Annunaki in GURPS Arabian Nights

[b-dog]

I am curious about how you would use the Annunaki in GURPS Arabian Nights. Islam is the law of the land but maybe the ancient Sumerian gods still hold some power? Or would they just be a type of jinn or even demons? The idea is there are some old ruins to explore where the PCs try to kill monsters and take their stuff. So how best to use the Annunaki in this setting?

[whswhs]

They would be interpreted as something in Arabian mythology or legend. I'm familiar with djinn, efreets, and ghuls; there are probably others. Or they might simply be taken as demons.

[jason taylor]

I would agree with the cavaet that actual polytheist gods would be hard to accept as actually existing in a traditional monotheist setting without being demons, certainly not in Islam. Christianity let the Teutonic and Olympian gods pass by assuming them allegorical or fictional; which by the way helped encourage the concept of acknowledged fiction into literature(that was actually pretty old, as old at least as Virgil who knowingly wrote fanfic) and thus allowed further development of the imagination which proves that the effort to get around a mental roadblock is good exercise. That is an interesting side note however.

Fairies are different because they kind of take up less space. Also an alt-Islam can be found that is more henotheistic. In Arabian Nights, Jinn and other beings are just other races and have as much ability to worship Allah or to apostisize as humans do.

[jason taylor]

A more mundane possibility is a minority variant of Islam. Islam has surprisingly many variants. They are common in Debateable Lands like the Balkans, and the Janisaries had their own religion which they adopted. Henotheism would be surprising but there were plenty of other oddities.

[b-dog]

Does anyone have any information about the reptoids that are pictured in the Sumerian myths? Were they the Igiggi? Maybe they could fit into my concept of the Sakyss which were dinosaur men who would not serve the gods due to their pride and thus the gods expelled them to make room for humanity. Of course the Sakyss desire to come back and enslave humanity so there is room for lots f adventures.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by b-dog

Does anyone have any information about the reptoids that are pictured in the Sumerian myths? Were they the Igiggi? Maybe they could fit into my concept of the Sakyss which were dinosaur men who would not serve the gods due to their pride and thus the gods expelled them to make room for humanity. Of course the Sakyss desire to come back and enslave humanity so there is room for lots f adventures.

Not off hand. But I am sure Wikipedia can give a summery and Amazon a few good and cheap collections.

[Phil Masters]

Gneerally, the approach taken by conventional Islam seems to be to assume that various (non-angelic) nonhumans in myth are some variety of djinn - that is to say, creations of smokeless fire rather than earth, with free will and the option to adopt Islam. Although the like of ghuls, the low-end version of this, are clearly too sordid and vicious to adopt the faith very easily. There are demons in Hell who might be djinn or fallen angels, depending which version you read, but I don't think that they are supposed to be able to get out and cause trouble too often. On the other hand, if you had annunaki known to be doing exactly that, well, maybe they're demons who manage to sidestep divine law somehow.

If you're using the annunaki from Madness Dossier as written, well, you'll need powerful PCs, preferably with access to something that lets them resist glyphs and such more or less reliably. Theologians might decide that they're djinn or efreet using powerful magic, but their ability to override free will would look like a affront to basic Islamic principles. I'd probably have someone who probably isn't called Abdul al-Hazred introduce the idea of these creatures being remnants of a previous creation, along the lines of Cabal's qlippoth. (In fact, "qlippoth" might be the scholarly term for them.) The idea that they could survive and intrude on the current world despite Allah's law would be another heresy, but at least it could be squeezed into the basic pattern of thought. And you get the proper creepy Madness Dossier image of these things stepping out of ancient and blasphemous illustrations.