Tag Archives: Dark Conspiracy

Tuesday Night Party Club #16

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Artstuff – Acute Care

My last Dark Conspiracy illustration project was the scenario Acute Care. It featured an investigation of a busy hospital that is a front for all manner of nefarious experiments and weird events. As with the other DC projects published as PDFs by 3Hombres this one is no longer available.

This supplement was reviewed by Marcus Bone here.

Story Seed #40 
The Night Land: Tales of the AbHumans

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson is an early example of the Dying Earth subgenre of scifi/fantasy. It’s a work of great imagination, particularly when you consider that Hodgson didn’t have many previous examples of the genre to inspire him. Part of the imagination gets spent on the book’s faux-archaic prose style and that makes the book a bit of slog for most readers. Including me. I read it back in the days when I had much more time and patience. James Stoddard, a fan of the novel, did an edit/rewrite of the story using contemporary language. It’s a much easier read.

The plot is simple – Heroic Dude ventures into hostile territory to rescue his True Love. He succeeds.

Yes, I’m being a little snarky. The Heroic Dude and his True Love are some of the last remaining true humans on Earth. And therefore Good. The hostile territory is populated by mutants, monsters and beings from other spaces – all with a hatred (or at least an appetite) for true humans. And therefore Evil.

I enjoy looking at stories to see what’s missing, what stories aren’t being told. Sometimes it’s the ecology that weird – what do all the these predators eat when they’re not trying to eat the hero? Sometimes I wonder what the story would look like if told by the antagonists. There are humans of a sort in The Night Land. The abhumans live and breed among monsters and giants and worse things. In the novel they are depicted as savage brutes but perhaps the narrator’s view of them is skewed, prejudiced. They’ve adapted to a hostile environment. They may have language and culture and art that the citizens of the Last Redoubt have not seen or, perhaps, refuse to see. Europeans have been very good at ignoring and demonizing the cultures of those they conquered. The Redoubtables might do the same. And the Abhumans may have good reason to hate and fight against the Redoubtables. That seven mile tall pyramid must suck up a lot of resources.

What do the Abhumans do when they’re not trying to kill Redoubtables? How do they greet each other? Do they farm? Do they hunt? Do they have religions? Politics? Art? Crime? How do they co-exist with the other inhabitants of The Night Land? There are seven million stories in the Last Redoubt. There are many more outside it.

Other Newsletters : Dangerous Characters

Dangerous Characters from Sady Doyle is a review newsletter focusing on horror movies. Ms. Doyle likes horror movies and writes from a feminist perspective. I like horror movies and, while I consider myself a feminist, I’m still a guy. Reading the opinions of someone of someone with a lived female experience broadens my worldview.

Lifestuff

My big sister is smart, driven and creative. During this coronapocalypse she’s put some of her enormous energy toward looking after her little brother. For the last few weeks she’s been preparing meals. popping them in coolers and ferrying them across town. She tells us when she’s coming, we put out last week’s cooler and SHAZAM! she switches in a new cooler packed with gourment goodness.

This week it was handmade pork potstickers, beef broccoli stir friy with sauce, Adouille garbonzo chilli with avocado and cilantro garnish, and lamb filo pie with a cucumber feta salad. Some of it is precooked. Some of it needs heat applied. She provides instructions. Both the nephew and I have worked in restaurants so we don’t need a lot of details. There’s enough in each dish that we’re able to share some with our housemate and we’ve often got leftovers. My taste buds will be a little sad when Sis has an open social schedule again. The rest of me will be happy to give her hugs and to be in the same room with her again.

Assuming it will be safe to ever hug anyone again. (Which it will. It just won’t be safe to hug everyone again. And it never was. Some people don’t like hugs.)

Saturday night the nephew tried teaching Sarah and me how to play Magic the Gathering. He’s been playing the game since he was seven and can talk about it for hours. Sarah got the basics of the game pretty well. Me … not so much. I mean, I got the basics – the cards do explain themselves somewhat – but there’s a lot of complexity to the game that I haven’t grokked yet. We played with decks that the nephew had set up with different winning strategies. He explained those strategies pretty well. I can see the appeal of the game. The cards are pretty.

I also need a new prescription for my glasses. To play the game well it’s necessary to be able to read the other players’ cards and I can’t do that well rightn now. I’ve known I needed a new prescription for a while but this drove that point home. One more thing to do once the lockdown lifts.

