and no moving parts other than those of a normal bicycle. The system was entirely solid state, powered by the movements of the bicycle itself and recording the vibrations inside its rare-earth-impregnated chassis as a kind of solid-tape, to be retrieved and decoded at a later date by unspooling the bike chassis. The Secret Service confirmed that they believed no Top Secrets had been lost as "The President does not discuss policy while cycling".
The five-mile 'low-noise' zone around Cambridge University has drawn criticism again after levels of petty crime and several assaults occurred over the previous month.
The 'Teks' at the big 'U' confirmed the renewed need for the 'Zone' and even asked for an extension. "We test and develop the worlds most advanced and subtle circuits and the more complex they are, the more vulnerable they are to EM interference. Last year an illegal TV crashed one of our most expensive research projects with its irregular transmissions. This is a matter of not just our technological development but our security."
Cambridge locals are split on the matter; "Its quite nice really" claimed one OAP. Just like the old days. No buzzing and I like the horses. I don't mind paying for telegrams. Life just moves at a slower pace here." But voices close to the Cambridge Plod were less pleased; "Its like a bl**dy nineteenth century rookery round here. No radios, no telegram. Crims realised they could do what they want here and the state can't see them. Then they started moving in en-masse. Its not just the hawkers, thieves and pickpockets, all the London Gangs have set up their HQ under our noses. They know there's no transmissions, so no bugs, no telephones, no evidence! They can organise without trouble right in the heart of England!"
Elon Musk the "Minidisc King" yesterday claimed to have "acquired" the Louvre. That is, to have the physical copies of super-high grade transmissions of its whole stock of art and culture.
The batty millionaire says he wants to make the Mona Lisa Free and add the entirety of the Louvre to his information transmission network for all of his customers to enjoy whenever they wish, in high-definition colour.
"It will be like being there." Claimed Musk.
The French authorities are in a stew and a major legal battle has broken out over the terms of their deal with Musk for the discs with the art. "The image itself is valuable" said the director. "Just as a photograph should not be included in a book without permission, curation and copyright, neither should Musks "accessible transmissions", he is just selling pirate art books over the air waves and that was not our agreement.
Drivers have been vindicated recently as the Government has admitted that the GPS maps of Southern England "may have been altered". Controversy has been stewing for a year as drivers in the South have found themselves lost in wrong turns and going down bad alleys. HMRC and the contracted corporation that engraves the maps on super-shin sheet Googleplex navigation, had previously claimed that any errors were within bounds and the "slow but natural changes in road building" were the cause.
Conspiracy Theories pointed to an alleged break-in at Googleplex's Engraving Centre in late 2022, a break-in in which it was claimed nothing was taken. The seemingly batty concept that someone may have sneaked into the building and re-engraved the core maps for that area before they were updated and couriered out to users of the GPS system (mainly hauliers, travelling salesmen and other long-distance travellers) has now been vindicated. The identity of "who changed the maps" and why, remains an "open question" Govt spokesmen yesterday said.
November 1, 2022
'Speak, False Machine' Kickstarter is LIVE!
The Kickstarter for 'Speak, False Machine' a Brick of Culture, is now up and running!
Its a big book collecting and organising most of the blog posts from the first ten years of False Machine.
How big? Fucking huge; pinched crown quarto and over 650 pages and half a million words long.
Grab it if you want a Weapon of Words to wield against the oncoming dark, (or if you desire a curious level of intimacy with my mind) and if you can't afford that, back the PDF (which is cheap).
MEDIA
As usual I have made zero media plans and have no marketing budget.
If you want to help spread or re-link the Kickstarter I think the best times to do so are now and in the final few days.
If you have ideas or desires for blog posts you would like to see over November, or interviews or anything else that might drag me into the light of public attention, you can let me know here, on my socials or at pjamesstuart@gmail.com
FUNDING LEVELS
We have a bunch of funding levels at which the quality of the book will improve, including pieces from a range of OSR-adjacent artists so check those out if you are interested.
I only need 590 rich and/or crazy backers to hit every art and design goal! Its theoretically possible!
October 31, 2022
The Great Book
So, I lumber towards Bethlehem, ready to be BORN.
As an old Kickstarter passes into completion, a new one crawls forth, gasping. A new books shall be made! Different to the old!
Speak, False Machine!The first TEN YEARS of this blog, organised, indexed and arranged in hardback form!
It will launch in ONE DAY!
And ye shall be presented with another Sad Month of me whoring myself out.
Go HERE for the pre-launch page.
October 25, 2022
Trailing Corposant 10 – Swallow it All
#1 - What Is the Heresy About?#2 - Horus#3 - Fulgrim#4 - The Lion and the Dark Angels#5 - The Alpha Legion#6 - The Bottle Novels#7- Graham McNeil and the Mechanicus#8 - The Short Stories#9 - Magnus the Red
In a previous post we considered the mixed but pivotal Graham McNeil. Now we must cross an invisible barrier in quality for, if my usual response to a McNeil book is; “oh that’s, wait, what the fuck, what the fuck is that, why did you do that, oh wow, ok that was fun I suppose”
Then my usual expectation for a Swallow book is; “un hu un hu ah, yep yep, ok… well that happened..”
From a pretty good or at least always interesting writing with a lot of weird or bad elements to a generally very boring writer who surprisingly often pokes his head up above the parapet of quality, but is sadly blown away by a waiting sniper. Swallow has rambled all over the Heresy taking on a variety of subjects but not really having an emblematic series, Legion or character.
I think perhaps he was meant to be the main writer for Sanguinius and the Blood Angels, but he isn’t very good so those works don’t really stand out. Still he makes some good efforts! If wasn’t for the tragic dead weight of his last book, ‘The Buried Dagger’, a truly abominable disaster bringing the poorly-told story of Mortarion to an eve more poorly-told end, he might still rate above average.
But he does not. Follow me now into tragedy…
Assassins!
Nemesis
EXECUTION FORCE! The deadliest ever dudes with a very special set of skills! They all wear black and work alone! Now they team up to do a thing! Will they do the thing somehow? And how the fuck are there meant-to-be-used-alone weird as shit skillsets meant to actually work together? Its not like using a knife with a fork or a fork with a cheesegrater even, more like a fork and the colour blue.
Malcador being Malcador has a very bay-of-pigs concept of; hey we got literally piles of assassins around here why not just assassinate Horus?
So a rag tag team of the assasnoriums synth-skin wearing wierdoes are sent to do just that.
Meanwhile someone, (Maloghurst?) realises hey with all this warp gunk we can basically reshape reality and also with our Chaos Prime account we have access to the entire archive of demons dating back to the fucking old ones baby! Surely there is something in the back of the drawer that we can use to kill the Emperor?
And in fact they do have just such a demon - a shapechanging super-clever psychic leech/capacitor thingy that only gets stronger the more power its target has
High concept. Honestly not bad. Basically a meta-story shaping book; i.e. why not just assassinate horus/e-money. Think this actually invented the execution force, an idea which sounds cool AS SHIT but often works out to be a bit eh.
Ultimately neither E-Dawg or Horus want the other to be assassinated. They both want a Dramatic Last Scene. The Emperor in order to maybe redeem Horus and get him back? Horus so he can eat the Emperor and become double-strong, allowing him to take on the Chaos Gods probably/
What even happens in this?
They try to shoot a giant evangelion style sniper rifle at Horus. It’s so big it has to be hidden in a building. But they only shoot his double. This is one of two times I can recall that someone in the Heresy has dressed up as Horus and pretended to be him and one was Robute Guilliman… Insert your own “weird that its happened twice” joke here.
Good because it leads onto ‘Gunsight’ in which the Vindicare sniper left behind goes mad on the vengeful spirit
Gunsight (Short Story)
A good story! An assassin leftover from a previous book infiltrates the Vengeful Spirit and, while waiting to kill Horus, has a mental.
The Assassin bumps into a crewman who is still somewhat loyal. A neat look at what it might be like to be an almost-normal human who happened to be one of the hundreds of thousands aboard the Vengeful Spirit when Horus decided he was going to turn evil. Since then the ship has basically melted through reality and turned into a living nightmare, plus all of your colleagues are now big devotees of a scary new religion. It’s a rare sympathetic portrait of a normal human amidst the utter lunacy of the Heresy.
Ultimately Horus converts the Assassin to Chaos with the inference that he will turn up at the Siege of Terra. (He does not).
Angels!
Fear to Tread
A pivotal moment and sadly just not that well written.
This should be a major moment of the Heresy. Horus knows Sanguinius is super-dangerous and super-nice and super-loyal to the Emperor. So he sends him, and his entire Legion out to a distant world telling him; “Very dangerous Xenos here bro, take your guys and take em out.”
In fact the planet, and entire system, is and are a warp-drenched, demon-infected spiritual and military trap for Sanguinius designed to either reduce him to a berserk rage and make him a servant of chaos, or simply to kill him.
This does not work largely because the Demons are dumb as shit panto villains. Though that's a bit of a theme in the Heresy – the ruinous powers being basically crackheads and – regardless of the fact they can bleed through reality and travel through time affecting every moment of your life imperceptibly, other than that, they are actually often dinguses who faceplant at the last moment. I suppose being living psychic fatbergs is not a wonder for competence.
Imagine playing chess against an idiot who can see through time. Or to call back to me previous example, imagine if your arch-foe was a crackhead with a TARDIS. Very very dangerous, and in fact terrifying, but likely not competent and, once you have had the first encounter, (from your perspective), you can start to develop safeguards. The Crackhead might have theoretically incredible power but they are going to consistently mis-use it, or make foolish decisions, because they are on crack.
Demons in the Heresy are written a lot like this, which would make an elegant kind of sense if it were deliberate artifice, but in fact its just largely bad writing making the Demons look like the Chuckle Brothers.
What happened; Sanguinius is a super pure very great guy and both Khorne and Slaanesh really want him to be their particular murder/perv angel – in an unusual example of chaotic combined arms planning planning the evil joint chiefs of staff have gotten together and set the PERFECT TRAP for the Blood Angels. They have basically cum all over reality in the Signus sector and now the stains won’t come out
Horus will send Sangy and the Angels to Signus where they will have their first no-warnings experience of Chaos ; bad news its not aliens its LITERAL FUCKING DEMONS BABY
Remember the aim here is not just to separate the Blood Angels from the rest of Imperial ForcesBut specifically to convert Sanguinius to the ruinous powers. Since he is a space vampire mutant with a near constant thirst for blood ruling over a legion of former blood drinking berserkers – shouldn’t be too hard right?
No because he is the best guy ever
It hard to write Sanguinius. I can think of only a few really good examples of him in the Heresy, one by Chris Wraight where he meets the Khan and ADB in ‘Echoes of Eternity’
As soon as the Blood Angels fleet arrives almost all of the standard humans go mad and/or die. Parts of the Blood Angels assault Signus Prime. Sanguinius crashes on the surface and has a fight in a Beksynski madscape against legions of demons as they try to drive him, and the Blood Angels. Maaad I tell you; “Unleash your beserker rage you nerds!”
Meanwhile a handful of humans have survived on the fleet – due to an unregistered psychic blank lady who protected them without realising.
This whole thing might have worked much better if we didn’t get actual scenes of the main demons plotting and scheming in their tower of bones and goop. If it was played straight as a horror movie, with reality literally melting and the Blood Angels going increasingly mad and even Sanguinius, best guy ever, slowly going nuts, being confronted by that which cannot be, it might have been pretty great.
Perhaps fortunately for humanity, the minions of the Chaos Gods are, during the Heresy, not particularly great at being unknowable horror-movie monsters, instead feeling more like very-knowable batman-villian arguing goons.
Some allowance should be given. They have just come off maternity leave after giving birth to Slaanesh and have not had to deal this directly with corrupting humanity before, at least on this scale, they are not always on their A-Game.
Sangy meets the main demons, fights them, Ka-Banda who is meant to be his nemesis fights him and does pretty well, going I am your doom! Your DOOM!
Then one of the Blood Angels Librarians sacrifices themselves in Sanguinius’ place and the good guys win. I think that’s what happens.
Future books will see the Blood Angels going off to hang out with Robute, where Sanguinius is made ‘Emperor’ of Imperium Secundus, before finally trying to make it through the Ruinstorm in ‘Ruinstorm’ and ending up in a massive catastrophe at Beta-Garmon in ‘Titandeath’ and finally zooming around the Siege and ultimately fighting at the Eternity Gate in ‘Echoes of Eternity’. All of these by different writers.
Garro !
Garro is boring. Shouldn’t be but is. Maybe he’s ok with that though.
We last saw him back in post 2 where we talked about the Flight of the Eisenstein. Then he ran through the bitz box posts as he fought a demon on the moon, largely didn’t go mad, though did get religion in a major way, then got recruited by Malcador and spent the mid-years of the Heresy wandering around usually on Grey-Knights sub-plot fetch quests saying ‘Come with me to Malcador’
All That Remains (Short Story)
Another in the ‘Grey Knights’ sub-arc as a bunch of imperial troops are diverted to Titan and thence out of the story.
Ghosts Speak Not (Short Story)
Hey random Death Guard left behind on the moooooon, come with me..
To Malcador?
No. But I am on a mission from Malcador. Also at the end of this story we blow up a planet. The Emperors Dream is dead!
Lost Sons (Short Story)
“Warden Arkad, Sangunius is deaaaaaad, (or missing), come with me to Malcador.”
Arkad - “Like fuck I will.”
“Ok well then we are taking all your stuff to Malcador!”
Arkad - “Noooooo fucking way.”
Random Messenger “Guys, text from the astropath, Sanguinius is alive.”
Arkad – “Leave.”
(Sanginius later dies)
Patience (Short Story)
A… a.. a.. good Garro story?
Garro turns up in this as a mysterious avenging monster slayer seen through the eyes of others who just poses meaningfully and is taciturn but who it turns out later actually had a plan.
…..
The curious frustration of Garros' story is that his fate is to be sent through a WARP HOLE by Malcador, leaving the Heresy story and turning up in the ‘future’ of 40k.
That’s it really, he goes through a hole.
Sick and Morty
James has a short story AND a major novel about the Death Guard. Ancient lore says the Death Guard were only totally finally corrupted on their way to the Siege of Terra. Caught in a timeless warp Sargasso they were all infected and, over who knows how long of subjective time, went MAAAAD.
How will this come over in text??
But first;
Exocytosis (short story)
Typhon comes down with a cold while chilling in Luthers micro-realm. Strangest friendship ever? Its weird that these guys know each other let alone that they get on. Admittedly they do both have somewhat anguished relationships with their Primarch but that’s literally every First Captain of every Legion.
The Buried Dagger
A genuinely bad book and really quite a disappointment.
Just very very very dull. Should be an absolute axial high point horror movie novel for the Heresy. So bad Chris Wraight took, and was allowed, an entire sub chapter in his Siege book in which a demon turns up and talks at length about these events to explain that actually morty is not functionally retarded.
The complete fall of the Death Guard to Nurgle takes place as their fleet is stranded in the warp and infected with a plague that slowly destroys even their fabled resistance. A timeless moment that only ends when Mortarian says ‘ok’ and sells both their souls and his to Nurgle
Dreams and visions fleet through the mind. An infinite time trapped in the warp. How long were they there for, subjectively? Ten years, a hundred, a thousand? Did we get time loops where they were forced to repeat the same horrors again and again? How about body horror- how does it feel to be forcibly transforming into a plague marine? Your body shifting and mind melting, and you can’t even die to stop it? EVEN DEATH IS NO ESCAPE. Time to enter the Ballardian dreamscape of your insane fungal reality! Dreams and truth intermix! What is real?? Does reality even mean anything in this hell? A crazed legion trapped in the dream of a mad god, poisoned with that madness until their personal reality melts and eventually, ultimately, they submit to the nightmare and emerge utterly changed! Sounds pretty great!
