Evangelion + H.P. Lovecraft + Macross (Robotech version) + Guyver + Akira
Describe
Cthulhu Tech here.
All right, but I'm warning you, this is gonna be weird...
The story begins when a scientist by the name of Theresa Ashcroft makes the discovery of a
Tome Of Eldritch Lore,
The Mysteries Within, which outlines how to create
Magitek. Although she was
unsurprisingly driven insane, she remained coherent enough to help her apprentice Simon Yi, who desings the
Dimensional Engine from it, basically an infinite-energy device that draws its power from another dimension. He
goes insane before he can test it. The first working D-Engine is finally constructed and tested by the team led by Golvash Czeny, Simon's collegue, and it's successfully draws power from another dimension. It *usually* doesn't bring anything other than energy through from the other side...
Pretty soon, the D-Engine makes the development of
Humongous Mecha feasible, along with other futuristic technology (hover cars and antigrav being two commonplace examples).
This did
not sit well with the local
Starfish Aliens, the Migou, who view humans as a threat with their new technology. In order to nip this potential enemy in the bud, they used the human genome to create a society of
Proud Warrior Race Guys, the Nazzadi. This leads to the First Arcanotech War, which ends only when the Nazzadi realized they have more in common with humans than Migou, and decide to become part of Earth's population. Undeterred, the Migou
themselves attack next, bringing both their own,
semi-biological mecha, as well as a nasty "
Assimilation" process with them.
Bad enough?
Apparently not.
You see, while all this was going on, various
Eldritch Abomination cults were enjoying a resurgence due to the discovery of
Functional Magic by the populace, even taking over their own
Megacorp, the Chrysalis Corporation. That would be bad enough, except one of said cults, the Children Of Chaos, invent the
Rite of Transfiguration, which transforms a mortal being into a
shapeshifter Super Soldier, called a Dhohanoid. It gets even better for the
NEG when another cult, the Disciples of the Unnamable, successfully summons an avatar of the Old One Hastur into the world, who happily wreaks havoc by having part of his cult become the
trigger-happy Rapine Storm, and the other becoming the
criminal Death Shadows, despite the efforts of the
Defector From Decadence cult, the Eldritch Society. Meanwhile, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, who'd been quietly breeding a Deep One army for millenia, are taking over strategic locations in and around the world's oceans while searching for R'lyeh so they can
awaken Great Cthulhu.
Rather than ally with the NEG to combat this obviously greater threat, the Migou decide to war against them
both, tracking down and killing the servants of the
Cosmic Horrors while at the same time still trying to wipe the NEG off the map.
Needless to say, the NEG, realizing it was less than equipped to fight not one, but
two Bug Wars, they decide to develop a super-mecha that can stand up to both threats. The result? The
Evangelion-ish Engels, alien
Empathic Weapons with a lot of firepower and a chip on their shoulder, finally making it seem as if the NEG might be able to win — or at least, hold off their enemies long enough to get the hell off the planet.
This leaves you in the midst of a brave new world. Earth's managed to pull through the war, a bunch of new allies have joined the fight, and the NEG is a government of limitless potential — trying desperately to cover up the fact that the Great Old Ones are walking again, there are mad cultists trying to call forth Cthulhu everywhere, and the Migou may be coming back for another sweep. You quickly find yourself on the frontlines, with either a sorcerer's license, an empathic mecha, or your own illegal psychic powers as the only barrier between you and the eldritch things beyond reality. Good luck.
This Tabletop RPG provides examples of:
- Ascend To A Higher Plane Of Existence: Possible for powerful sorcerers.
- Body Horror: The Dhohanoids and their Dark Is Not Evil kin, the Tagers.
- Black And Grey Morality: Would you prefer the paranoid Police State of the NEG sir? The amoral Eldritch Society? The genocidal Migou? Or would you like to go all out and join the Eldritch Abomination cults?
- Butterfly Of Death And Rebirth: The Chrysalis Corporation uses one of these as their insignia. Incidentally, they also specialize in turning people into hybrid monsters. Symbolism anyone?
- Blessed With Suck: Congrats, you've survived a brush with the Zone, and now have incredible Psychic Powers. Now all you have to deal with is constant Burn, being slightly insane (ranking up to moderately and severely after a few days), and being a Weirdness Magnet. Oh, and did we mention that you're unable to control your powers (always on) *and* pretty much every group wants to kill or experiment on you? You know, screw it, being a Zoner is a perfectly good reason for saying I Just Want To Be Normal.
- Bug War: The Aeon War, with both the Migou and the Rapine Storm's various monsters attacking humanity, certainly comes under this category.
