01-16-2019, 04:47 AM | #91 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Major Power Groups Aware of the Occult
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The libraries of Timbuktu are obviously connected to the Vortices, but their affiliations would be with the cities in North Africa which gave Ibn-Khaldun his model of political change. I don't know the exact situation in Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia and who holds old books and studies old languages there. Apparently there are good classicists in Egypt and all the magical papyri come from there ... Oman has always been poor, but had a distinct lack of Mongols building pyramids of skulls compared to say Baghdad or Delhi, there might be libraries or traditions there. They have an elderly, childless sultan which would leave room for people dabbling in unconventional rites, and they have strong traditional connections to the UK.
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"It is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge." H. Beam Piper This forum got less aggravating when I started using the ignore feature Last edited by Polydamas; 01-16-2019 at 04:56 AM. |
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01-16-2019, 07:02 AM | #92 | |||||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats
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I shall have to come up with some religious movements and political candidates linked to them in the US that are preaching the End of Times, with rather more plausibility than usual, given how my setting and reality have diverged and how thoroughly awful the 2010s in my setting have been, even compared to reality. Some occult-aware statisticians are claiming that when the data is analyzed with a view toward discovering the effects of the paranormal, and all the small wars and various hot spots of violence, all disappearances that are not noted or slip between the cracks and all homicides not found to be such or not filed as homicides, are counted, the odds of meeting death by violence may be up to ten times as much in the modern world than it was in the mid-1950s. And that's against a statistical trend of greatly reduced deaths from warfare in wars involving any of the most populous countries in the world. Basically, in our real real world, the global violent death has been trending steadily downward for all of human history. While particularly intense wars might represent significant variations from this downward trend and while there are many small blips, e.g. the brief spike in violent crime between 1970-1990 that was observed in the US and some other countries, the general trend is reliably and steadily downward, correlating with any or all of higher economic output, better health, more opportunities, better legal protections of human rights, freer societies, etc. In the setting, however, instead of the violent crime rate, that rose in the US and elsewhere from 1970-1990, declining again, sharply, after 1990, it kept on rising. And unexplained disappearances rose, almost anywhere that data could be collected, especially after 1995 or so. And while the international history seems to have been more or less identical to the real world until 2010 or so, this does not hold true after that time. The world of the setting has many more hot spots of political and ethnic violence that have flared up after 2010, with a number of civil wars in Africa (e.g. Mali, Malawi, Zimbabwe, etc.) and at least one in South American (Venezuela) that are not happening in our real world. Not to mention that the situation in Mexico is, in the setting, somehow even worse than in real life, with the temporary reduction in homicide rates that occurred between 2011-2016 not having happened in the setting. Instead, the rate of violent crime in Mexico has risen steadily and now eclipses many acknowledged war zones, even as authorities persist in claiming that they are merely dealing with criminals. What is actually happening, of course, in the setting, is that there are various supernatural beings and ritual magicians who are involved in the criminal underworld in Mexico, and are fighting each other and the authorities. To a greater or lesser extent, the same is true of many countries, indeed, most of those that in our world have significant trouble with violent crime. US and other North American homicide rates and the rate of all violent crime is significantly worse than it was during the worst years of the 1980s. This time, however, extremely high rates of urban crime are accompanied by unprecedented rates of violent crime and unexplained disappearances in rural areas across America. With minor variations, the same thing holds true in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. In general, countries lying in or near Vile Vortices are the worst affected, with Brazil and Pakistan both suffering so much violence that it would be more accurate to speak of insurgency or civil war than high crime rates, except that aside from the official government, the identity and even the number of any other factions is unclear. Quote:
Any suggestions for which of them might have evolved into an organisation of occultists, more than just local concern, which matters on either a global scale or at least is a power group worth treating with for organisations with US interests, like the one that the PCs belong to? Quote:
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01-16-2019, 07:34 AM | #93 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats
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How would you envision that working? Is the organisation itself under the control or influence of individuals aware of the occult, either formally (but secretly) like the Vatican, or more informally and perhaps to a somewhat lesser degree, like the various intelligence and security services of Great Britain, France or Israel? Or would there exist a network of people who've served with the Peace Corps, seen something they could not reconcile with reality as they believed it to be and reached out to others who might have similar experiences? Would that network be formal, if secret in purpose, or completely informal? Or would Peace Corps volunteer alumni simply be more likely to have seen something odd and be more heavily represented among other secret power groups or factions of those who are aware of the occult?
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01-16-2019, 07:52 AM | #94 | |||||
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats
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The new Revelation part is spot on. And that doesn't require a lot of fanfare. It does mean that the response may be difficult to predict. It will certainly come from the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. Quote:
That sounds plausible enough. Civic duty and all that. The network would almost certainly be informal rather than formal though. The Book of Mormon has some very strong negative things to say about secret societies.