Well none of that happens in the books really. The only way it simulates the horror of Nurgles touch is in how long and dull it is.
Morty is extra-stupid in this, cucked worse than Josh Reynolds being cucked out of a series, by Calas Typhon who pulls some of the most pantomime-villain “it was chaos all along whoo hoo haa ha” bullshit
The poor bloody death guard, always mildly badly written.
Easy to Swallow
James Swallow did some things well. ‘Nemesis’ isn’t bad, bits of ‘Fear to Tread’ are interesting and many of his short stories are quite Good Actually.
The shorts are generally a much better bet than his longer tales since even if they are boring they are over fast and play well to his strengths of innovative pseudo-sci fi concepts mixed with 40k stuff
The Voice (short story)
A Black Ship straaaaands-oooff-ffaaaate story. Some Sisters of Silence board a Black Ship to uncover spooky doings, turns out they are mixed up with an attempt to use psykers to send a message back in time from the Future. There is this thing called a heresy and they need to stop it. One of the people sending the message back is a future version of someone on the ship now and….., I don’t remember the exact resolution but it ends badly.
Liars Due (short story)
A stranger comes to town on a small world, is he a villain? Yes. And he drives everyone mental with paranoia in order to collapse the society in preparation for team bad guy to arrive. IT’S THE ALPHA LEGION! Slightly notable for the end in which a farm boy chases him into space.
Hard to Swallow
However. For almost all the major elements he wrote about they were handled better by othersOr barely handled at all.
Sanguinius has never been done really WELL (except in ‘Echoes of Eternity)– though his appearances in other things have generally been better than Fear to Tread. Cool but shallow most of the time.
Sraight arrow-Garro outlived his core plot use and was a ping pong ball for most of the heresy until he was literally ping-ponged through a WARP HOLE to a MOON. His religiosity in a still-atheist culture is the most interesting thing about him but rarely comes up.
Morty and the Death Guard were written pretty consistently poorly throughout the Heresy and the book which covers their fall in detail is the WORST ONE. Christ Wraights embarrassing explanation chapter in ‘Warhawk’ is better than the entirety of ‘The Buried Dagger’. It might actually be one of the worst books of the series which is saying something, or would be if the sad tales of Nick Kyme were not there to take the top spot.
In a previous post we considered the mixed but pivotal Graham McNeil. Now we must cross an invisible barrier in quality for, if my usual response to a McNeil book is; “oh that’s, wait, what the fuck, what the fuck is that, why did you do that, oh wow, ok that was fun I suppose”
Then my usual expectation for a Swallow book is; “un hu un hu ah, yep yep, ok… well that happened..”
From a pretty good or at least always interesting writing with a lot of weird or bad elements to a generally very boring writer who surprisingly often pokes his head up above the parapet of quality, but is sadly blown away by a waiting sniper. Swallow has rambled all over the Heresy taking on a variety of subjects but not really having an emblematic series, Legion or character.
I think perhaps he was meant to be the main writer for Sanguinius and the Blood Angels, but he isn’t very good so those works don’t really stand out. Still he makes some good efforts! If wasn’t for the tragic dead weight of his last book, ‘The Buried Dagger’, a truly abominable disaster bringing the poorly-told story of Mortarion to an eve more poorly-told end, he might still rate above average.
But he does not. Follow me now into tragedy…
Assassins!
Nemesis
EXECUTION FORCE! The deadliest ever dudes with a very special set of skills! They all wear black and work alone! Now they team up to do a thing! Will they do the thing somehow? And how the fuck are there meant-to-be-used-alone weird as shit skillsets meant to actually work together? Its not like using a knife with a fork or a fork with a cheesegrater even, more like a fork and the colour blue.
Malcador being Malcador has a very bay-of-pigs concept of; hey we got literally piles of assassins around here why not just assassinate Horus?
So a rag tag team of the assasnoriums synth-skin wearing wierdoes are sent to do just that.
Meanwhile someone, (Maloghurst?) realises hey with all this warp gunk we can basically reshape reality and also with our Chaos Prime account we have access to the entire archive of demons dating back to the fucking old ones baby! Surely there is something in the back of the drawer that we can use to kill the Emperor?
And in fact they do have just such a demon - a shapechanging super-clever psychic leech/capacitor thingy that only gets stronger the more power its target has
High concept. Honestly not bad. Basically a meta-story shaping book; i.e. why not just assassinate horus/e-money. Think this actually invented the execution force, an idea which sounds cool AS SHIT but often works out to be a bit eh.
Ultimately neither E-Dawg or Horus want the other to be assassinated. They both want a Dramatic Last Scene. The Emperor in order to maybe redeem Horus and get him back? Horus so he can eat the Emperor and become double-strong, allowing him to take on the Chaos Gods probably/
What even happens in this?
They try to shoot a giant evangelion style sniper rifle at Horus. It’s so big it has to be hidden in a building. But they only shoot his double. This is one of two times I can recall that someone in the Heresy has dressed up as Horus and pretended to be him and one was Robute Guilliman… Insert your own “weird that its happened twice” joke here.
Good because it leads onto ‘Gunsight’ in which the Vindicare sniper left behind goes mad on the vengeful spirit
Gunsight (Short Story)
A good story! An assassin leftover from a previous book infiltrates the Vengeful Spirit and, while waiting to kill Horus, has a mental.
The Assassin bumps into a crewman who is still somewhat loyal. A neat look at what it might be like to be an almost-normal human who happened to be one of the hundreds of thousands aboard the Vengeful Spirit when Horus decided he was going to turn evil. Since then the ship has basically melted through reality and turned into a living nightmare, plus all of your colleagues are now big devotees of a scary new religion. It’s a rare sympathetic portrait of a normal human amidst the utter lunacy of the Heresy.
Ultimately Horus converts the Assassin to Chaos with the inference that he will turn up at the Siege of Terra. (He does not).
Angels!
Fear to Tread
A pivotal moment and sadly just not that well written.
This should be a major moment of the Heresy. Horus knows Sanguinius is super-dangerous and super-nice and super-loyal to the Emperor. So he sends him, and his entire Legion out to a distant world telling him; “Very dangerous Xenos here bro, take your guys and take em out.”
In fact the planet, and entire system, is and are a warp-drenched, demon-infected spiritual and military trap for Sanguinius designed to either reduce him to a berserk rage and make him a servant of chaos, or simply to kill him.
This does not work largely because the Demons are dumb as shit panto villains. Though that's a bit of a theme in the Heresy – the ruinous powers being basically crackheads and – regardless of the fact they can bleed through reality and travel through time affecting every moment of your life imperceptibly, other than that, they are actually often dinguses who faceplant at the last moment. I suppose being living psychic fatbergs is not a wonder for competence.
Imagine playing chess against an idiot who can see through time. Or to call back to me previous example, imagine if your arch-foe was a crackhead with a TARDIS. Very very dangerous, and in fact terrifying, but likely not competent and, once you have had the first encounter, (from your perspective), you can start to develop safeguards. The Crackhead might have theoretically incredible power but they are going to consistently mis-use it, or make foolish decisions, because they are on crack.
Demons in the Heresy are written a lot like this, which would make an elegant kind of sense if it were deliberate artifice, but in fact its just largely bad writing making the Demons look like the Chuckle Brothers.
What happened; Sanguinius is a super pure very great guy and both Khorne and Slaanesh really want him to be their particular murder/perv angel – in an unusual example of chaotic combined arms planning planning the evil joint chiefs of staff have gotten together and set the PERFECT TRAP for the Blood Angels. They have basically cum all over reality in the Signus sector and now the stains won’t come out
Horus will send Sangy and the Angels to Signus where they will have their first no-warnings experience of Chaos ; bad news its not aliens its LITERAL FUCKING DEMONS BABY
Remember the aim here is not just to separate the Blood Angels from the rest of Imperial ForcesBut specifically to convert Sanguinius to the ruinous powers. Since he is a space vampire mutant with a near constant thirst for blood ruling over a legion of former blood drinking berserkers – shouldn’t be too hard right?
No because he is the best guy ever
It hard to write Sanguinius. I can think of only a few really good examples of him in the Heresy, one by Chris Wraight where he meets the Khan and ADB in ‘Echoes of Eternity’
As soon as the Blood Angels fleet arrives almost all of the standard humans go mad and/or die. Parts of the Blood Angels assault Signus Prime. Sanguinius crashes on the surface and has a fight in a Beksynski madscape against legions of demons as they try to drive him, and the Blood Angels. Maaad I tell you; “Unleash your beserker rage you nerds!”
Meanwhile a handful of humans have survived on the fleet – due to an unregistered psychic blank lady who protected them without realising.
This whole thing might have worked much better if we didn’t get actual scenes of the main demons plotting and scheming in their tower of bones and goop. If it was played straight as a horror movie, with reality literally melting and the Blood Angels going increasingly mad and even Sanguinius, best guy ever, slowly going nuts, being confronted by that which cannot be, it might have been pretty great.
Perhaps fortunately for humanity, the minions of the Chaos Gods are, during the Heresy, not particularly great at being unknowable horror-movie monsters, instead feeling more like very-knowable batman-villian arguing goons.
Some allowance should be given. They have just come off maternity leave after giving birth to Slaanesh and have not had to deal this directly with corrupting humanity before, at least on this scale, they are not always on their A-Game.
Sangy meets the main demons, fights them, Ka-Banda who is meant to be his nemesis fights him and does pretty well, going I am your doom! Your DOOM!
Then one of the Blood Angels Librarians sacrifices themselves in Sanguinius’ place and the good guys win. I think that’s what happens.
Future books will see the Blood Angels going off to hang out with Robute, where Sanguinius is made ‘Emperor’ of Imperium Secundus, before finally trying to make it through the Ruinstorm in ‘Ruinstorm’ and ending up in a massive catastrophe at Beta-Garmon in ‘Titandeath’ and finally zooming around the Siege and ultimately fighting at the Eternity Gate in ‘Echoes of Eternity’. All of these by different writers.
Garro !
Garro is boring. Shouldn’t be but is. Maybe he’s ok with that though.
We last saw him back in post 2 where we talked about the Flight of the Eisenstein. Then he ran through the bitz box posts as he fought a demon on the moon, largely didn’t go mad, though did get religion in a major way, then got recruited by Malcador and spent the mid-years of the Heresy wandering around usually on Grey-Knights sub-plot fetch quests saying ‘Come with me to Malcador’
All That Remains (Short Story)
Another in the ‘Grey Knights’ sub-arc as a bunch of imperial troops are diverted to Titan and thence out of the story.
Ghosts Speak Not (Short Story)
Hey random Death Guard left behind on the moooooon, come with me..
To Malcador?
No. But I am on a mission from Malcador. Also at the end of this story we blow up a planet. The Emperors Dream is dead!
Lost Sons (Short Story)
“Warden Arkad, Sangunius is deaaaaaad, (or missing), come with me to Malcador.”
Arkad - “Like fuck I will.”
“Ok well then we are taking all your stuff to Malcador!”
Arkad - “Noooooo fucking way.”
Random Messenger “Guys, text from the astropath, Sanguinius is alive.”
Arkad – “Leave.”
(Sanginius later dies)
Patience (Short Story)
A… a.. a.. good Garro story?
Garro turns up in this as a mysterious avenging monster slayer seen through the eyes of others who just poses meaningfully and is taciturn but who it turns out later actually had a plan.
…..
The curious frustration of Garros' story is that his fate is to be sent through a WARP HOLE by Malcador, leaving the Heresy story and turning up in the ‘future’ of 40k.
That’s it really, he goes through a hole.
Sick and Morty
James has a short story AND a major novel about the Death Guard. Ancient lore says the Death Guard were only totally finally corrupted on their way to the Siege of Terra. Caught in a timeless warp Sargasso they were all infected and, over who knows how long of subjective time, went MAAAAD.
How will this come over in text??
But first;
Exocytosis (short story)
Typhon comes down with a cold while chilling in Luthers micro-realm. Strangest friendship ever? Its weird that these guys know each other let alone that they get on. Admittedly they do both have somewhat anguished relationships with their Primarch but that’s literally every First Captain of every Legion.
The Buried Dagger
A genuinely bad book and really quite a disappointment.
Just very very very dull. Should be an absolute axial high point horror movie novel for the Heresy. So bad Chris Wraight took, and was allowed, an entire sub chapter in his Siege book in which a demon turns up and talks at length about these events to explain that actually morty is not functionally retarded.
The complete fall of the Death Guard to Nurgle takes place as their fleet is stranded in the warp and infected with a plague that slowly destroys even their fabled resistance. A timeless moment that only ends when Mortarian says ‘ok’ and sells both their souls and his to Nurgle
Dreams and visions fleet through the mind. An infinite time trapped in the warp. How long were they there for, subjectively? Ten years, a hundred, a thousand? Did we get time loops where they were forced to repeat the same horrors again and again? How about body horror- how does it feel to be forcibly transforming into a plague marine? Your body shifting and mind melting, and you can’t even die to stop it? EVEN DEATH IS NO ESCAPE. Time to enter the Ballardian dreamscape of your insane fungal reality! Dreams and truth intermix! What is real?? Does reality even mean anything in this hell? A crazed legion trapped in the dream of a mad god, poisoned with that madness until their personal reality melts and eventually, ultimately, they submit to the nightmare and emerge utterly changed! Sounds pretty great!
Well none of that happens in the books really. The only way it simulates the horror of Nurgles touch is in how long and dull it is.
Morty is extra-stupid in this, cucked worse than Josh Reynolds being cucked out of a series, by Calas Typhon who pulls some of the most pantomime-villain “it was chaos all along whoo hoo haa ha” bullshit
The poor bloody death guard, always mildly badly written.
Easy to Swallow
James Swallow did some things well. ‘Nemesis’ isn’t bad, bits of ‘Fear to Tread’ are interesting and many of his short stories are quite Good Actually.
The shorts are generally a much better bet than his longer tales since even if they are boring they are over fast and play well to his strengths of innovative pseudo-sci fi concepts mixed with 40k stuff
The Voice (short story)
A Black Ship straaaaands-oooff-ffaaaate story. Some Sisters of Silence board a Black Ship to uncover spooky doings, turns out they are mixed up with an attempt to use psykers to send a message back in time from the Future. There is this thing called a heresy and they need to stop it. One of the people sending the message back is a future version of someone on the ship now and….., I don’t remember the exact resolution but it ends badly.
Liars Due (short story)
A stranger comes to town on a small world, is he a villain? Yes. And he drives everyone mental with paranoia in order to collapse the society in preparation for team bad guy to arrive. IT’S THE ALPHA LEGION! Slightly notable for the end in which a farm boy chases him into space.
Hard to Swallow
However. For almost all the major elements he wrote about they were handled better by othersOr barely handled at all.
Sanguinius has never been done really WELL (except in ‘Echoes of Eternity)– though his appearances in other things have generally been better than Fear to Tread. Cool but shallow most of the time.
Sraight arrow-Garro outlived his core plot use and was a ping pong ball for most of the heresy until he was literally ping-ponged through a WARP HOLE to a MOON. His religiosity in a still-atheist culture is the most interesting thing about him but rarely comes up.