- Captain Ersatz: The Engels are alive, they go berserk when the wrong person gets in them or when the right person is knocked out, they're the only proper defense Earth has against unstoppable Cosmic Horrors, and their pilots tend to be a little bit nuts. Sound familiar to anyone else?
- Cast From Hit Points: If a psychic runs out of MP, he can choose to do this. Just don't go near him for a few hours afterwards.
- Cloning Blues: The Nazzadi have mostly gotten over theirs, although the game mentions they still get sore when something reminds them of it.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Chrysalis Corporation takes it to a whole new level, insofar as their Director is actually Nyarlathotep.
- Cosmic Horror Story
- Crapsack World: The phrase "Neon Genesis Evangelion meets HP Lovecraft" should tell you how bleak it is. Thankfully for the NEG, there actually is some hope for humanity.
- Crossover Cosmology: The setting is a fusion of Macross (Nazzadi=Zentradi), Guyver (Tagers v. Dhohanoids = Guyvers v. Zoanoids), and of course Evangelion, all with a healthy dose of the Mythos added. And the players' guide adds Akira into the mix...!
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Eldritch Society, despite happily worshipping Eldritch Abominations, is pretty much the only thing keeping the Chrysalis Corporation from corrupting the NEG from within. You can also play a sorcerer, who indulges in what one would probably consider Black Magic in any other setting, albeit at a significant cost to their sanity. Then again, everyone else is paying that cost too.
- Death World: The area around the the Zone.
- Eldritch Abomination: Partially subverted in the form of the symbiotic Ta'ge, which the Eldritch Society use to augment their warriors.
- Empathic Weapon: The Engels, which are practically a ripoff of the Evangelions.
- Fake Memories: The Migou made the Nazzadi think that they were millenia-old galactic conquerors instead of a newly-made clone race. The Nazzadi finding out that these memories were fake led to their Heel Face Turn.
- Functional Magic: Parapsychics have an Innate Gift, sorcerers use a mixture of Rule Magic and Force Magic which is taught as a science.
- Green Skinned Space Babe: Nazzadi women are often treated as such by the artists on this project. Seriously, go through the books and try to find one Nazzadi female who isn't Stripperiffic.
- The fact that they have no nudity taboo doesn't help matters.
- Justified in that the Nazzadi are basically humans with some minor changes.
- Half Human Hybrids: In three different flavors!
- Nazzadi — Human hybrids are justified — since they are essentially the same race, it is natural that they would be able to interbreed.
- The Deep One Hybrids are...pretty much the same as they are in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," except that they can't pass down their Deep One genes if they marry an ordinary mortal.
- The Outsider Taint drawback, which doubles your Orgone at the cost of the NEG's trust, the ability to become a Tager or pilot an Engel, and a physical deformity.
- Human Aliens: Very, very subverted — if a person is even remotely humanoid and native to the local dimension, that's because they come from Earth.
- It Got Worse: In the first story book, The Rapine Storm overruns China Completely, the Deep Ones find something, and the summoning of an Outer God is barely averted. There are five books remaining.
- And the big reveal at the end of the book? There's another Migou Hive Ship on the way to Earth. The presence of ONE has driven mankind nearly to extinction. Yeah. It's about to get much, much worse.
- The book Mortal Remains has some interesting information, but the opportunity it opens up is so minute as to be nonexistent. The two hive ships hold the ENTIRETY of the Migou in our solar system. Pluto, their
homeworld Mining colony, is going to have a skeleton crew once the second ship launches. Some may question the rationality of leaving Pluto defenseless, but according to Migou intel, there are no threats to it since nobody is capable of getting there (And the Earth is locked down by the first Hive ship).
- Jump Physics: Cthulhutech is animesque, so characters are allowed to pull wicked jumps.
- Just Before The End: Sure, it may not SEEM like it in NEG-controlled territory, but the government has become quite adept at hiding just how utterly screwed humanity is.
- Knight Templar: The Office Of Internal Security has a lot of these on staff.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: How the hell is this not on here? Anyways, Dhoanoids and Tagers have this as their schtick; the dhoanoids are closer to the strict definition of the term.
- Magitek: Well, sort of. The line between science and magic is basically arbitrary in Cthulhutech, based off the ability of humanity to understand the underlying principles without going crazy. The D-Engines, with their whole infinite-energy-but-finite-power nature are a clear example of this trope, though.
- Masquerade: The NEG with it's Ministry of Infromation tries really hard to hide how utterly screwed the humanity is.
