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Old 06-01-2017, 12:45 PM   #1
b-dog
 
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Default Alien or Extradimenional order for Elder Things in Dungeon Fantasy?

I was thinking chaos might not be the fit I want for the power source for Elder Things in DF. I am thinking more of something along the lines of an order so alien that if beings from the prime material plane view it they go insane. There are also mundane ways to connect to this extradimensional order by following certain rituals or sequences of events. Maybe lighting a special candle on a full moon and chiming a special gong and speaking certain phrases then the person doing so can interact with this alien order. Chaos seems to imply absence of order when in fact I want there to be order for interacting with Elder Things. Does this make sense.
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Old 06-01-2017, 01:55 PM   #2
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Default Re: Alien or Extradimenional order for Elder Things in Dungeon Fantasy?

Any time I add "Elder Things" in a game - fantasy or Call of Cthulhu - I tend to treat the Elder Things as existing in 4- or 5-dimensional space and interacting with 3-dimensional space (treating "time" as a temporal rather than spatial dimension) in such a manner that we only perceive their interactions as "tentacles".

That way, what we perceive as "chaos" isn't necessarily so. We simply cannot perceive their order.
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Old 06-01-2017, 05:23 PM   #3
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Default Re: Alien or Extradimenional order for Elder Things in Dungeon Fantasy?

I think too often people confuse chaos for random or white noise. For proper spooky chaos there must be just enough semblance of pattern to look non-random but not enough to be predictable for more than a moment.
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Old 06-01-2017, 06:12 PM   #4
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Default Re: Alien or Extradimenional order for Elder Things in Dungeon Fantasy?

I like to set each 'individual' "Elder Thing" on one side (or the other) of the entropy/ectropy, order/disorder, creation/destruction, nihilism/essentialism, etc/cte scales.

Does the creature seek to 'add' or 'remove' (basically), and then let that guide it from there. If all Elder things act the same way, that's gets predictable and boring.
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Old 06-01-2017, 06:40 PM   #5
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Default Re: Alien or Extradimenional order for Elder Things in Dungeon Fantasy?

Quote:
Originally Posted by b-dog View Post
Chaos seems to imply absence of order when in fact I want there to be order for interacting with Elder Things. Does this make sense.
No, I wouldn't link them to "chaos" either. They don't *care* whether their actions promote chaos or not, but it's not their goal. Promoting chaos is much too humanly comprehensible to be a suitable motive for Things.

When they appear in a scene the have immediate goals (which I do need to decide on), and longer term ones (which I don't, and by definition I couldn't understand anyway...). Their actions may look "random" between scenes, since we have no idea of their motives or how their immediate goals contribute to them, but within any given appearance they should act more or less coherently, with any "randomness" at least sharing themes or being pointed in the same general direction. You have no idea why they appear and drive silver spikes through the skulls of half the people in the room, but still they're consistently driving silver spikes through skulls in this encounter. If you dodge one, they probably should try again, not suddenly change the plan and start singing a weird tune that causes the walls to become radioactive.
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Old 06-01-2017, 08:17 PM   #6
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Default Re: Alien or Extradimenional order for Elder Things in Dungeon Fantasy?

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
No, I wouldn't link them to "chaos" either. They don't *care* whether their actions promote chaos or not, but it's not their goal. Promoting chaos is much too humanly comprehensible to be a suitable motive for Things.

When they appear in a scene the have immediate goals (which I do need to decide on), and longer term ones (which I don't, and by definition I couldn't understand anyway...). Their actions may look "random" between scenes, since we have no idea of their motives or how their immediate goals contribute to them, but within any given appearance they should act more or less coherently, with any "randomness" at least sharing themes or being pointed in the same general direction. You have no idea why they appear and drive silver spikes through the skulls of half the people in the room, but still they're consistently driving silver spikes through skulls in this encounter. If you dodge one, they probably should try again, not suddenly change the plan and start singing a weird tune that causes the walls to become radioactive.
I think incomprehensible is the best explanation for Elder Things. I sort of like the AD&D alignment system where chaotic good was a force that was good but has tons of freedom and almost no rules other than doing things that are good. Chaotic evil was just evil and lawlessness while lawful evil used law and order to promote suffering. Chaos and law are comprehensible while Elder Things are something else. I don't mind Elder Things being evil though but they would be an incomprehensible evil however. They will do things that none can understand but the outcome will be horrible to those affected by their plans. I used to have temples to Elder Things radiate evil but any attempt to understand the evil by a cleric would cause a holy cleric to go mad. The evil of Elder Things is not able to be comprehended.
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