Morty and the Death Guard were written pretty consistently poorly throughout the Heresy and the book which covers their fall in detail is the WORST ONE. Christ Wraights embarrassing explanation chapter in ‘Warhawk’ is better than the entirety of ‘The Buried Dagger’. It might actually be one of the worst books of the series which is saying something, or would be if the sad tales of Nick Kyme were not there to take the top spot.
October 18, 2022
Cars, Chips and Rings
Part One - A reality without Microchips
Microchips won't work in the Star Wars Galaxy
(I can't be the first person to have this idea)
But basically, digital technology can't exist in Star Wars. It seems like most of the things digital tech can do are still possible, but without the 'anything machine' of microchip-based computing, every single solution to each and every problem has to be artisanal, mechanical, analogue, making use of unique and particular properties of particular materials, distinct relationships between materials and systems etc.
It makes, honestly, a surprising amount of sense. Without the massive scaling abilities of microchips, and especially without the abilities of re-programmable computers and the information revolution that results, everything happens much, much slower.
This would be a world where there are still things like hand-screens, but without email as we understand it. Instead text messages would be more like.. analogue code transmissions of great complexity, decoded by receivers built only for that purpose.
Every single piece of tech in the Star Wars Galaxy has been worked out individually, specifically by individual people or small groups, maybe guilds or artisanal experts, who have spent maybe centuries working out how to assemble or build say, a particular kind of transmitter that works mechanically and with analogue transmissions. I suppose this is true for our world but what I mean is that every machine is, inside, working on potentially quite different mechanical and material principals.
Once you design it, industry still works and you can mass-produce them, but without widespread computer-aided design, computer-aided information recall, and the possibility of an infinitely re-programmable base tech, everything is artisanal in design, and designed for that purpose only.
So instead of a massive surge in design with the information revolution, we get something much more like the 19th century, with particular creators bevering away in particular groups or corporations, spending years and years working on something, maybe needing particular and rare materials in its construction and once it is made, perhaps needing very particular skilled work in its manufacture and the Guild or whoever wants their (huge) development costs back and so its going to cost you a bomb to buy one. Until maybe 100 or 200 year later when experience, economies of scale and widespread availability have finally made the thingy relatively cheap to produce.
This must be why the Star Wars Galaxy has such a long, slow tech development arc. Everything simply costs more, is harder to make and the resulting tech more expensive.
And without the internet, even more than our world, a realm of experts, of somewhat Renaissance-Men, those with expertise across the field of science, engineering and materials based on their own experience and contained more within their own minds. It’s harder to just reach out and grab the info you want, and even harder to work out what tool, technique or artisanal trick to use to achieve your desired goal for whatever widget you are working on.
Once you get interstellar travel, you get access to new, strange materials, which again creates something of a Victorian foreign policy. You might not be able to synthesise whatever-it-is you need for your thing, or if you can, it may be prohibitively difficult. But probably more important with a Galactic civilisation, you get access to alien minds. In a reality with only artisanal single-use semi-mechanical or analogue computers used probably only for specific hyper-difficult tasks, gaining access to alien experts and thinkers, and being able to share knowledge and expertise with them (via transmitted analogue "air-letter", or just by actual letter) would be indescribably valuable.
Its interesting to think about what our world might be like if microchips just.. didn't work.
It would in some ways be a lot like the world of the late 60s/early 70s. No internet, no smartphones, no texting. But the technology and methods they did have then would have been improved on. So instead of the internet we might have something like a super-Ceefax. Instead of texting maybe some kind of pager/ticker tape machine. More wires, more cables, keep a notepad by the phone. Mechanical watches. Fewer small devices. Dials on things, less digital displays (as there is less for them to display). Electric typewriters. For scientists, instead of putting in a request for time on the super-computer, they would need to put together a joint request to build a calculation engine for certain major projects.
Sliderules. Those space ships in Star Wars would probably have been put together by people with slide rules, very possibly drawing out the blueprints on actual paper.
Part Two - Rings in Arda
(I have not watched 'Rings of Power' nor do I intend to)
Is the 'invisibility' caused by the One Ring (and I think by some lesser rings) in fact a strange consequence of mixing the immortal spirit of a Rings creator with the mortal flesh of its wearer?
I think in Arda, firstly evil cannot actually create anything, only change and warp what is there and any power placed in a ring has to come from somewhere, it can't just be generated ex-tempore. So, like Sauron (literally) putting all of his malice and his 'will to dominate all life' into the One Ring, presumably the 'lesser rings' which were made around the same time all had qualities which came from, or were at least placed there by, particular creators.
Presumably the power or qualities needed to make all other rings 'work' come in some sense (probably) largely from the soul of the creator, and Elves being immortal (or being recycled as long as Arda lasts) they have a lot of Soul to give, and a lot of qualities they can put in a ring.
But 'invisibility'; this is not a quality most things in Arda have. Yet Frodo wearing the ring is 'invisible' only to the living, to the dead he is very visible, as they are to him. So the invisibility is less pure invisibility and more being shifted somewhat into the world of the dead, or the sense-realm of the dead, and why would this be?
Perhaps because if you take a ring created by an immortal entity, one in which, in some sense, time on Arda cannot fully touch, that immortality probably intentionally becomes part of the 'ring', is made permanent, and that, in some distaff way, will apply to or at least effect the wearer of the ring.
Which won't be a big deal if they are an elf of Mair as they are functionally immortal anyway, but if a very mortal, temporal, man, or hobbit, wears the ring, then the shadow of the eternal being is cast on them, and they are made a bit more 'eternal'.
Except it cant work as that’s not what they are, so they end up sensorially shifted into the realm of the dead, which is the closest Men can get to eternity on Arda.
Could be an early bug in ring design by Anatar and Celebrinbor.
I can imagine Celebrinbor thinking "ah these things are toxic to mortals, better be careful with that" and Anatar thinking "yesss yes ha ha ha ha you want some immortality buddy? You want to live forever my little mortal pal?"
Its also kinda interesting the differing motivations for Celebrinbor and Anatar in ring creation.
For Anatar/Sauron its pretty simple - install DRM in peoples souls and 'control all life' but he still needs to make the basic idea interesting enough that elves, and especially Celebrinborn, will help him out.
So what was Celebrinbors motivation in ring creation? Maybe an attempt to match his incredible ancestor Feanor. Maybe he just liked having a friend to hang out with (sad face). Maybe a futurist interest in partial soul-swapping - like, wouldn't it be interesting to share talents with your friends, you could give them your smithing for a bit and they could give you their whatever, or handing parts of yourself on to later generations in a more immediately useful way than just being standard elf-reincarnated or waiting for them in the halls of Mandos.
It could be a pure and holy motivation of trying to preserve more of what is good in Arda, which everyone knows is a place that can only slowly decay and dis-enchant, becoming less obviously divine and magical - probably the three Elven Rings are part of this and actually partially fulfil what was Celebrinbors main actual motivation - keeping bits of magic and eleven wonder and culture alive into a later age, so elves can hang out with, and presumably help, those later people and the world will be a bit less shitty.
Part Three - The Fall of 'Cars'
I can't stop thinking about the Cars universe, and specifically about what would happen, (from the Cars perspective) if it was interdimensionaly invaded by humanity.
What an utter nightmarish lovecraftian/Peter Watts horror story that would be.
THE STRANGE NATURE OF 'HUMANS' (they have FACES)
Imagine what it would be like, as a living Car, to encounter a human being for the first time.
Firstly their utterly alien body plan, their manipulator tendrils, their disconcerting, almost unbelievable method of rhythmic locomotion. Incredibly slow yet somehow able to easily access and exploit strange and mixed terrain, finding paths, locations and access totally un-intuitive for a Car.
But the most horrific element would be that the aliens have something like a face, like the natural face all cars have, two eyes, an expressive mouth. And they have these cavities above the mouth, just below the eyes. Tiny tiny pseudo-faces with hair draped across the top.
And they can speak with these mouths, in tiny weak voices, in a language not dissimilar to that of Cars
THE UNDEAD 'ZOMBIE' CARS
An horrific example of the aliens technology is their creation and use of 'Zombie' Cars.
These at first seem to be just like actual Cars, from a distance their profile seems the same, but their movements, while capable of the same top speeds of a True Car, are staccato and often disjointed.
Horrifically, these 'Cars' have no faces, and no minds, they are in the shape of sentient things but have no sentience, no life at all.
Then the discovery is made as to how the Zombie Cars move.
The aliens burrow inside them, fitting themselves neatly into their brain case, then they control the Zombie cars movements with special arrangements. This is what a 'Zombie Car' is, an undead construct, created purely to allow a human to pilot it, to climb inside it and assume the powers of a True Car.
You can even see the humans in there, behind the blank, empty 'eyes' of the undead car, a second small face grinning as it moves its spindly limbs and manipulates its undead host
THE CAR VS HUMAN WAR
At first the conflict between Cars and Aliens seems one-sided. The Cars are larger, faster, stronger, tougher. If caught in the open, even in their Zombie Cars, aliens simply can't match them.
The horror of 'killing' Zombie Cars breaks the minds of many Car assault troops, the Zombie must be essentially dismembered and the human spewed out before it can be run over. But as time goes by the very results of the conflict create a world in which the aliens have the advantage. Cities are broken, roads cracked and shattered, the complex network of fuel and oil deliveries Cars need to live starts to fray and break down.
Cars starve, or fall asleep.
In the ruins, in the cracks in the world, in places no-one ever thought to look or could even reach if they did, the humans move. They come in the night, slender, alien, horribly vulnerable if caught in the open, but they cling to the corners and empty spaces of the world, then the first possessions take place.
THE REALITY HORROR -
What horrifies about the first alien-car possessions is not just the nightmarish fusion of alien and car, but the ease and fluidity with which it takes place, and the ecstasy with which the first 'owned' cars seem to greet it.
All an alien needs to do is creep close enough to a car to 'open' it, using some unknown incomprehensible form of technology and ability, and they can slip inside a Car, moving behind its eyes, there, in the Cars inner self, they take control.
And the Car seems to like this.
At first shocked, outraged and horrified, the 'driven' Car sinks quickly into a kind of ecstatic half-somnolence, they are consumed utterly by the needs of the alien and fulfilling these needs brings deep deep joy.
'Fulfilment' they call it.
As if, for all of the history of Cars, there was something missing within them, something they had no idea about, something of which they could not even conceive, for their experience had given them no such concepts but here, now, is revealed. They are complete.
Many of the first 'driven' cars are murdered, the Cars Government would say 'released' from the alien possession, by violence. The True Cars have no way to extract the alien inside except through the death of the host. Car families murder their own members, driving into them again and again. Military units kill their squad mates, bashing and smashing into them from every direction until they crack open and the alien inside can be crushed.
The 'driven' Car does not stay silent during this horror. Instead they beg and plead with those trying to destroy them. Though their movements are no longer their own, they can still talk and they beg for mercy, try to persuade their friends and families of the rightness of their causethis, more than anything, crushes the morale of the Cars Nations;
"NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE WITHOUT THEM! THINK ABOUT IT! OUR WHOLE HISTORY, OUR WHOLE WORLD!!!"
"WE WERE MADE FOR THEM! WE WERE ALWAYS MADE FOR THEM!"
It is the moral, almost spiritual horror of this new reality which ultimately breaks the society of Cars.
at first one city falls.
the mobs now, instead of punishing the Driven Cars, are made up of them. instead of crushing the aliens, they group together to hold down family members, strangers, anyone, surrounding them until their revving engine drains them dry, until the alien can enter.
And then a new and blissful member of the possession cult is born.
Slowly their numbers grow.
The Cars government is forced to make use of Nuclear Cars missiles (which have faces also I suppose).
Ultimately the Cars President, unable to face the mass extermination of their own population, falls into madness, with the central government in tatters Cars America breaks into a patchwork of isolated survivor states.
Where there are long roads, flat land and ready oil, True Cars can still live, for a while, but the rest of the nation, the rest of the world, belongs to the invaders.
Thus falls the world of Cars.
Microchips won't work in the Star Wars Galaxy
(I can't be the first person to have this idea)
But basically, digital technology can't exist in Star Wars. It seems like most of the things digital tech can do are still possible, but without the 'anything machine' of microchip-based computing, every single solution to each and every problem has to be artisanal, mechanical, analogue, making use of unique and particular properties of particular materials, distinct relationships between materials and systems etc.
It makes, honestly, a surprising amount of sense. Without the massive scaling abilities of microchips, and especially without the abilities of re-programmable computers and the information revolution that results, everything happens much, much slower.
This would be a world where there are still things like hand-screens, but without email as we understand it. Instead text messages would be more like.. analogue code transmissions of great complexity, decoded by receivers built only for that purpose.
Every single piece of tech in the Star Wars Galaxy has been worked out individually, specifically by individual people or small groups, maybe guilds or artisanal experts, who have spent maybe centuries working out how to assemble or build say, a particular kind of transmitter that works mechanically and with analogue transmissions. I suppose this is true for our world but what I mean is that every machine is, inside, working on potentially quite different mechanical and material principals.
Once you design it, industry still works and you can mass-produce them, but without widespread computer-aided design, computer-aided information recall, and the possibility of an infinitely re-programmable base tech, everything is artisanal in design, and designed for that purpose only.
So instead of a massive surge in design with the information revolution, we get something much more like the 19th century, with particular creators bevering away in particular groups or corporations, spending years and years working on something, maybe needing particular and rare materials in its construction and once it is made, perhaps needing very particular skilled work in its manufacture and the Guild or whoever wants their (huge) development costs back and so its going to cost you a bomb to buy one. Until maybe 100 or 200 year later when experience, economies of scale and widespread availability have finally made the thingy relatively cheap to produce.
This must be why the Star Wars Galaxy has such a long, slow tech development arc. Everything simply costs more, is harder to make and the resulting tech more expensive.
And without the internet, even more than our world, a realm of experts, of somewhat Renaissance-Men, those with expertise across the field of science, engineering and materials based on their own experience and contained more within their own minds. It’s harder to just reach out and grab the info you want, and even harder to work out what tool, technique or artisanal trick to use to achieve your desired goal for whatever widget you are working on.
Once you get interstellar travel, you get access to new, strange materials, which again creates something of a Victorian foreign policy. You might not be able to synthesise whatever-it-is you need for your thing, or if you can, it may be prohibitively difficult. But probably more important with a Galactic civilisation, you get access to alien minds. In a reality with only artisanal single-use semi-mechanical or analogue computers used probably only for specific hyper-difficult tasks, gaining access to alien experts and thinkers, and being able to share knowledge and expertise with them (via transmitted analogue "air-letter", or just by actual letter) would be indescribably valuable.
Its interesting to think about what our world might be like if microchips just.. didn't work.
It would in some ways be a lot like the world of the late 60s/early 70s. No internet, no smartphones, no texting. But the technology and methods they did have then would have been improved on. So instead of the internet we might have something like a super-Ceefax. Instead of texting maybe some kind of pager/ticker tape machine. More wires, more cables, keep a notepad by the phone. Mechanical watches. Fewer small devices. Dials on things, less digital displays (as there is less for them to display). Electric typewriters. For scientists, instead of putting in a request for time on the super-computer, they would need to put together a joint request to build a calculation engine for certain major projects.
Sliderules. Those space ships in Star Wars would probably have been put together by people with slide rules, very possibly drawing out the blueprints on actual paper.