- Melee A Trois: The Migou, Humans/Nazzadi run NEG, and Cults all want each other dead/conquered/changed.
- Mind Rape: Oh so very common. It happens just from looking at some of the things that humanity has to fight. It can also be done by parapsychics, and the OIS does it to people it suspects of involvement in cults.
- Multiple Endings: Right now, none of them look very good. Likely endings include human extinction and surviving to become a Mythos race.
- Mutant Draft Board: All parapsychics (people born with innate abilities, which can range from mind control to having control over gravity) have to register with the Office of Internal Security, be tested, are subjected to survielence, and if their powers are deemed Invasive or Dangerous, they have to wear badges in public to inform people of it. On the other hand, looking at what kind of place the Cthulhutech setting is, it's fairly justified.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The Zone, which is what happens when you try to compress infinite dimensions into just three. As it turns out, it doesn't work out well at all.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Pick a member of the Rapine Storm. Any member of the Rapine Storm.
- Only One Name: Nazzadi don't use surnames. They identify themselves by occupation, instead.
- Physical God: Hastur's avatar, the Ragged King. He is unable to leave his castle on the Plateau of Leng, but he has complete dominion there, and woe be to Earth if he ever steps out.
- Nyarlathotep aswell, being the physical avatar of the soul and messager of Outer Gods.
- Police State: The NEG, which is understandable given the amount of threats they face from internal enemies and the Migou's Mind Control. Though the New Earth Government can also be seen as a more dystopian example of The Federation, which has to follow policies more suited for the Imperium of Man in order to survive.
- Power Incontinence: When para-psychics overexert themselves, they can enter a state called Burning, wherein they can still use their powers... With the catch that their powers don't turn off for quite a while. Zoners are in a permanent state of Burning, so you can probably figure out why they're considered a public menace.
- For reference, a para-psychic whose skill at pyrokinesis can barely heat up cold coffee are capable of making a house explode when they Burn. No pun intended.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: Pick a Nazzadi, though they are a subdued example-see Warrior Poet below.
- Psychic Powers: Parapsychics, who can vary quite a lot in power. At the low end, they can keep their coffee hot. At the high end, they can crush a Humongous Mecha into a little tin can, set fire to entire buildings with a thought, and rebuild your personality from the ground up. For this reason, they're subject to mandatory registration with the OIS, and those with powers deemed Dangerous or Invasive have to wear public identity tags. On the plus side, both the government and corprations love their abilities, so they tend to migrate to high paying jobs.
- Religion Of Evil: And how! Subverted in the form of the Eldritch Society — see above.
- A lot of Sex Tropes: As a part of a process that legalized a lot of illegal stuff (like drugs) in order to keep the general population sane, sexual morality became a lot loose (average age when someones loses virginity is 12, prostitution is legalized and resembles modern-day Holland practices, the porn industry rivals modern Hollywood and major porn-stars are minor mainstream celebrities, and the sex in mainstream media is borderline softcore). Of course, Death Shadows and various other cults are trying to take this into squick territory.
- Sliding Scale Of Social Satisfaction: The life in Arcologies is quite good actually, despite the war. Death Shadows want to change that into Dystopia.
- State Sec: The Office of Internal Security. They're supposed to just be the police for Functional Magic-related crimes, but in practice, they seem a lot more like a more democratic Minstry of Love, which is probably a good thing considering what kind of enemies they have.
- There Are No Therapists: Heavily averted, every NEG government person working with sorcery, arcanotech, or the sanity-straining bond with the inhuman Engels gets regular psychiatric care from well trained therapists to keep them sane. Well, sort of sane. Functional at the very least, so they won't (hopefully) have a breakdown in the middle of an attack and be unable to pilot.
- Even psychiatry has its limits.
- Transhuman Aliens: Humanity is in the process to doing this to itself. Dhohanoids are examples of this. Tagers are examples of this. Engels (which use human and Nazzadi DNA in their template) are examples of this. Deep One Hybrids are an example of this. Even the fact that humanity is acclimatising to the unnatural, that it can do things that would have driven earlier humans mad, is an example of this.
- And the thing is, it's a choice between this and extinction.
- Warrior Poet: The Nazzadi were specifically created by the Migou to be intelligent ass-kickers, and it shows.
- Also, one of the things that gnaws at the Nazzadi is that as a cloned race with no members chronologically in their 40s, they have no true culture of their own, and are desperate to create one. Therefore, any of the 2nd generation Nazzadi who take up one of the arts are highly prized by their families and the Nazzadi as a whole.
- The Windy City: Chicago is a capitol of NEG.