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01-16-2019, 08:10 AM | #95 | |
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Re: [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats
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I can see the Saudis being useful blunt force in the right areas. If you come across a dangerous occult group in the right area send a anonymous email or letter to the right fanatical mullah and expect that they will be attacked. |
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01-16-2019, 09:04 AM | #96 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Major Power Groups Aware of the Occult
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I have no idea what it's going to be, of course, but would welcome suggestions. I have some rough idea that the Vile Vortex around Easter Island, for whatever reason, seems to be producing much less dramatic effects than the other Vile Vortices. J.R. Kessler and Dr. Lapointe have theorized that perhaps one or more of the statues, rock art or petroglyphs there are a form of containment system. I still haven't any idea whether there is any kind of Polynesian power group that is significant on the worldwide scene in occult circles. Obviously there are some groups of people of Polynesian origin who've become aware of the occult, but I don't know if there are many small groups of friends and family who've each witnessed something independently and started to study the occult, or if there is some kind of occult organisation that links together people from many Polynesian cultures. Quote:
I don't know either, but I shall have to learn. Quote:
By 2018, it appears that Dr. Ganoush, several of his students and a group of unscrupulous magicians connected to him seem to be major players in the chaotic and violent world of Iraqi and Syrian occultism, with influence in some parts of Iran and Turkey as well. Dr. Ganoush is either allied with or has seized control of the Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order, as well as having allies or subordinates who appeared to be Malay and who practiced some mystical version of silat, and has at various times supported various factions of ISIS/ISIL against other factions and/or other power groups in the area. As far as any PCs in prior campaigns have been able to tell, Dr. Ganoush is either an atheist or worships the spirits and other beings he interacts with through his ritual magic. He even claims to have fled Iran due to religious persecution and prior to discovering his nefarious magical activities, a Jewish PC believed that Dr. Ganoush avoided speaking about religion because of his atheistic/agnostic stance and position at a university in an Islamic country. While Dr. Ganoush is probably fairly indifferent to religious conflicts between Shia, Sunni and the various flavours of sufism that fall under either, many of his allies or pawns are sincerely religious. And many of his enemies, of course, have religious objections to his activities, aside from the fairly reasonable objections that most people have to human sacrifice, torture, blood magic and the binding of spirits of pain and degradation. Notably, even most of the senior members of ISIS/ISIL who are aware of his existence and suspect some of influence among many occult groups consider him an apostate and a religious abomination. Of course, some of them still accept his help if offered, especially if they face another occult faction which has more power than they can counter. Quote:
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01-16-2019, 10:03 AM | #97 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats
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Of course, this applies to a wide variety of people. EMT personnel and other emergency workers and first responders, police and detectives, ER doctors and other personnel, aid workers in general, social workers, mental health professionals, clergy, etc. Most of them will find a rational explanation, even if they have to edit their memories of what they actually saw, heard, witnessed or experienced the aftermath of, because that's how the Facade (Pyramid #3/97 ' Mask of Humanity' by Christopher R. Rice) works. The ones who not only remember, but actually start digging around for more anomalies, are usually simply strong-willed exceptions or inveterate nonconformists, but also might be those with some kind of paranormal gift themselves. Quote:
But note that the fact that I believe followers of a 'Wahhabi' (comprising equally those who prefer to be called Salafi or muwahhid, as well as those with teachings essentially indistinguishable from such groups) doctrine within Islamic thought to be especially hostile to any supernatural forces or practices should not be read as stating that the royal family, government or the people of Saudi Arabia necessarily all categorically reject evidence of the paranormal or consider manifestations of it automatically inimical to Islam. There are plenty of moderate and progressive Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia, especially, of course, among the educated elite of the Royal Family and those close to them. While the Hanbali school of Salafi 'branch'* and Wahhabi doctrine in general, as well as similar conservative, Islamist interpretations of Islam, are very politically powerful in Saudi Arabia, it's doubtful that much more than half of the people there would agree that they fall into any of these categories. The majority of Saudis are devout Sunni Muslims, but there is even a significant Shia minority there and the population of guest workers and immigrants means that more or less any variation of the Islamic faith can be found among Saudi citizens and residents. And those who know about and accept the occult are by definition statistical outliers, with the strength of will and the personality to overcome a wide metaphysical consensus that monsters and magic in the modern world is merely superstition. All of which means that regardless of the influence of conservative ulama and Wahhabi thought in Saudi Arabia, there might very well by smaller groups and factions within their intelligence and security apparatus that are secretly confronting the threat, much as individual small conspiracies are doing in many other nations, and there might also be individuals or organisations who study the occult in secret. It's just that these will likely not have worldwide influence and will probably be less influential on the global occult stage than the strongly anti-occult conservative strain of Wahhabi and Salafist thought. *Whether to define various differing interpretations or ways to practice within religions as 'branches', 'movements' or something else is predictably controversial.