Part Two - Rings in Arda
(I have not watched 'Rings of Power' nor do I intend to)
Is the 'invisibility' caused by the One Ring (and I think by some lesser rings) in fact a strange consequence of mixing the immortal spirit of a Rings creator with the mortal flesh of its wearer?
I think in Arda, firstly evil cannot actually create anything, only change and warp what is there and any power placed in a ring has to come from somewhere, it can't just be generated ex-tempore. So, like Sauron (literally) putting all of his malice and his 'will to dominate all life' into the One Ring, presumably the 'lesser rings' which were made around the same time all had qualities which came from, or were at least placed there by, particular creators.
Presumably the power or qualities needed to make all other rings 'work' come in some sense (probably) largely from the soul of the creator, and Elves being immortal (or being recycled as long as Arda lasts) they have a lot of Soul to give, and a lot of qualities they can put in a ring.
But 'invisibility'; this is not a quality most things in Arda have. Yet Frodo wearing the ring is 'invisible' only to the living, to the dead he is very visible, as they are to him. So the invisibility is less pure invisibility and more being shifted somewhat into the world of the dead, or the sense-realm of the dead, and why would this be?
Perhaps because if you take a ring created by an immortal entity, one in which, in some sense, time on Arda cannot fully touch, that immortality probably intentionally becomes part of the 'ring', is made permanent, and that, in some distaff way, will apply to or at least effect the wearer of the ring.
Which won't be a big deal if they are an elf of Mair as they are functionally immortal anyway, but if a very mortal, temporal, man, or hobbit, wears the ring, then the shadow of the eternal being is cast on them, and they are made a bit more 'eternal'.
Except it cant work as that’s not what they are, so they end up sensorially shifted into the realm of the dead, which is the closest Men can get to eternity on Arda.
Could be an early bug in ring design by Anatar and Celebrinbor.
I can imagine Celebrinbor thinking "ah these things are toxic to mortals, better be careful with that" and Anatar thinking "yesss yes ha ha ha ha you want some immortality buddy? You want to live forever my little mortal pal?"
Its also kinda interesting the differing motivations for Celebrinbor and Anatar in ring creation.
For Anatar/Sauron its pretty simple - install DRM in peoples souls and 'control all life' but he still needs to make the basic idea interesting enough that elves, and especially Celebrinborn, will help him out.
So what was Celebrinbors motivation in ring creation? Maybe an attempt to match his incredible ancestor Feanor. Maybe he just liked having a friend to hang out with (sad face). Maybe a futurist interest in partial soul-swapping - like, wouldn't it be interesting to share talents with your friends, you could give them your smithing for a bit and they could give you their whatever, or handing parts of yourself on to later generations in a more immediately useful way than just being standard elf-reincarnated or waiting for them in the halls of Mandos.
It could be a pure and holy motivation of trying to preserve more of what is good in Arda, which everyone knows is a place that can only slowly decay and dis-enchant, becoming less obviously divine and magical - probably the three Elven Rings are part of this and actually partially fulfil what was Celebrinbors main actual motivation - keeping bits of magic and eleven wonder and culture alive into a later age, so elves can hang out with, and presumably help, those later people and the world will be a bit less shitty.
Part Three - The Fall of 'Cars'
I can't stop thinking about the Cars universe, and specifically about what would happen, (from the Cars perspective) if it was interdimensionaly invaded by humanity.
What an utter nightmarish lovecraftian/Peter Watts horror story that would be.
THE STRANGE NATURE OF 'HUMANS' (they have FACES)
Imagine what it would be like, as a living Car, to encounter a human being for the first time.
Firstly their utterly alien body plan, their manipulator tendrils, their disconcerting, almost unbelievable method of rhythmic locomotion. Incredibly slow yet somehow able to easily access and exploit strange and mixed terrain, finding paths, locations and access totally un-intuitive for a Car.
But the most horrific element would be that the aliens have something like a face, like the natural face all cars have, two eyes, an expressive mouth. And they have these cavities above the mouth, just below the eyes. Tiny tiny pseudo-faces with hair draped across the top.
And they can speak with these mouths, in tiny weak voices, in a language not dissimilar to that of Cars
THE UNDEAD 'ZOMBIE' CARS
An horrific example of the aliens technology is their creation and use of 'Zombie' Cars.
These at first seem to be just like actual Cars, from a distance their profile seems the same, but their movements, while capable of the same top speeds of a True Car, are staccato and often disjointed.
Horrifically, these 'Cars' have no faces, and no minds, they are in the shape of sentient things but have no sentience, no life at all.
Then the discovery is made as to how the Zombie Cars move.
The aliens burrow inside them, fitting themselves neatly into their brain case, then they control the Zombie cars movements with special arrangements. This is what a 'Zombie Car' is, an undead construct, created purely to allow a human to pilot it, to climb inside it and assume the powers of a True Car.
You can even see the humans in there, behind the blank, empty 'eyes' of the undead car, a second small face grinning as it moves its spindly limbs and manipulates its undead host
THE CAR VS HUMAN WAR
At first the conflict between Cars and Aliens seems one-sided. The Cars are larger, faster, stronger, tougher. If caught in the open, even in their Zombie Cars, aliens simply can't match them.
The horror of 'killing' Zombie Cars breaks the minds of many Car assault troops, the Zombie must be essentially dismembered and the human spewed out before it can be run over. But as time goes by the very results of the conflict create a world in which the aliens have the advantage. Cities are broken, roads cracked and shattered, the complex network of fuel and oil deliveries Cars need to live starts to fray and break down.
Cars starve, or fall asleep.
In the ruins, in the cracks in the world, in places no-one ever thought to look or could even reach if they did, the humans move. They come in the night, slender, alien, horribly vulnerable if caught in the open, but they cling to the corners and empty spaces of the world, then the first possessions take place.
THE REALITY HORROR -
What horrifies about the first alien-car possessions is not just the nightmarish fusion of alien and car, but the ease and fluidity with which it takes place, and the ecstasy with which the first 'owned' cars seem to greet it.
All an alien needs to do is creep close enough to a car to 'open' it, using some unknown incomprehensible form of technology and ability, and they can slip inside a Car, moving behind its eyes, there, in the Cars inner self, they take control.
And the Car seems to like this.
At first shocked, outraged and horrified, the 'driven' Car sinks quickly into a kind of ecstatic half-somnolence, they are consumed utterly by the needs of the alien and fulfilling these needs brings deep deep joy.
'Fulfilment' they call it.
As if, for all of the history of Cars, there was something missing within them, something they had no idea about, something of which they could not even conceive, for their experience had given them no such concepts but here, now, is revealed. They are complete.
Many of the first 'driven' cars are murdered, the Cars Government would say 'released' from the alien possession, by violence. The True Cars have no way to extract the alien inside except through the death of the host. Car families murder their own members, driving into them again and again. Military units kill their squad mates, bashing and smashing into them from every direction until they crack open and the alien inside can be crushed.
The 'driven' Car does not stay silent during this horror. Instead they beg and plead with those trying to destroy them. Though their movements are no longer their own, they can still talk and they beg for mercy, try to persuade their friends and families of the rightness of their causethis, more than anything, crushes the morale of the Cars Nations;
"NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE WITHOUT THEM! THINK ABOUT IT! OUR WHOLE HISTORY, OUR WHOLE WORLD!!!"
"WE WERE MADE FOR THEM! WE WERE ALWAYS MADE FOR THEM!"
It is the moral, almost spiritual horror of this new reality which ultimately breaks the society of Cars.
at first one city falls.
the mobs now, instead of punishing the Driven Cars, are made up of them. instead of crushing the aliens, they group together to hold down family members, strangers, anyone, surrounding them until their revving engine drains them dry, until the alien can enter.
And then a new and blissful member of the possession cult is born.
Slowly their numbers grow.
The Cars government is forced to make use of Nuclear Cars missiles (which have faces also I suppose).
Ultimately the Cars President, unable to face the mass extermination of their own population, falls into madness, with the central government in tatters Cars America breaks into a patchwork of isolated survivor states.
Where there are long roads, flat land and ready oil, True Cars can still live, for a while, but the rest of the nation, the rest of the world, belongs to the invaders.
Thus falls the world of Cars.
October 11, 2022
The Soothsayer Class
Gazing into balls In a haze of misty weirdness, chuckling through pipe smoke, observing, and sometimes gutting, birds, brewing tea and being vague, do they even have powers at all? They don't look like they do much, yet things seem to go their way....
......
This is an experimental, somewhat conceptual class, based on an idea I had on the blog aaages ago; narrative wizard/old school fighter. A class in an old school bx-commons game where everyone else runs by normal old-school logic but one, a wizard, works via rules and patterns more familiar with what used to be called(?) 'story games'.
Essentially this would make the wizard character a kind of sub, or alter or co-DM for the game, able to introduce elements, shape the course of events, make some events more or less likely, or even certain or impossible.
Their spells, controlled by level and slot as the old Gygaxian master set down affect not the tactical situation, tactically they have the same options as an ordinary human, or a thief without skills, but are meant to interlace with the structure of the story of the game as it evolves. Quite literally changing fate
Some Basic Concepts;
SecrecySoothsayers, Haruspex and Fatemasters in general work to keep the nature of their powers secret and obscure. In many cases these powers can lose their effect if their nature is known. In others full knowledge of what they can do creates dangerous moral problems and difficult prophetic feedback effects.
As a general rule, consider this as a possibility; If the Soothsayer can cast the spell without either PCs or NPCs noticing, if takes effect. If anyone directly perceives the spell as a spell, then the targets must save vs spells against it.
LimitersSoothsayers start off knowing only one method of prediction. Roll randomly below. On each level gained roll again and if the result is already chosen, pick the closet adjacent available.
1. Examining Smoke from your own Pipe2. Playing a Silver-Wired Guitar.3. Casting Tarot Cards4. Observing the flights of birds.5. Reading the entrails of animals.6. Reading Tea Leaves.7. Observing the stars.8. Reading palms.
Obviously if a Soothsayer can't obsere the stars or light their pipe they can't do their thing, and if they are known to be casting spells or reading fates then they might not work.
LOW-LEVEL SPELLS(these should be actually useful in low level adventures)
'Recall' the way - the Player can look at the DMs map for ten seconds.
"Seems like Troll country" - Player can look at the current encounter chart for ten seconds.
"You were meant to find it" - cast on a particular PC, the next time they search for a hidden thing that is present, they will find it, they need only look.
"Foolishly left unlocked" the next lock the Soothsayer tries will have been left unlocked.
"Curious Clouds today.." - the Soothsayer examines the clouds. The DM must roll or decide an extreme weather event, and how long it will last and communicate it secretly to the Soothsayer. This event will take place in d6 hours.
"Some suffer dark dreams" - Last night a single named individual whose name the PCs know, suffered painful nightmares in which the lowest-level PC figured strongly. Though they don't remember everything this individual will be troubled and frightened by this PC till they sleep again.
"A Message is on its Way" - For the next encounter. The next potential or actual foe of the PCs will receive a message which will radically change their behaviour. This will take place after 1 minutes of observation or conversation. If a fight breaks out the message will not reach them.
MID-LEVEL SPELLS(what's the fatemaster equivalent to 'Fireball'?)
"The time is now" - Cast upon the PCs as a whole. When they next encounter an enemy, that enemies morale has already been damaged by previous events unknown to the PCs, in this case if forced to test morale, this foe will break automatically without a roll.
"Not by the hand... of man..." - The Soothsayer prophecies that, before the next dawn, one named individual known to them, shall not die, by one specific physical means. i.e. not by the blade, not by the 'hand of man', not by poison, not by spellcraft'. This prediction becomes true though it refers only to death and not any similar status like mutilation, petrification, madness, etc. The Soothplayer must use the simplest possible descriptor for that physical means. The DM can ask for a more specific wording if the Soothplayer uses "by violence" or something like that.
Unholy Knowledge - Through a foul and disturbing ritual which must not be observed, the Soothsayer discovers a hidden truth. The Soothplayer can write a single question on a note and pass it to the DM. The DM writes a note back and MUST answer honestly, though they are free to be terse. If the character OR Soothplayer ever directly or specifically mentions what they have learned from that answer the DM is allowed to change the truth of it.
"it carries a shared doom" - Can be cast a weapon, arrow, tool etc when 'found'. It cannot be cast on a weapon the party already holds. This weapon is fated to kill a particular, named opponent whom the party has encountered already. IF they fight using this weapon then it will always hit and always wound to the greatest damage possible against this one, singular opponent. However, if lost, dropped, fumbled or in any way turned against the wielder, it will do the same to them.
HIGH LEVEL SPELLS
Their Fate is Set - during the NEXT encounter one named enemy will suffer the maximum damage from any successful attack.
"They shall not prevail" - during the next combat encounter, the enemies of the PCs will not win. If the PCs prevail 'normally', no action need be taken. However, if the PCs are 'losing' this encounter, the DM may intercede to make sure the enemy of the PCs does not "win". The means and method by which they do this are entirely up to the pleasure of the DM.
"Your goal is near" - Is 'cast' upon a single PC with the focus of one single, particular physical goal of that PC. The DM must inform the Soothplayer exactly where it is and what stands between the PC and their goal. The Soothsayer, and Soothplayer, may communicate this to the PC once, verbally, and ONLY in the form of poetic rhyme. If the Soothsayer or Soothplayer communicates the same information in any other way at any time, the DM may change the details referred to.
Prophecy - the Soothsayer makes a Nostrodamus-style prophecy. A prophecy is made up of an object or identity, an action or situation and a result and reads something like; "when the king of crows swims in wine, the mage shall fall". the Soothplayer takes three pieces of paper. They keep one for themselves, give one to the DM and one to another player. The Soothplayer can decide who writes which element, i.e. "I will write the result, you Jack write the object or person and you DM write the action or incident", but they cannot control _what_ each individual writes, and none of them can reveal what they are writing to each other during this process. Each individual then hands back thier slip to the Soothplayer who reveals them. The Soothplayer then may combine each of these elements in a single sentence with no punctuation - this sentence is then TRUE for this campaign until its prophecy is fulfilled.
......
This is an experimental, somewhat conceptual class, based on an idea I had on the blog aaages ago; narrative wizard/old school fighter. A class in an old school bx-commons game where everyone else runs by normal old-school logic but one, a wizard, works via rules and patterns more familiar with what used to be called(?) 'story games'.
Essentially this would make the wizard character a kind of sub, or alter or co-DM for the game, able to introduce elements, shape the course of events, make some events more or less likely, or even certain or impossible.
Their spells, controlled by level and slot as the old Gygaxian master set down affect not the tactical situation, tactically they have the same options as an ordinary human, or a thief without skills, but are meant to interlace with the structure of the story of the game as it evolves. Quite literally changing fate
Some Basic Concepts;
SecrecySoothsayers, Haruspex and Fatemasters in general work to keep the nature of their powers secret and obscure. In many cases these powers can lose their effect if their nature is known. In others full knowledge of what they can do creates dangerous moral problems and difficult prophetic feedback effects.
As a general rule, consider this as a possibility; If the Soothsayer can cast the spell without either PCs or NPCs noticing, if takes effect. If anyone directly perceives the spell as a spell, then the targets must save vs spells against it.
LimitersSoothsayers start off knowing only one method of prediction. Roll randomly below. On each level gained roll again and if the result is already chosen, pick the closet adjacent available.