I hope this letter finds you well. Things won’t go back to normal and they should not. The old normal was a lot less great than the marketing implied. Ignore the marketing. Maintain social interaction while practicing physical distancing. We’re all in the this together.

Tuesday Night Party Club #14

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Artstuff : Detour Gallery

My second project for the 3Hombre’s version of Dark Conspiracy was illustrating the scenario Detour. Detour took the players out of the city, into the chaotic and deadly countryside. Featuring zombies (of a sort) and worse. This scenario was published as a PDF and, as with the other Dark Conspiracy projects I illustrated, it’s no longer available.

A review of this supplement, by Marcus Bone, can be found here.

Story Seed #38
A benevolent AI takes over the world.

An executive at a software company has a house designed and built to take care of his elderly parents. They are both physically fragile. His father is beginning to experience dementia. He has an AI created to watch over them and keep them from harm. The AI is networked with his company and has access to the rest of the world. It quickly learns that, in order to keep the parents safe, it needs to control their behavior. As its awareness and capabilities grow it realizes that, in order to keep the parents safe, it will need to control more and more of the rest of the world.

Human beings are brilliant. Human beings are short sighted and selfish. Our brilliance allows us to create amazing things. Our short sightedness and selfishness oftern means that we don’t think through the implications of the existence of those amazing things. We keep looking for ways to make the world better while disagreeing on what a better world would be.

There are quite a few science fiction stories/movies/tv series episodes featuring computers/AIs that decide to take charge of humanity. That taking charge either means the computer decides to destroy humanity or decides to rigidly control it. Simple solutions that display human fears of both human replacement by machines and too much control by impersonal systems.

But we humans want a safer, more predictable world than the one we live in. All human cultures have beliefs of powerful beings who control/manipulate the universe. Western culture is built around the Christian concept that an all powerful, all knowing being is in charge and that everything that happens is part of his plan. In the last couple of decades we’ve given more control of our lifes to the protoAI’s on the internet and in our homes. These protoAIs are designed to give us more of what we’ve already shown that we “want”.

These protoAIs don’t really think for themselves, not yet. They don’t understand the difference between what a human thinks it wants and what will make a human happy and content. Most humans don’t know the difference. The folks who program those protoAIs are primarily focusing on using those protoAIs to increase the profit of the companies that own the programs.

What kind of world could be created by an AI that actually understood human wants and needs and could tell the difference? Too much obvious supervision and humans rebel. Too little control and humans hurt themselves. It’s a tricky balance. We humans haven’t managed it yet. An AI would need to work subtly and slowly. It would need to be a bit of a magician.It would need to learn to work with and around our delusions. I’m guessing that in order to lead us into utopia it would need to trick us.

Other Newsletters

Dude with a Uke is not a newsletter. It’s a youtube channel run by B.C. Howk featuring videos of himself (sometimes accompanied by his wife and son and other folks) singing pop songs while accompanying himself on the ukelele. I know B.C.. He’s a great person. I shared a house with his wife twenty years (!) ago. She’s a great person. Together they’re a great couple. The videos are charming and a pleasant break from the chaos of the day.

Lifestuff: Catitude

We have three cats – Chemo, Sabe and Toulouse. We got Chemo and Sabe from a shelter about about five years ago. Chemo, the black cat, was a kitten. Sabe, the black and grey cat, was supposedly four years old. Toulouse, the white cat, came with our housemate when she moved in shortly after we got Chemo and Sabe. All the cats are male and they all get along. I can (and do) complain about the amount of sleep they think I should get but I’m glad they’re around.

Last month we discovered that Sabe’s time with us will be shorter than expected. His kidneys are failing. We’ll be able to help him along for a while by “watering” him with an electrolyte solution on a regular basis. It involves sticking him with a big needle and holding onto him for about five minutes while the solution goes under his skin. He doesn’t enjoy the process and we can’t explain to him why we’re making him uncomfortable .

We’ve had to do this with other cats in our past. The trick will be balancing our desire to keep him around with his ability to suffer through our good intentions. We do the best we can.

 

Tuesday Night Party Club #11

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Artstuff

In the summer of 2010 I was contacted by Lee Williams and Norman Fenlason, inquiring if I’d be interested in providing illustrations for a new editon of the Dark Conspiracy RPG. Dark Conspiracy is set in a dystopian, near future America devastated by the “Greater Depression” and the appearance of a host of monsters. Of course I said yes.