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01-16-2019, 11:40 AM | #98 | |||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an Occult Threat
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Given the Facade, anyone, LDS or otherwise, who becomes personally convinced of the existence of the supernatural and who manages to retain his memories of such, will still find it extremely hard to convince anyone skeptical enough to require scientific proof or even evidence that couldn't be picked apart by a competent defense attorney. Basically, the only people you can rely on being able to convince are those who know you personally and think enough of you to take your word that you actually experienced something, as well as perhaps people who'll consider a supernatural explanation, even if not explicitly proven, more rational than all the statistical anomalies, unexplained disappearances, rising crime rates without a convincing underlying narrative, etc. In essence, someone who thinks that the world isn't becoming worse, more dangerous and more violent year by year merely for some random, inexplicable reason founded in politics, economics or just sheer bad luck, but that there might be an explanation for the changes in the world (since 1990 or so) that modern science isn't ready to address. Would significant numbers of people influential within the Church fit that description? Quote:
I think that there would be a huge temptation to do what I've assumed many policemen and government officials who discover the supernatural, but are unable to convince their superiors do, i.e. try to do what they can to help citizens threatened by the supernatural by sharing information with like-minded people they become aware of and by trying to nudge official policy to what is least harmful for victims and potential victims of the supernatural. This, of course, if more than one person in a department or agency has become aware, can very quickly start to look a lot like a conspiracy within police departments and government agencies. And legally, these people will often file false statements by not mentioning things authorities would not believe and even cover up things they or others have done, simply because to tell the truth would be to risk being labelled insane, prosecuted or having others, often victims, suffer the same fate. The question becomes, if the LDS leadership or at least some influential people in leadership positions, become absolutely convinced that supernatural forces are killing thousands of Americans a year, but that authorities are unwilling or unable to do anything about it, would they support technically illegal, in that it is not authorized by the civic authorities, cooperative self-defense activity by Church members who are in positions to make a difference? Would they take any sort of action, like having members in positions where they might witness supernatural phenomena report on what they see and collect that data? Would they go so far as to analyze that data and try to inform sympathetic people within various law-enforcement agencies or even extralegal organisations involved in monster hunting, in order to help them defend against threats that were killing Americans? Would they go all the way toward forming militias that did not disclose to the mundane authorities what kind of threats they were meant to defend against? Quote:
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Assuming that the US government officially denied the problem, but that small pockets of occult-aware people within various agencies were aware of it and some of them functioned very much like secret societies or conspiracies in trying to cooperate in defending America.
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01-16-2019, 12:51 PM | #99 | |||||||
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and an Occult Threat
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When faced like something like this, Members of the church are going to pray very hard to know whether nor not this supernatural thing is real. Most of them will be expecting an answer one way or another, and they will be looking for internal signs, not external ones (though external are acceptable). How this goes down is up to how your setting works. Does religion have real mystic power? does the facade actively "fuzz" the mind of those told about it? (that will be interpreted by most members as a no). The church believes in modern miracles, so members probably have a better chance of many in the US of accepting an eye-witness story. Statistically, we're probably more likely than most to accept a statistical increase in deaths and disappearances as valid. Or rather, as a sign of the wickedness of the last days. Now, if the church leadership starts telling people in positions to do things about the other side of the facade in private, a fair number of those people are going to believe them. Even without knowing them personally. They'll want two or three witnesses, and they'll do the prayer thing, but ultimately a large segment that can be identified before hand can be reliably brought in. Quote:
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The church has a strong sub-community that are big on self-defense. Enough that I've seen Leadership ask them to tone it down a bit in some very specific contexts. I could see that group taking action, no problem, but they'd try to stay legal... as in not breaking any laws. Quote:
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Of course, I could be reading that wrong. It could be that an open membership roll satisfies the "not a secret society" requirement. Or it could just be common knowledge in a different group focused around profession. but the emphasis will be on official law keepers or other sanctioned rolls.
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01-16-2019, 12:56 PM | #100 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: MO, U.S.A.
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Re: [MH] Vile Vortices and Supernatural Threats
One last thought from me on the influence of conservative ulama and Wahhabi thought in Saudi Arabia.
This group has sponsored a lot of Madrases, Mosques, hospitals etc. in Pakistan, Indonesia, and North Africa. If they spot unusual activity in several of these areas, and convince the right Royal that there is a problem, they will have access to a lot of oil money to suddenly become a player overnight. If they are willing to access the archeological record in Iraq* they could gain a lot of information rather quickly. Of course they will likely be the "Kill them all, Allah will know his own" types. When they show up, it will be a race to collect what you can and get out, before they burn it all to the ground. *That information that survived the U.S. invasion, and subsequent civil war, and Isil invasion.
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Tags |
ken hite, modern, monster hunters, suppressed transmission, vile vortices |
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