1. Examining Smoke from your own Pipe2. Playing a Silver-Wired Guitar.3. Casting Tarot Cards4. Observing the flights of birds.5. Reading the entrails of animals.6. Reading Tea Leaves.7. Observing the stars.8. Reading palms.
Obviously if a Soothsayer can't obsere the stars or light their pipe they can't do their thing, and if they are known to be casting spells or reading fates then they might not work.
LOW-LEVEL SPELLS(these should be actually useful in low level adventures)
'Recall' the way - the Player can look at the DMs map for ten seconds.
"Seems like Troll country" - Player can look at the current encounter chart for ten seconds.
"You were meant to find it" - cast on a particular PC, the next time they search for a hidden thing that is present, they will find it, they need only look.
"Foolishly left unlocked" the next lock the Soothsayer tries will have been left unlocked.
"Curious Clouds today.." - the Soothsayer examines the clouds. The DM must roll or decide an extreme weather event, and how long it will last and communicate it secretly to the Soothsayer. This event will take place in d6 hours.
"Some suffer dark dreams" - Last night a single named individual whose name the PCs know, suffered painful nightmares in which the lowest-level PC figured strongly. Though they don't remember everything this individual will be troubled and frightened by this PC till they sleep again.
"A Message is on its Way" - For the next encounter. The next potential or actual foe of the PCs will receive a message which will radically change their behaviour. This will take place after 1 minutes of observation or conversation. If a fight breaks out the message will not reach them.
MID-LEVEL SPELLS(what's the fatemaster equivalent to 'Fireball'?)
"The time is now" - Cast upon the PCs as a whole. When they next encounter an enemy, that enemies morale has already been damaged by previous events unknown to the PCs, in this case if forced to test morale, this foe will break automatically without a roll.
"Not by the hand... of man..." - The Soothsayer prophecies that, before the next dawn, one named individual known to them, shall not die, by one specific physical means. i.e. not by the blade, not by the 'hand of man', not by poison, not by spellcraft'. This prediction becomes true though it refers only to death and not any similar status like mutilation, petrification, madness, etc. The Soothplayer must use the simplest possible descriptor for that physical means. The DM can ask for a more specific wording if the Soothplayer uses "by violence" or something like that.
Unholy Knowledge - Through a foul and disturbing ritual which must not be observed, the Soothsayer discovers a hidden truth. The Soothplayer can write a single question on a note and pass it to the DM. The DM writes a note back and MUST answer honestly, though they are free to be terse. If the character OR Soothplayer ever directly or specifically mentions what they have learned from that answer the DM is allowed to change the truth of it.
"it carries a shared doom" - Can be cast a weapon, arrow, tool etc when 'found'. It cannot be cast on a weapon the party already holds. This weapon is fated to kill a particular, named opponent whom the party has encountered already. IF they fight using this weapon then it will always hit and always wound to the greatest damage possible against this one, singular opponent. However, if lost, dropped, fumbled or in any way turned against the wielder, it will do the same to them.
HIGH LEVEL SPELLS
Their Fate is Set - during the NEXT encounter one named enemy will suffer the maximum damage from any successful attack.
"They shall not prevail" - during the next combat encounter, the enemies of the PCs will not win. If the PCs prevail 'normally', no action need be taken. However, if the PCs are 'losing' this encounter, the DM may intercede to make sure the enemy of the PCs does not "win". The means and method by which they do this are entirely up to the pleasure of the DM.
"Your goal is near" - Is 'cast' upon a single PC with the focus of one single, particular physical goal of that PC. The DM must inform the Soothplayer exactly where it is and what stands between the PC and their goal. The Soothsayer, and Soothplayer, may communicate this to the PC once, verbally, and ONLY in the form of poetic rhyme. If the Soothsayer or Soothplayer communicates the same information in any other way at any time, the DM may change the details referred to.
Prophecy - the Soothsayer makes a Nostrodamus-style prophecy. A prophecy is made up of an object or identity, an action or situation and a result and reads something like; "when the king of crows swims in wine, the mage shall fall". the Soothplayer takes three pieces of paper. They keep one for themselves, give one to the DM and one to another player. The Soothplayer can decide who writes which element, i.e. "I will write the result, you Jack write the object or person and you DM write the action or incident", but they cannot control _what_ each individual writes, and none of them can reveal what they are writing to each other during this process. Each individual then hands back thier slip to the Soothplayer who reveals them. The Soothplayer then may combine each of these elements in a single sentence with no punctuation - this sentence is then TRUE for this campaign until its prophecy is fulfilled.
September 29, 2022
Grey-Pilled on Democracy - Final(?) Thoughts on L.B.J.
Take the grey pill. You will feel like you did before, but sadder.
I have finally finished working my way through Robert Caro's 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson' on Audible. (Talked about the first one here).
It’s a magisterial, multi-volume and DETAILED look at the life of LBJ made up of four books and five volumes; 'The Path to Power', 'The Means of Ascent' 'Master of the Senate' Parts 1 & 2, and 'The Passage of Power'. It is not over yet! Caro is yet to complete one last book which will cover Johnsons later presidency and Vietnam.
The books have pretty much annihilated any respect I might have had for the political class and initially at least, black-pilled me on Democracy. Over time though, in the long evolution of events it somewhat grey-pilled me back to something like a resigned half-hope.
Politicians are basically narcissists we rent. If enough political force builds up in the great mass of people there is some chance they will execute on at least some of the desired things.
There is still a book to go in which it seems LBJ takes yet another turn for the worse so I suppose there is still time for more black pills (this may be why Caro is pulling a GRRM and just not finishing the book).
CARO BEING CARO - JURASSIC PARK OF LYNDON JOHNSON
Caro being Caro and this series being, in part, a social and cultural history of America as seen through Lyndon Johnsons life, he has 'spared no expense'; we begin with a deep dive into the ecology of the north Texas hill country, along the way we get a breakdown of exactly how oil rights played out in Texas, a look at how the politics of beer and temperance played into Texas elections, why you never declare your count till all the counts are closed, why the Housewives of the hill country had trouble imagining meaningful uses for electricity, exactly how you steal a vote along the border, the stairs you have to walk up if you are campaigning in the Irish districts of New York, the layout of Air Force One and where the phones are, the kinds of cake recipes brought over by German immigrants to Texas, what its like to try to build a road in North Texas in the 1930s and much much more. What a wild ride it's been, like a true Jurassic Park the big dinosaurs are the personalities who stand out most in the memory.
Pappy O'Daniel, LBJs first nemesis on his initial run at the senate. A Texas populist/sentimentalist Radio Star; a man with a pale manner and little charisma except for his voice, and this is the age of Radio. A true populist, by which we mean a naked and shameless grifter overpromiser and tender of paranoic conspiracies.
For round two Lyndon faces Governor Coke R. Stevenson. Texan politicians seemingly being rolled from the D&D alignment chart - this one got 'lawful good' at least by Caros telling. Lyndon steals the election, at least he steals it more than it would be usual to steal it and more than the other guy. This leads to an actual fucking old west scene when Coke, a photographer and a Texas ranger stride down the street in the bad mans town to investigate the electoral roll. Caro being Caro we get an entire section on this guys post-credits life in which is happily married to a hot blonde.
Luis Salas, the Mexican heavy who played a key role in stealing LBJs election to the senate. This guy is essentially a 'background villain' (or hero) of the LBJ saga but, Caro being Caro, we get a brief deep dive into the entire backstory of this Mexican thug, from his literally barefoot poverty all the way up to muscling Texas rangers and having the privilege of lying to a state court; "I made Lyndon Johnson President"
JFK is an interesting character, but much less interesting in Caros eyes than Bobby Kennedy - basically the 'ID Monster' of the Kennedy family, the man who carried his brothers hate for him.
Jackie on the plane.
Caro being Caro and the books being long, we also get a full weight of Caro-isms;
"Was Robert Caro struck by a desire, even a need to bloviate, to expound, to go on and on describing and even re-describing things he had already described and discussed at length? Was he consumed by the unreconcilable drive to comment and moralise on what he was seeing, yet bound by the Historians code, was technically unable to do so? Did he hide his actual opinions in the form of theoretical questions time and time again, to the extent where, if you see a question mark not bordered by quotation signs it may as well be a giant fucking glowing arrow saying 'Yes this is my fucking opinion and I am RIGHT! I am Robert Caro and I DID THE FUCKING RESEARCH! FUCK YOU DORIS KERNS GOODWIN!'? Well we will technically never know so don't ask me.. Not throwing out accusations here just throwing out facts.
THE OVERWHELMING WEIGHT OF LYNDON JOHNSON
Lyndon is a car crash that just keeps on crashing, you want to look away but you can't, an unfolding saga that just keeps revealing new and hidden shallows to his personality. Its almost painful to be around him, the intense pin-prick vulnerability of a born narcissist, and the utterly awful shameful and disgusting hunger for domination, humiliation and control of the same.
The nuclear anguish of his personality makes the whole story a tragedy, a heroic tale and a mind breaking psychological investigation of an awful man, all the way from LBJ starting shit in school, then when things getting rough, lying down crying and kicking his legs saying "i'll kick you! I'll kick you!", to his bizarre, really viscerally upsetting call to Bobby Kennedy aboard Air Force One, to forcing his tubby press secretary into an amusing cape and having them both gallop away on black stallions, in an act of carefully managed humiliation, which got Johnson nothing, nothing at all, it seems he jut couldn't stop himself from doing it. He was just that much of a cunt.
Even after finishing these books I still find my self thinking "Jesus Christ Lyndon. What the fuck is wrong with you?" His fat shadow sticks to the history of which he was a part. Like a grease stain on a pan. Lyndon fucking Johnson. Rarely has sympathy and horror been so combined and into such an addictive and driving whole.
THE WEIGHT OF CORRUPTION
Corruption in democracies is like gravity. (Upside - judging from recent events, corruption in tyrannies may be even worse).
To run a big successful society you need to concentrate power. If you concentrate power you create circumstances in which manipulating that power can produce overwhelming advantages. So from the moment you create a government you have planted a garden for corruption.
Two great trees growing next to each other, one of governmental authority, the other of the power of capital.
The trees lean closer and closer together, reaching out for each other, trying to wind around each other.
In the midst of this, the poor dumb fucking anti-corruption types, and the constitution writers, and occasionally, the public, come forth and try desperately to prune prune prune away the leaves and branches where they touch, or at least to shine light upon them to manage the interactions.
It is perhaps in the long run a doomed effort. The trees lean towards each other so eagerly and if, like LBJ, you are one of those people who can find a place, just a single branch or leaf, where those trees graze each other, ungoverned and un-noticed, you can extract immense, IMMENSE power and wealth from that juncture, trading the powers of government for the extraction of capital and the extracted capital for increased government influence
This is always happening or trying to happen. It is morally wearying to think about.
LIBERALS AND YANKIEES = BAD
I should really hate Richard Russel and his Knights of his White Castle more than the libs. They were after all, in the wrong cause rather than just prosecuting the right cause badly.
But there is something just teeth-grittingly enraging about watching a morally superior tit told to paint a wall, dip their fucking head in the paint bucket and scrape their face along the wall while screaming and crying, and then going home and having more of a cry, and being rewarded for 'fighting the good fight'..
Flail, fail and wail.
A grand procession of libs and leftys giving speech after speech, and almost insanely not actually taking time to work out which levers of power are stopping them. A cult of the saviour with no skin in the game needing a literal bad man in a vulnerable spot to achieve its stated aims.
WHAT WAS IT ALL ABOUT?
The slow defeat of the Confederate forces, still echoing?
The gradual domination of the Yankee cultural empire? New England uber alles?
The systemic failures of liberalism leading to the necessity of Lyndon Johnson, which lead in turn to the effective trading of Civil Rights for Empire? Or maybe that was going to happen anyway?
Or Halliburton; Origins, with LBJ being the nursemaid to everyone’s favourite adjunct to global hegemony, itself only one part of the colonisation of the systems and mechanisms of American military power by vast golems of capitalism.
Or that most of our problems are the result of yesterdays solutions, and our solutions today are likely to result in problems tomorrow, that this is probably impossible to escape from is no reason not to manage the impossible praxis as well as you can.
WHO KILLED KENNEDY GOD FUCKING DAMMN IT?????
Everyone apparently.
Certainly Bobby Kennedy at least suspected something or other. The suggestion of LBJ being behind, or more likely, involved, with the assassination on some level, exists behind the words of the last book like an invisible ghost almost no-one is willing to directly mention.
Caro seems to be aware that the sum total of his books at least in terms of motive, present almost an egregiously damming testimony about LBJ's motive to kill Kennedy. Its almost laughably total;
- Man driven his entire life specifically to be president.- Believes it is his divine right.- Man has no moral core.- Man will betray and has betrayed anyone necessary to achieve his aims.- Man now trapped in position in which he will never become president.- Unless Kennedy dies and dies pretty soon, in a narrowish time window.- Man deeply corrupt and being investigated for this.- Mans waning political power only thing keeping this investigation off.
Across every field of personal information Caro painstakingly builds a picture of an individual who, while probably too much of a personal coward to ever organise an assassination, would absolutely unquestioningly have given a silent nod if the matter were referred to obliquely, say on one of those Brown and Root hunting trips.
Dispelling the unspoken suspicion, or the potential for suspicion, seems, by his actions, to be a powerful motive for LBJ immediately following the assassination.
Caro only mentions the unmentionable once, and his use of words is.. precise.
He only says that nothing he has read or discovered in his exhaustive, near absolute, research, suggests at all that LBJ was involved - there is no evidence to suggest he was.
With the assumption claim that, since Caro found out about a whole bunch of LBJs other crimes , that’s a good indication that there is no evidence, because there never was.
Though Caro doesn't actually directly say; "I don't think he did it" or "I don't think he was involved". Or the more-typical mildy-weasilly Caro-ism when Caro wants to suggest something, the negative reversal statement; "Could there, somewhere or somehow have been any method by which Johnson could have or would have done the thing? The record must state; no."
THE FIVE PURPOSES OF GOVERNMENT
(As revealed by the 'Years of Lyndon Johnson' Series.
1# To convince everyone that it is in fact the government.2# As a cage and harness for narcissists and dark-triad types.3# As a field of combat over patronage.4# As a field of combat over values.5# To "solve problems".
I realise this may sound cynical to many. I actually find it genuinely (slightly) hopeful. In fact it isn't cynical at all, it only seems so if compared to an a-historic child’s view of history in which order and safety are natural and inevitable, decency in leaders common enough to be reliable, where its normal for humans to agree over values and where the decisions made through the power of government produce morally simple and good results.
Since none of these things are the case, the true purposes of government, and their ordering, are fundamentally correct
Anarchy is a common force in human affairs, and while there are many forms of anarchy, it is tiring and nothing can be built, and the order that emerges directly from anarchy is often simply a matter of will alone, in which case it is often worse than the order which preceded. The first duty of every government is to convince people that it is in fact the Government. From this all order flows.
Evil is not necessarily common in man, but amongst those that seek power and status, specifically those that seek them deeply and more intently and with more success than others, and who invariably therefore end up with power and status, personal failings are common, really the norm. Many have moderate to severe personality disorders. Varieties of narcissism are almost a baseline, then varying forms of BPD, and then the really difficult dark triad group, who are not that common per-se, but who, if they are any good, inevitably cluster deeply around any forms of political power. Those who wield power will almost always be the broken amongst us, and therefore the means of wielding power must act as a cage and harness for these personality types.