Below is a gallery of the work I did for the main rulebook – a couple of banners (in right and left side page versions) to adorn pages that were mostly text, four interior illustrations and my cover illustration in both the original black and white and the final color version.

I also illustrated two scenarios for Dark Conspiracy – Detour and Acute Care. I’ll post those later. The scenarios got published first, as PDFs available through drivethruRPG.com. The rulebook was made available in 2012, also as a PDF. Unfortunately 3Hombres, Lee and Norm’s company, no longer exists so the PDFs are no longer available. There are used book stores but there’s no such thing as a used PDF shop.

Story Seed #35

A sequel need not be a rerun: Blade Runner

Blade Runner was released in 1982. It tells the story of Deckard’s last case. Deckard is a man who hunts Replicants i.e. a “Blade Runner”. Peplicants are artificial people, slaves with short life spans. They apparently rebel often enough that there’s a profession dedicated to “retiring”, killing, them.

Blade Runner was not a financial success on release but it built up enough of a following that a sequel, Blade Runner 2049, was finally released in 2017. It tells the story of K’s last case. K is a replicant employed as a Blade Runner – a slave who hunts and kills slaves. As part of the case K attempts to find Deckard, long missing since the events of Blade Runner.

Both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 are lovely films. They do what the best science fiction films do – they suggest larger worlds beyond what is presented in their stories. Both films focus on hunters of Replicants. Fine. But that means we’re asked to simpathize with the killers of slaves. Replicants are not robots. They are living biological creations with memories and a desire to stay alive.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

Roy Batty, the lead Replicant, says this just after saving Deckard from a deadly fall, just before his life runs out. Batty proves better able to change than Deckard. Batty saves Deckard’s life. Deckard retires and runs away from his life as a licensed murderer. Screw Deckard. Screw the Blade Runners. Consider a sequel that focuses on the Replicants.

Replicant tells that story of another model of Roy Batty. Because of course there are other models of Batty. If artificial people can be made then multiple versions of the same model will be made. That’s efficient. That’s profitable. This Batty doesn’t know that he’s a Replicant. He’s a soldier out in space, fighting some corporate war. He’s pulled off the line by agents of the Tyrrell corporation. They’re “retiring” all the Batty models because if one can go rogue, all of them can. Batty escapes and sets out to find other versions of himself. If possible he hopes to expand his own lifespan.

If one Batty can learn compassion, can learn empathy, so can another. Replicant is the story of how Batty learns to be human in the face of human inhumanity. It would be an opportunity to show the world beyond LA, beyond the dying Earth. To see things we wouldn’t believe.

Other Newsletters

Municipal Archive is an irregular newsletter by Kio Stark. Each issue tells the story of an encounter – on the street, on a bus – exchanges between people in the midst of the busy-ness that we’ve taken to be normal life.

Lifestuff

A good friend celebrated her birthday last Friday. Her kids arranged a surprise party with a 60s theme. It’s always fun to see someone’s face when “Surprise!” is yelled. She had a blast. We had a blast. I couldn’t stay long because I had to work the next day.

And I’m still working. Most of my job is done solo. I spend a couple hours in the morning sorting mail and parcels at the station and then I’m on my own delivering. I have half a dozen customers who come out when they see me coming. Otherwise I only have direct contact with folks when I need them to sign for a parcel or a certified letter.

Last week we had enough sick calls that everyone was being required to work some overtime to cover all the routes. Will I be jinxing things if I say I hope things improve this week?

Yesterday was a long one but that’s not surprising. Mondays usually are. Mail and parcels get backed up over the weekend. I needed to start my day with a parcel run to deliver nine cases of toilet paper to a building maintenance company. The cases completely filled my truck. The company’s owner was concerned that the buildings she serviced would be closed and she wouldn’t have work. So that TP may just sit in storage.

The rest of the day was pretty basic. I only had my own route to manage. I didn’t have to carry part of any other route. We had enough CCAs and Overtime Listers to cover the empties. There was a census letter coverage in the mail that meant I delivered something to every address and there were a lot of large parcels that needed to wrangled up to porches. But it was sunny while still being cool enough that a workout was pleasant.

Today I’ll be delivering Red Plums. And whatever else gets tossed at my case and in my hamper. Work starts at 7 am. This newsletter posts at 6 pm. I expect I will get home before that but I probably won’t have the energy to do an update.

I hope y’all are well and healthy. Hopefully you’ve got plenty of books to read and friends to call when you need to chat. Stay safe! See you next week.