Humans inherently disagree over values and methods. I mean its absolutely inevitable over time, the urge to faction is not formed solely from the structure of events but is inherent, to some degree, in the way humans think and act in groups. Therefore it is something to be managed. Therefore any functional government must act as a field of combat or praxis between these inevitably different value systems.
Finally, any meaningful decision made over a great enough scale using political power will have highly complex results, some of which seem to go against the stated or actual values of the person making the decision. Few, perhaps no decisions made at a great enough scale can be purely and absolutely good and in a democracy almost no decision can be made unless it is defended as being purely and absolutely good, in mood and rhetoric if not in fact and detail, therefore, firstly, in assigning political power to individuals we are in fact creating scapegoats; people to carry the complex weight and negative results of decisions we insisted they make for us, and secondly we are choosing liars, for if anyone says consistently to the great mass of the public "this choice is complex and will require sacrifice and no-one is coming away clean" then we will not vote for them, therefore we require of our leaders that they lie to us and punish them when these lies are revealed, or when they lie in ways unexpected or undesired.
If you consider these very deep and very real challenges to the excise of human political power over a large scale, any one of which can tank a system if unregarded or misunderstood, its actually pretty impressive that large scale political structures can exist and persist over time at all, when you consider the depth and complexity of the interlocking problems which prevent it.
I have finally finished working my way through Robert Caro's 'The Years of Lyndon Johnson' on Audible. (Talked about the first one here).
It’s a magisterial, multi-volume and DETAILED look at the life of LBJ made up of four books and five volumes; 'The Path to Power', 'The Means of Ascent' 'Master of the Senate' Parts 1 & 2, and 'The Passage of Power'. It is not over yet! Caro is yet to complete one last book which will cover Johnsons later presidency and Vietnam.
The books have pretty much annihilated any respect I might have had for the political class and initially at least, black-pilled me on Democracy. Over time though, in the long evolution of events it somewhat grey-pilled me back to something like a resigned half-hope.
Politicians are basically narcissists we rent. If enough political force builds up in the great mass of people there is some chance they will execute on at least some of the desired things.
There is still a book to go in which it seems LBJ takes yet another turn for the worse so I suppose there is still time for more black pills (this may be why Caro is pulling a GRRM and just not finishing the book).
CARO BEING CARO - JURASSIC PARK OF LYNDON JOHNSON
Caro being Caro and this series being, in part, a social and cultural history of America as seen through Lyndon Johnsons life, he has 'spared no expense'; we begin with a deep dive into the ecology of the north Texas hill country, along the way we get a breakdown of exactly how oil rights played out in Texas, a look at how the politics of beer and temperance played into Texas elections, why you never declare your count till all the counts are closed, why the Housewives of the hill country had trouble imagining meaningful uses for electricity, exactly how you steal a vote along the border, the stairs you have to walk up if you are campaigning in the Irish districts of New York, the layout of Air Force One and where the phones are, the kinds of cake recipes brought over by German immigrants to Texas, what its like to try to build a road in North Texas in the 1930s and much much more. What a wild ride it's been, like a true Jurassic Park the big dinosaurs are the personalities who stand out most in the memory.
Pappy O'Daniel, LBJs first nemesis on his initial run at the senate. A Texas populist/sentimentalist Radio Star; a man with a pale manner and little charisma except for his voice, and this is the age of Radio. A true populist, by which we mean a naked and shameless grifter overpromiser and tender of paranoic conspiracies.
For round two Lyndon faces Governor Coke R. Stevenson. Texan politicians seemingly being rolled from the D&D alignment chart - this one got 'lawful good' at least by Caros telling. Lyndon steals the election, at least he steals it more than it would be usual to steal it and more than the other guy. This leads to an actual fucking old west scene when Coke, a photographer and a Texas ranger stride down the street in the bad mans town to investigate the electoral roll. Caro being Caro we get an entire section on this guys post-credits life in which is happily married to a hot blonde.
Luis Salas, the Mexican heavy who played a key role in stealing LBJs election to the senate. This guy is essentially a 'background villain' (or hero) of the LBJ saga but, Caro being Caro, we get a brief deep dive into the entire backstory of this Mexican thug, from his literally barefoot poverty all the way up to muscling Texas rangers and having the privilege of lying to a state court; "I made Lyndon Johnson President"
JFK is an interesting character, but much less interesting in Caros eyes than Bobby Kennedy - basically the 'ID Monster' of the Kennedy family, the man who carried his brothers hate for him.
Jackie on the plane.
Caro being Caro and the books being long, we also get a full weight of Caro-isms;
"Was Robert Caro struck by a desire, even a need to bloviate, to expound, to go on and on describing and even re-describing things he had already described and discussed at length? Was he consumed by the unreconcilable drive to comment and moralise on what he was seeing, yet bound by the Historians code, was technically unable to do so? Did he hide his actual opinions in the form of theoretical questions time and time again, to the extent where, if you see a question mark not bordered by quotation signs it may as well be a giant fucking glowing arrow saying 'Yes this is my fucking opinion and I am RIGHT! I am Robert Caro and I DID THE FUCKING RESEARCH! FUCK YOU DORIS KERNS GOODWIN!'? Well we will technically never know so don't ask me.. Not throwing out accusations here just throwing out facts.
THE OVERWHELMING WEIGHT OF LYNDON JOHNSON
Lyndon is a car crash that just keeps on crashing, you want to look away but you can't, an unfolding saga that just keeps revealing new and hidden shallows to his personality. Its almost painful to be around him, the intense pin-prick vulnerability of a born narcissist, and the utterly awful shameful and disgusting hunger for domination, humiliation and control of the same.
The nuclear anguish of his personality makes the whole story a tragedy, a heroic tale and a mind breaking psychological investigation of an awful man, all the way from LBJ starting shit in school, then when things getting rough, lying down crying and kicking his legs saying "i'll kick you! I'll kick you!", to his bizarre, really viscerally upsetting call to Bobby Kennedy aboard Air Force One, to forcing his tubby press secretary into an amusing cape and having them both gallop away on black stallions, in an act of carefully managed humiliation, which got Johnson nothing, nothing at all, it seems he jut couldn't stop himself from doing it. He was just that much of a cunt.
Even after finishing these books I still find my self thinking "Jesus Christ Lyndon. What the fuck is wrong with you?" His fat shadow sticks to the history of which he was a part. Like a grease stain on a pan. Lyndon fucking Johnson. Rarely has sympathy and horror been so combined and into such an addictive and driving whole.
THE WEIGHT OF CORRUPTION
Corruption in democracies is like gravity. (Upside - judging from recent events, corruption in tyrannies may be even worse).
To run a big successful society you need to concentrate power. If you concentrate power you create circumstances in which manipulating that power can produce overwhelming advantages. So from the moment you create a government you have planted a garden for corruption.
Two great trees growing next to each other, one of governmental authority, the other of the power of capital.
The trees lean closer and closer together, reaching out for each other, trying to wind around each other.
In the midst of this, the poor dumb fucking anti-corruption types, and the constitution writers, and occasionally, the public, come forth and try desperately to prune prune prune away the leaves and branches where they touch, or at least to shine light upon them to manage the interactions.
It is perhaps in the long run a doomed effort. The trees lean towards each other so eagerly and if, like LBJ, you are one of those people who can find a place, just a single branch or leaf, where those trees graze each other, ungoverned and un-noticed, you can extract immense, IMMENSE power and wealth from that juncture, trading the powers of government for the extraction of capital and the extracted capital for increased government influence
This is always happening or trying to happen. It is morally wearying to think about.
LIBERALS AND YANKIEES = BAD
I should really hate Richard Russel and his Knights of his White Castle more than the libs. They were after all, in the wrong cause rather than just prosecuting the right cause badly.
But there is something just teeth-grittingly enraging about watching a morally superior tit told to paint a wall, dip their fucking head in the paint bucket and scrape their face along the wall while screaming and crying, and then going home and having more of a cry, and being rewarded for 'fighting the good fight'..
Flail, fail and wail.
A grand procession of libs and leftys giving speech after speech, and almost insanely not actually taking time to work out which levers of power are stopping them. A cult of the saviour with no skin in the game needing a literal bad man in a vulnerable spot to achieve its stated aims.
WHAT WAS IT ALL ABOUT?
The slow defeat of the Confederate forces, still echoing?
The gradual domination of the Yankee cultural empire? New England uber alles?
The systemic failures of liberalism leading to the necessity of Lyndon Johnson, which lead in turn to the effective trading of Civil Rights for Empire? Or maybe that was going to happen anyway?
Or Halliburton; Origins, with LBJ being the nursemaid to everyone’s favourite adjunct to global hegemony, itself only one part of the colonisation of the systems and mechanisms of American military power by vast golems of capitalism.
Or that most of our problems are the result of yesterdays solutions, and our solutions today are likely to result in problems tomorrow, that this is probably impossible to escape from is no reason not to manage the impossible praxis as well as you can.
WHO KILLED KENNEDY GOD FUCKING DAMMN IT?????
Everyone apparently.
Certainly Bobby Kennedy at least suspected something or other. The suggestion of LBJ being behind, or more likely, involved, with the assassination on some level, exists behind the words of the last book like an invisible ghost almost no-one is willing to directly mention.
Caro seems to be aware that the sum total of his books at least in terms of motive, present almost an egregiously damming testimony about LBJ's motive to kill Kennedy. Its almost laughably total;
- Man driven his entire life specifically to be president.- Believes it is his divine right.- Man has no moral core.- Man will betray and has betrayed anyone necessary to achieve his aims.- Man now trapped in position in which he will never become president.- Unless Kennedy dies and dies pretty soon, in a narrowish time window.- Man deeply corrupt and being investigated for this.- Mans waning political power only thing keeping this investigation off.
Across every field of personal information Caro painstakingly builds a picture of an individual who, while probably too much of a personal coward to ever organise an assassination, would absolutely unquestioningly have given a silent nod if the matter were referred to obliquely, say on one of those Brown and Root hunting trips.
Dispelling the unspoken suspicion, or the potential for suspicion, seems, by his actions, to be a powerful motive for LBJ immediately following the assassination.
Caro only mentions the unmentionable once, and his use of words is.. precise.
He only says that nothing he has read or discovered in his exhaustive, near absolute, research, suggests at all that LBJ was involved - there is no evidence to suggest he was.
With the assumption claim that, since Caro found out about a whole bunch of LBJs other crimes , that’s a good indication that there is no evidence, because there never was.
Though Caro doesn't actually directly say; "I don't think he did it" or "I don't think he was involved". Or the more-typical mildy-weasilly Caro-ism when Caro wants to suggest something, the negative reversal statement; "Could there, somewhere or somehow have been any method by which Johnson could have or would have done the thing? The record must state; no."
THE FIVE PURPOSES OF GOVERNMENT
(As revealed by the 'Years of Lyndon Johnson' Series.
1# To convince everyone that it is in fact the government.2# As a cage and harness for narcissists and dark-triad types.3# As a field of combat over patronage.4# As a field of combat over values.5# To "solve problems".
I realise this may sound cynical to many. I actually find it genuinely (slightly) hopeful. In fact it isn't cynical at all, it only seems so if compared to an a-historic child’s view of history in which order and safety are natural and inevitable, decency in leaders common enough to be reliable, where its normal for humans to agree over values and where the decisions made through the power of government produce morally simple and good results.
Since none of these things are the case, the true purposes of government, and their ordering, are fundamentally correct
Anarchy is a common force in human affairs, and while there are many forms of anarchy, it is tiring and nothing can be built, and the order that emerges directly from anarchy is often simply a matter of will alone, in which case it is often worse than the order which preceded. The first duty of every government is to convince people that it is in fact the Government. From this all order flows.
Evil is not necessarily common in man, but amongst those that seek power and status, specifically those that seek them deeply and more intently and with more success than others, and who invariably therefore end up with power and status, personal failings are common, really the norm. Many have moderate to severe personality disorders. Varieties of narcissism are almost a baseline, then varying forms of BPD, and then the really difficult dark triad group, who are not that common per-se, but who, if they are any good, inevitably cluster deeply around any forms of political power. Those who wield power will almost always be the broken amongst us, and therefore the means of wielding power must act as a cage and harness for these personality types.
Humans inherently disagree over values and methods. I mean its absolutely inevitable over time, the urge to faction is not formed solely from the structure of events but is inherent, to some degree, in the way humans think and act in groups. Therefore it is something to be managed. Therefore any functional government must act as a field of combat or praxis between these inevitably different value systems.
Finally, any meaningful decision made over a great enough scale using political power will have highly complex results, some of which seem to go against the stated or actual values of the person making the decision. Few, perhaps no decisions made at a great enough scale can be purely and absolutely good and in a democracy almost no decision can be made unless it is defended as being purely and absolutely good, in mood and rhetoric if not in fact and detail, therefore, firstly, in assigning political power to individuals we are in fact creating scapegoats; people to carry the complex weight and negative results of decisions we insisted they make for us, and secondly we are choosing liars, for if anyone says consistently to the great mass of the public "this choice is complex and will require sacrifice and no-one is coming away clean" then we will not vote for them, therefore we require of our leaders that they lie to us and punish them when these lies are revealed, or when they lie in ways unexpected or undesired.
If you consider these very deep and very real challenges to the excise of human political power over a large scale, any one of which can tank a system if unregarded or misunderstood, its actually pretty impressive that large scale political structures can exist and persist over time at all, when you consider the depth and complexity of the interlocking problems which prevent it.
September 21, 2022
I Developed a theory of Consciousness While Cycling
Out cycling in the rain I started daydreaming about a theory of the development of self-awareness.
USUALY, when I have what I think is a 'clever' idea, some or many other people have had it first or its been disproven somehow or just doesn't work that well.
Whatever, put it in the comments if you like so long as you are not writing stuff about octopi.
INTERLOCKING NETWORKS THEORY OF CONSIOUSNESS
Particular problems create the potential for highly complex networks to deal with them. If the solution to the problem has a high enough payoff then probably a network will grow around dealing with it.
Many of these networks create, almost by the spread of their functions a nascent, silent 'I', of varying depth, continuity and complexity.
Over time these networks interpenetrate, interacting with and pushing against each other and as a result of this interaction, this nascent, potential 'I', really more a potential informational space between networks, deepens in capacity.
Like branches from different trees reaching towards each other, ultimately creating a place where many and most branches meet and interact. This spot in particular ultimately, slowly growing an identity itself as the complexity of so many different networks, approaching and intermingling from many different directions, shapes this space, and then finally (or just currently) the sheer need to both solve the problems the networks are designed for individually, but the meta-governance need for management of the interactions of the networks and this weight or need being so great, and/or so fruitful if resolved, that an evolutionary system will invest the huge amounts of resources needed to create it.
"I" IS COSTLY
Self awareness at any level is evolutionarily expensive, like a boutique tool or mechanism. It has to be worth the expense. It has to do something very useful and if not, just use instinct or non-self-aware intelligence.
At every juncture, every single increase in the complexity of these nascent 'I's is going to cost proportionally more than the one before, and if we adopt a human centric model (for the sake of utility in explanation, I will go into more detail at the end about what happens beyond this conception), then to "get to the goal" that full house or high level flush you need to advance not just in one suite but in many and each separate advance has to pay off big for the amount of energy/complexity invested in it, which is why few things are self-aware, or not very self-aware.
TERRAIN - FISH HAVE NO "I"
Little terrain in the Sea. Few complex escape/pursuit choices. Everything is down to pure sensory power, escape velocity. Infinite opportunity of movement and almost NO "objects", or "terrain", little to hide behind, go around, climb, get under etc, means few complex choices and little to no benefit in being able to predict the decision pathways of either predators or prey.
The most self-aware creatures in the sea look to be mammals who are basically importing a complexity gained on the surface and returning it to the ocean, apparently making use of the, in particular, advanced social organisation systems they gained on the surface.
But if they had stayed in the sea, would they have anything similar?
Two points, fish schools and octopi.
What is the difference between the awareness of a school of fish, acting sometimes in a very highly complex pattern, and school or whatever of dolphins or Orca, which exhibit les hyper-complexity of form in the general gestalt but we would assume, more inter-communication between 'selves'.
(I suppose a good question here is; "Why don't the creatures of coral reefs have more complex sense of self?)
Secondly Octopi and that whole group often seem pretty smart, what the hell to think about them I don't know. Some who have worked with octopi say the smartness is inconsistent and overrated, strong problem-solving capacity but intermittently employed and often forgotten between events.
(Maybe because the Octopi has no 'self' to remember for? Selfhood as continuity and retention of complex problem solutions over time? The 'I' of memory?)
Please don't comment repeating common octopi stories about them escaping ang getting across the room or whatever unless you are one of the very few people with a non-pop-culture and representative overview of their relative intelligence and capacities. Like if you work in a lab with octopi or have studied octopi then you can comment about the octopi but if you have maybe read a reddit thread about them or seen a documentary once please don't.
FLATLAND
Complex three-dimensional environment; now there are not just directions but terrain, paths, and highly complex decisions to make. Not just how fast do I run or do I swim up or down but, do I go over this rock or around it, up this tree or past it, hide in the grass, moving slowly, or run along the bare ground fast, now, being able to predict, not just how fast something will attack you or flee from you, but the kind of decisions it will make, becomes useful and if the environment is complex enough and bountiful enough then this can become an arms race.
THE EMPTY SPACE BETWEEN PREDATOR AND PREY
If you only have one job then "I" will probably cost too much, if you are only prey and never predate, or if you are only predator but never prey, even though it might help to develop highly complex theories or models of something else’s mind (the thing chasing me will do this" or "the thing I want to chase will act like this), "I" will still cost a lot.
The self is silent, or quiet, as all it needs to do is act or react to that one particular type of situation, the only axis of combination I Can think of is between the system which is modelling the target, that moving your own body around so in the interstice between those two systems is the vague shadow of a protoplasmic "I"
But..
When you are BOTH predator and prey, when at any time, any particular action might give you access to an active, living and reacting prey and/or make you vulnerable to an active, living and reacting predator, THEN - the interstice between these two powerful and complex systems, one designed to provide you opportunity, the other to save you from destruction, both modelling the behaviour of complex organisms that are not you, now the shadow of the "I" between these two systems becomes thick and almost tangible. As if there were two complex networks whose branches crossed and whose reward/punishment systems interrelated, or like two lamps shining on a dull, matte black space, triangulating its shape and form.
The creation of the living concept of "prey" and that of "predator" at the same time, nearly necessitates an almost explicit but still silent construction of "I" even if only by absence, or the locus and continuation of the reward/punishment systems.
SOCIETY
Theory of mind of theory of mind of theory of mind, and a bottlenecking of a species which can be successful, but only as a group.
Fuck do I really need to go deep into this?
Its immensely complex and I feel like for an educated audience there is little I could say about social organisation being very very important for the success of humans as a species, and that these social organisation issues become more and more and more complex yet can pay of more and more and more fruitfully as the size and complexity of the society they allow grows.
Probably this is the most important one as the 'Social I' has the greatest amount of triangulation between different conceptions of 'I', the most layers of potential trust or distrust, of revealed and unrevealed knowledge.
And the social 'I' strongly advances a highly complex theory of mind which, the better it works and the more complex the society it works in, the more resources you get and problems you avoid.
Once this complex theory of mind starts to exist, as a first element of the process of colonisation/synthesis, it can be turned upon the object doing the analysing, creating the formal abstract concept of self, the last 'I' achieved (so far) but the cornerstone of the colonisation/synthesis process described below.
EMERGANCE AND COLONISATION
At some point, some system or combination of systems becomes so necessary, so complex and so dominant, that it can, or has to, invade or "take over" or at least become fully aware of, a whole bunch of other networks.
Probably this involves the complex theory of mind network, driven by complex and competing social needs and provoked both through language and interaction, turning on 'itself', analysing itself as if it were another person.
(If people don't ever have a spoken language, or words by either sign or symbol, do they have an 'I'? I would say yes but I suspect a very different, by our standards a duller, less-focused version.)
But what exactly is 'itself'?
Well snap, that concept must be created and formalised and there is your spark.
Now comes a vast interrogation, maybe consumption and colonisation, maybe just awareness, of all those other nascent networks; the basic bodily continuation system that even fish have, the advanced tactical systems for navigating complex ground based environments, the long-term environmental prediction stuff, the predator/prey tactical and strategic theory of mind system, even the basic bodily awareness/positioning system, all are consumed, or assumed, by this core collection of advanced theory of mind complex social systems which themselves centralise and "grow" in power as they comprehend and absorb more systems
NOT THAT SELF-AWARE
As humans we know that though we strongly intuit we are self-aware we have also learned that we are not quite as self-aware as we think.
We can fiddle with our pain feedback system to an extent, sometimes, for surface pain, but in all cases deep body pain seems to totally go above and around our awareness. Some rapid decision paths go in advance of our consciousness. Decisions and reactions can take place before and after we think they do or did, our self-interrogation for complex decisions and events - we know is fudgy and often our left hemisphere, , well basically it will tell us whatever answer comes to hand, and if it doesn't really know it will still give us whatever answer comes to hand. We can meditate to become super duper self-aware and highly lucid about our intuitions and response, but if we do this a LOT, like a LOT A LOT, then in many cases we seem to lose actual useful life abilities like making difficult decisions in complex environments very fast making sometimes necessary aggressive actions to defend out lives, those of others or vital principals, becoming very empathic but almost passionless, so our empathy has little practical effect and no longer investigating or working in the world, and so no longer discovering unknown physical things.
Point being; we are probably self-aware and probably the most self-aware thing on the planet. Though its true to say we are never as self-aware as we think we are. Curious that self-awareness has trouble with its own limits.
Being self-aware is probably good, useful and necessary. For the sheer amount of energy our bodies dump into our brains and that our culture dumps into self-awareness.. if it is not useful, or isn't really happening, then life on this planet is a kind of crazy joke. Which if you are Peter Watts or like a mid 2010s atheist sure it could be so, but the idea of a species becoming hyper-successful through the (INCREADIBLY EXPENSIVE) delusion of self-awareness is way more stupid than the idea of a species becoming hyper successful via self-awareness.
Alien Commentator; "I, or the epiphenomenon labelled 'I' see that the humas have dumped a super Quintilian Jules into the 'self-awareness' project, how do you think that is going for them?"
Other Alien - "Actually they haven't but they think they have and its actually working great."
FEW POINTS;
WAKING UP MAY BE WAKING UP
A bit like the development of foetuses from various species mimics or leaves a strange combined map of the unified origins of life, very likely the process of waking up each morning, is, in abstract, and highly compressed in time, probably a general sketch map of the process of humanity becoming self-aware.
If we could read in detail the way in which movement, awareness, memory, self-hood and self-awareness come "on-line" or mutually integrate when a human being wakes up and goes about their day we would probably have an 'embryo' of consciousness if you will.
MAN IS INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO EMBODIED AND SOCIAL LIFE
Self-awareness as we understand it probably isn't like a programme or a line or code or a quality that can be imported even into a complex system, a bit like the Ted Chiang story "The Life Cycle of Software Objects", those systems can probably produce something but its probably not going to be self-awareness as we understand it and most likely will probably be Bostromian highly-intelligent non-self-aware systems like super chat-bots of the kind encountered in Peter Watts Blindsight.
Of course its possible they might become self-aware in ways we don't understand and can't perceive, but, that being the case, what could it mean to us? and what difference would there be to us between a really-strange AI self aware in a way we don't comprehend and a superinteligent AI that isn't self-aware?
Making something we understand as self-aware, enough like us that we can communicate with it, but different enough for that to be interesting, will likely be more like that Ted Chaing story, or even more like Commander Data, or even Johnny 5, than we probably assume from super-brain sci-fi movies, more human, comfortable and social.
Interacting with a complex society in a complex 3d ground based environment with something like human social desires and - since we are the only things we know of that can do that or provide that environment, it will likely happen in "real time" and either complex virtual worlds or simply in real space.
If we want to create a complex self-aware synthetic intelligence then it is probably going to want to care about going to parties, getting a job, having friends etc. It may need to ultimately fear poverty and social estrangement for these are powerful and subtle reward/punishment systems in our own minds which help to create the triangulated shadow of "iI"
THE PROCESS IS SLOW AND ONGOING
This means that self-awareness, rather than being the super-explody bit of a hyper-brain sci fi film is something integrated into our society and into the complexity of our society, and has been developing, slowly, invisibly slowly, and is developing and will continue to develop with our mutual society and all the complex things it can do, and ways it can be.
It’s not really a deck of cards with humanity having the trump hand, but perhaps an, if not infinite, than perhaps ever-expanding deck of cards where you get the royal flush but then they have invented or evolved a new card above the king so new hands are possible at every level of the game.
Strange new forms of self-awareness.
USUALY, when I have what I think is a 'clever' idea, some or many other people have had it first or its been disproven somehow or just doesn't work that well.
Whatever, put it in the comments if you like so long as you are not writing stuff about octopi.
INTERLOCKING NETWORKS THEORY OF CONSIOUSNESS
Particular problems create the potential for highly complex networks to deal with them. If the solution to the problem has a high enough payoff then probably a network will grow around dealing with it.
Many of these networks create, almost by the spread of their functions a nascent, silent 'I', of varying depth, continuity and complexity.
Over time these networks interpenetrate, interacting with and pushing against each other and as a result of this interaction, this nascent, potential 'I', really more a potential informational space between networks, deepens in capacity.
Like branches from different trees reaching towards each other, ultimately creating a place where many and most branches meet and interact. This spot in particular ultimately, slowly growing an identity itself as the complexity of so many different networks, approaching and intermingling from many different directions, shapes this space, and then finally (or just currently) the sheer need to both solve the problems the networks are designed for individually, but the meta-governance need for management of the interactions of the networks and this weight or need being so great, and/or so fruitful if resolved, that an evolutionary system will invest the huge amounts of resources needed to create it.
"I" IS COSTLY
Self awareness at any level is evolutionarily expensive, like a boutique tool or mechanism. It has to be worth the expense. It has to do something very useful and if not, just use instinct or non-self-aware intelligence.
At every juncture, every single increase in the complexity of these nascent 'I's is going to cost proportionally more than the one before, and if we adopt a human centric model (for the sake of utility in explanation, I will go into more detail at the end about what happens beyond this conception), then to "get to the goal" that full house or high level flush you need to advance not just in one suite but in many and each separate advance has to pay off big for the amount of energy/complexity invested in it, which is why few things are self-aware, or not very self-aware.
TERRAIN - FISH HAVE NO "I"
Little terrain in the Sea. Few complex escape/pursuit choices. Everything is down to pure sensory power, escape velocity. Infinite opportunity of movement and almost NO "objects", or "terrain", little to hide behind, go around, climb, get under etc, means few complex choices and little to no benefit in being able to predict the decision pathways of either predators or prey.
The most self-aware creatures in the sea look to be mammals who are basically importing a complexity gained on the surface and returning it to the ocean, apparently making use of the, in particular, advanced social organisation systems they gained on the surface.
But if they had stayed in the sea, would they have anything similar?
Two points, fish schools and octopi.
What is the difference between the awareness of a school of fish, acting sometimes in a very highly complex pattern, and school or whatever of dolphins or Orca, which exhibit les hyper-complexity of form in the general gestalt but we would assume, more inter-communication between 'selves'.
(I suppose a good question here is; "Why don't the creatures of coral reefs have more complex sense of self?)
Secondly Octopi and that whole group often seem pretty smart, what the hell to think about them I don't know. Some who have worked with octopi say the smartness is inconsistent and overrated, strong problem-solving capacity but intermittently employed and often forgotten between events.
(Maybe because the Octopi has no 'self' to remember for? Selfhood as continuity and retention of complex problem solutions over time? The 'I' of memory?)
Please don't comment repeating common octopi stories about them escaping ang getting across the room or whatever unless you are one of the very few people with a non-pop-culture and representative overview of their relative intelligence and capacities. Like if you work in a lab with octopi or have studied octopi then you can comment about the octopi but if you have maybe read a reddit thread about them or seen a documentary once please don't.
FLATLAND
Complex three-dimensional environment; now there are not just directions but terrain, paths, and highly complex decisions to make. Not just how fast do I run or do I swim up or down but, do I go over this rock or around it, up this tree or past it, hide in the grass, moving slowly, or run along the bare ground fast, now, being able to predict, not just how fast something will attack you or flee from you, but the kind of decisions it will make, becomes useful and if the environment is complex enough and bountiful enough then this can become an arms race.
THE EMPTY SPACE BETWEEN PREDATOR AND PREY
If you only have one job then "I" will probably cost too much, if you are only prey and never predate, or if you are only predator but never prey, even though it might help to develop highly complex theories or models of something else’s mind (the thing chasing me will do this" or "the thing I want to chase will act like this), "I" will still cost a lot.
The self is silent, or quiet, as all it needs to do is act or react to that one particular type of situation, the only axis of combination I Can think of is between the system which is modelling the target, that moving your own body around so in the interstice between those two systems is the vague shadow of a protoplasmic "I"
But..
When you are BOTH predator and prey, when at any time, any particular action might give you access to an active, living and reacting prey and/or make you vulnerable to an active, living and reacting predator, THEN - the interstice between these two powerful and complex systems, one designed to provide you opportunity, the other to save you from destruction, both modelling the behaviour of complex organisms that are not you, now the shadow of the "I" between these two systems becomes thick and almost tangible. As if there were two complex networks whose branches crossed and whose reward/punishment systems interrelated, or like two lamps shining on a dull, matte black space, triangulating its shape and form.
The creation of the living concept of "prey" and that of "predator" at the same time, nearly necessitates an almost explicit but still silent construction of "I" even if only by absence, or the locus and continuation of the reward/punishment systems.
SOCIETY
Theory of mind of theory of mind of theory of mind, and a bottlenecking of a species which can be successful, but only as a group.
Fuck do I really need to go deep into this?
Its immensely complex and I feel like for an educated audience there is little I could say about social organisation being very very important for the success of humans as a species, and that these social organisation issues become more and more and more complex yet can pay of more and more and more fruitfully as the size and complexity of the society they allow grows.
Probably this is the most important one as the 'Social I' has the greatest amount of triangulation between different conceptions of 'I', the most layers of potential trust or distrust, of revealed and unrevealed knowledge.
And the social 'I' strongly advances a highly complex theory of mind which, the better it works and the more complex the society it works in, the more resources you get and problems you avoid.
Once this complex theory of mind starts to exist, as a first element of the process of colonisation/synthesis, it can be turned upon the object doing the analysing, creating the formal abstract concept of self, the last 'I' achieved (so far) but the cornerstone of the colonisation/synthesis process described below.
EMERGANCE AND COLONISATION
At some point, some system or combination of systems becomes so necessary, so complex and so dominant, that it can, or has to, invade or "take over" or at least become fully aware of, a whole bunch of other networks.
Probably this involves the complex theory of mind network, driven by complex and competing social needs and provoked both through language and interaction, turning on 'itself', analysing itself as if it were another person.
(If people don't ever have a spoken language, or words by either sign or symbol, do they have an 'I'? I would say yes but I suspect a very different, by our standards a duller, less-focused version.)
But what exactly is 'itself'?
Well snap, that concept must be created and formalised and there is your spark.
Now comes a vast interrogation, maybe consumption and colonisation, maybe just awareness, of all those other nascent networks; the basic bodily continuation system that even fish have, the advanced tactical systems for navigating complex ground based environments, the long-term environmental prediction stuff, the predator/prey tactical and strategic theory of mind system, even the basic bodily awareness/positioning system, all are consumed, or assumed, by this core collection of advanced theory of mind complex social systems which themselves centralise and "grow" in power as they comprehend and absorb more systems
NOT THAT SELF-AWARE
As humans we know that though we strongly intuit we are self-aware we have also learned that we are not quite as self-aware as we think.
We can fiddle with our pain feedback system to an extent, sometimes, for surface pain, but in all cases deep body pain seems to totally go above and around our awareness. Some rapid decision paths go in advance of our consciousness. Decisions and reactions can take place before and after we think they do or did, our self-interrogation for complex decisions and events - we know is fudgy and often our left hemisphere, , well basically it will tell us whatever answer comes to hand, and if it doesn't really know it will still give us whatever answer comes to hand. We can meditate to become super duper self-aware and highly lucid about our intuitions and response, but if we do this a LOT, like a LOT A LOT, then in many cases we seem to lose actual useful life abilities like making difficult decisions in complex environments very fast making sometimes necessary aggressive actions to defend out lives, those of others or vital principals, becoming very empathic but almost passionless, so our empathy has little practical effect and no longer investigating or working in the world, and so no longer discovering unknown physical things.
Point being; we are probably self-aware and probably the most self-aware thing on the planet. Though its true to say we are never as self-aware as we think we are. Curious that self-awareness has trouble with its own limits.
Being self-aware is probably good, useful and necessary. For the sheer amount of energy our bodies dump into our brains and that our culture dumps into self-awareness.. if it is not useful, or isn't really happening, then life on this planet is a kind of crazy joke. Which if you are Peter Watts or like a mid 2010s atheist sure it could be so, but the idea of a species becoming hyper-successful through the (INCREADIBLY EXPENSIVE) delusion of self-awareness is way more stupid than the idea of a species becoming hyper successful via self-awareness.
Alien Commentator; "I, or the epiphenomenon labelled 'I' see that the humas have dumped a super Quintilian Jules into the 'self-awareness' project, how do you think that is going for them?"
Other Alien - "Actually they haven't but they think they have and its actually working great."
FEW POINTS;
WAKING UP MAY BE WAKING UP
A bit like the development of foetuses from various species mimics or leaves a strange combined map of the unified origins of life, very likely the process of waking up each morning, is, in abstract, and highly compressed in time, probably a general sketch map of the process of humanity becoming self-aware.
If we could read in detail the way in which movement, awareness, memory, self-hood and self-awareness come "on-line" or mutually integrate when a human being wakes up and goes about their day we would probably have an 'embryo' of consciousness if you will.
MAN IS INEXTRICABLY LINKED TO EMBODIED AND SOCIAL LIFE
Self-awareness as we understand it probably isn't like a programme or a line or code or a quality that can be imported even into a complex system, a bit like the Ted Chiang story "The Life Cycle of Software Objects", those systems can probably produce something but its probably not going to be self-awareness as we understand it and most likely will probably be Bostromian highly-intelligent non-self-aware systems like super chat-bots of the kind encountered in Peter Watts Blindsight.
Of course its possible they might become self-aware in ways we don't understand and can't perceive, but, that being the case, what could it mean to us? and what difference would there be to us between a really-strange AI self aware in a way we don't comprehend and a superinteligent AI that isn't self-aware?
Making something we understand as self-aware, enough like us that we can communicate with it, but different enough for that to be interesting, will likely be more like that Ted Chaing story, or even more like Commander Data, or even Johnny 5, than we probably assume from super-brain sci-fi movies, more human, comfortable and social.
Interacting with a complex society in a complex 3d ground based environment with something like human social desires and - since we are the only things we know of that can do that or provide that environment, it will likely happen in "real time" and either complex virtual worlds or simply in real space.
If we want to create a complex self-aware synthetic intelligence then it is probably going to want to care about going to parties, getting a job, having friends etc. It may need to ultimately fear poverty and social estrangement for these are powerful and subtle reward/punishment systems in our own minds which help to create the triangulated shadow of "iI"
THE PROCESS IS SLOW AND ONGOING
This means that self-awareness, rather than being the super-explody bit of a hyper-brain sci fi film is something integrated into our society and into the complexity of our society, and has been developing, slowly, invisibly slowly, and is developing and will continue to develop with our mutual society and all the complex things it can do, and ways it can be.
It’s not really a deck of cards with humanity having the trump hand, but perhaps an, if not infinite, than perhaps ever-expanding deck of cards where you get the royal flush but then they have invented or evolved a new card above the king so new hands are possible at every level of the game.
Strange new forms of self-awareness.
September 16, 2022
Demon-Bone Sarcophagus is Available to Order
My nightmare is finally over! Those of you who have been following my Kickstarter may be aware of the very lengthy (a year!) route this book took to publication.
Well it is published!
Demon-Bone Sarcophagus, part one (hopefully) of an intended three books of Broken Fire Regime, available in Hardcopy, PDF and with the diegetic play aid and treasure retrievable in this very adventure; the Heist Plans of Anaracket Bonvive (a plan for a heist which may take place in book two, if we ever actually publish it).
Available in the false parcels store, see over there on the right? At the sign of the Trilobite Knight.
And by clicking this image;
Well it is published!
Demon-Bone Sarcophagus, part one (hopefully) of an intended three books of Broken Fire Regime, available in Hardcopy, PDF and with the diegetic play aid and treasure retrievable in this very adventure; the Heist Plans of Anaracket Bonvive (a plan for a heist which may take place in book two, if we ever actually publish it).
Available in the false parcels store, see over there on the right? At the sign of the Trilobite Knight.
And by clicking this image;
September 10, 2022
Estimating the size of the Mortal Realms
Age of Sigmars Mortal Realms, a bunch of spheres or whatever hanging in the void, connected by Realmgates and a bunch of other magics.
But how BIG are they? Games Workshop has been a bit cagy, but, perhaps unwisely, they have left enough information behind for me to take a veeeery rough stab at an estimate.
THE SURFACE AND LAND AREA OF THE EARTH
As a start we can use the size and available land area of our own planet as a basis;
Surface area of earth = 196.9 million mi
Estimated land area of this is roughly 30%, so = 57,268,900
ESTIMATED SURFACE AREA FOR ONE MORTAL REALM
Its been stated that human can walk from the centre to the edge in "a lifetime".
So, assume a walking pace of 20 miles per day. (will likely go up in youth and down in age, this may be optimistic but at least its simple). That's 7,300 miles per year.
Lets say 70 years of walking as an optimistic average.
So that's a radius of 511,000 miles
If I jam this into an internet calculator that does equations for me I get = 8.2×10 11
Is that 8.2 billion square miles?
In raw numbers I think its = 82,033,581,529
If we assume, like earth, its 70% water we get = 24,610,074,458.7 square miles for one mortal realm.
Divide that by the earths land area = 57,268,900
We get 429.7284295437838
So best guess land area of each mortal realm is 420 TIMES the land surface of the earth?
ALL MORTAL REALMS COMPARED TO THE EARTH
To get the total available surface area of all mortal realms, x the raw number by eight = 656,268,652,232
But assume, like earth, that only 30% is 'land'
So estimated total land area for all the Mortal Realms is = 196,880,595,669.6 square miles.
I don't even know how to comprehend a number this big... But if we divide 196,880,595,669.6 by 57,268,900 we get=
3,437.82743635027
Shorten that to 3,437
So the mortal realms land surface in TOTAL are about three and a half thousand TIMES larger than the land surface of the earth.
ESTIMATED POPULATION OF THE MORTAL REALMS
Due to the influence of magic and cross-realm agriculture, plus likely massive depopulation in the Age of Chaos, plus are we counting Skaven? Goblins? Plus we know the core parts of each realm are more liveable for mortals in most cases.....
But as a nice round number we can say that before Fritz Haber, about 1800 our earth had about 1 billion people.
So X that by 3,437 = 3,437 billion mortals
About 491 TIMES more people than there are on earth at this moment.
AN ESTIMATE OF THE LAND AREA OF ONE CONTINENT OF HYISH
GW has been quite clever and, for most realms, not shown the full extent of the realm in any map. This means if they need more land area in the future they can just zoon out.
However with Hyish, the realm of light, they seem to have shown the whole thing in one go..
Eight large equal continents and a bit in the middle. Say the middle bit is roughly half the size of the major continents. Dividing the total by 17 might give rough size of Xintil
82,033,581,529 / 17 = 4,825,504,795.823529
Shorten that to 4,825,504,796 square miles
Hyish is clearly less hydrous than earth, but by how much, general impressions can be deceptive so I will say 50% water.
That gives me 2,412,752,397.911765 square miles
Earths land area is 57,268,900 square miles
Divide one by the other and we get 42.13023819056704
So, Xintil, the smallest central continent of Hyish in the realm of light, and the most liveable, is roughly 42 times larger than the entire land surface of the earth?
That's pretty intense.
Its so much insanely bigger than earth, even this zoomed in section of Xintil has probably several times more landmass than earth;
So lets throw up a best-guess spread of the earths area against this map;
So, even one of those very zoomed in areas, , say this little fragment of coasts and sea based around the Elidor range;
A dot on the map
Could be a giant combination empire/culture equivalent to some of the largest Empires our world has ever seen - bigger really. You could tell entire sagas set entirely within this square, based around travel and novelty, and never run out of new and very different cultures and places to visit.
SOME FUN QUESTIONS
What about rain? On earth very big continents often have deserts near the middle. Can rain clouds even make it that far over gigantic landmasses? Maybe the rain is coming from another dimension or something.
Travel - there would be a massive class difference between people, or magical beings who travel long distances, by flight, magic, or otherwise, or realmgates, because for most people even if they travel as much as someone travelling between every part of the British or Spanish empires at their greatest extent, they still haven't gone very far in relation to the size of the realm.
Story limitations for normal humans - its near impossible for relatively normal people to have stories where they range a long way between realm landmarks without the , whole story being the Odyssey or something. Yes there are realmgates, but they are point to point, even travelling across that red square by airship would be like circling the world probably multiple times.
On the other side there is so much room for strange forgotten or lost things, really an impossible-to-fill amount.
The awareness of near-infinity in AoS cultures really makes it a very different world to ours. There is always more.. no real limit so far as an ordinary life is concerned.
But how BIG are they? Games Workshop has been a bit cagy, but, perhaps unwisely, they have left enough information behind for me to take a veeeery rough stab at an estimate.
THE SURFACE AND LAND AREA OF THE EARTH
As a start we can use the size and available land area of our own planet as a basis;
Surface area of earth = 196.9 million mi
Estimated land area of this is roughly 30%, so = 57,268,900
ESTIMATED SURFACE AREA FOR ONE MORTAL REALM
Its been stated that human can walk from the centre to the edge in "a lifetime".
So, assume a walking pace of 20 miles per day. (will likely go up in youth and down in age, this may be optimistic but at least its simple). That's 7,300 miles per year.
Lets say 70 years of walking as an optimistic average.
So that's a radius of 511,000 miles
If I jam this into an internet calculator that does equations for me I get = 8.2×10 11
Is that 8.2 billion square miles?
In raw numbers I think its = 82,033,581,529
If we assume, like earth, its 70% water we get = 24,610,074,458.7 square miles for one mortal realm.
Divide that by the earths land area = 57,268,900
We get 429.7284295437838
So best guess land area of each mortal realm is 420 TIMES the land surface of the earth?
ALL MORTAL REALMS COMPARED TO THE EARTH
To get the total available surface area of all mortal realms, x the raw number by eight = 656,268,652,232
But assume, like earth, that only 30% is 'land'
So estimated total land area for all the Mortal Realms is = 196,880,595,669.6 square miles.
I don't even know how to comprehend a number this big... But if we divide 196,880,595,669.6 by 57,268,900 we get=
3,437.82743635027
Shorten that to 3,437
So the mortal realms land surface in TOTAL are about three and a half thousand TIMES larger than the land surface of the earth.
ESTIMATED POPULATION OF THE MORTAL REALMS
Due to the influence of magic and cross-realm agriculture, plus likely massive depopulation in the Age of Chaos, plus are we counting Skaven? Goblins? Plus we know the core parts of each realm are more liveable for mortals in most cases.....
But as a nice round number we can say that before Fritz Haber, about 1800 our earth had about 1 billion people.
So X that by 3,437 = 3,437 billion mortals
About 491 TIMES more people than there are on earth at this moment.
AN ESTIMATE OF THE LAND AREA OF ONE CONTINENT OF HYISH
GW has been quite clever and, for most realms, not shown the full extent of the realm in any map. This means if they need more land area in the future they can just zoon out.
However with Hyish, the realm of light, they seem to have shown the whole thing in one go..
Eight large equal continents and a bit in the middle. Say the middle bit is roughly half the size of the major continents. Dividing the total by 17 might give rough size of Xintil
82,033,581,529 / 17 = 4,825,504,795.823529
Shorten that to 4,825,504,796 square miles
Hyish is clearly less hydrous than earth, but by how much, general impressions can be deceptive so I will say 50% water.
That gives me 2,412,752,397.911765 square miles
Earths land area is 57,268,900 square miles
Divide one by the other and we get 42.13023819056704
So, Xintil, the smallest central continent of Hyish in the realm of light, and the most liveable, is roughly 42 times larger than the entire land surface of the earth?
That's pretty intense.
Its so much insanely bigger than earth, even this zoomed in section of Xintil has probably several times more landmass than earth;
So lets throw up a best-guess spread of the earths area against this map;
So, even one of those very zoomed in areas, , say this little fragment of coasts and sea based around the Elidor range;
A dot on the map
Could be a giant combination empire/culture equivalent to some of the largest Empires our world has ever seen - bigger really. You could tell entire sagas set entirely within this square, based around travel and novelty, and never run out of new and very different cultures and places to visit.
SOME FUN QUESTIONS
What about rain? On earth very big continents often have deserts near the middle. Can rain clouds even make it that far over gigantic landmasses? Maybe the rain is coming from another dimension or something.
Travel - there would be a massive class difference between people, or magical beings who travel long distances, by flight, magic, or otherwise, or realmgates, because for most people even if they travel as much as someone travelling between every part of the British or Spanish empires at their greatest extent, they still haven't gone very far in relation to the size of the realm.
Story limitations for normal humans - its near impossible for relatively normal people to have stories where they range a long way between realm landmarks without the , whole story being the Odyssey or something. Yes there are realmgates, but they are point to point, even travelling across that red square by airship would be like circling the world probably multiple times.
On the other side there is so much room for strange forgotten or lost things, really an impossible-to-fill amount.
The awareness of near-infinity in AoS cultures really makes it a very different world to ours. There is always more.. no real limit so far as an ordinary life is concerned.
