Hot-blooded Catholic Space Nazi
Cool, I'll check out the links later.
"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
Cool. I posted the OP for the night since I'm heading out.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
The Man in Black
Well hello there. You have my attention.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
Hot-blooded Catholic Space Nazi
I have posted on the main thread already, just a heads up.
"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."
I'm sorry, I was busy applying for jobs this weekend, but tomorrow I'll get my first post up.
This RP definitely sounds like it could build to something interesting.
Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
@Nick
- Ouch. Sorry to hear. Don't worry, it's starting a bit slow.
@Victor
- Thanks. I'll see if I'll do a GM post/GM (and player post) later on.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
Hot-blooded Catholic Space Nazi
As a member of the Special Crimes Section, I am endeavored to post my opinion on the workings of the supernatural. I am compelled to add a scientific and rational explanation in order not to disgust my more "reasonable" colleagues. May this short guide enable you to peer into my personal understandings of this matter.
Note: This work is currently under construction, but you may put your thoughts into my work if you wish to help.
Extra Note: OK, I REALLY NEED YOUR INTELLECTUAL HELP GUYS... pitch in.
EXTRA EXTRA NOTE: I'M FUCKING DYING WITH THIS THING CALLED THINKING... HELP MEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Theories of the Paranormal by Billy Macklin (Currently Under Construction)
The Dimensions of Consciousness
1st-3rd Dimensions - These dimensions make up the physical realm, which make conscious organisms possible.
4th Dimension - The dimension of the mind and the start of consciousness through the agents of thought. This is the stage in which imagination and ideas prosper.
5th Dimension - The dimension of the soul, this is the vessel of consciousness that is the result of our thoughts. This may be the dimension in which the paranormals exist.
6th Dimension - The dimension of spiritual matter, similar to the 1st-3rd dimensions but it's really hyped up with ghosts.
7th Dimension - This is the dimension of the Gods. I define a God as a paranormal vessel that contains the purest form of thought... worship. These beings possibly possess untold quantities of power as a result of our beliefs. And now that we stop worshiping them, are we being punished by them?
The Mind: A Chemical Reaction of the Brain or The Cooperation of Physical and Paranormal?
-Sure our bodies and our brains are made out of a complex strain of protein that strings us together, but the product of thought is much much more than that... Perhaps the physical existed first before the advent of the supernatural?
The Power of the Thought: A Perspective of the Science of Faith
Reason: The Ultimate Creed
-It is to my belief that once superstition fades away, soon the forces of reason shall march on and "delete" the existence of the paranormal. Maybe the paranormal are actually a fragment of our thoughts, which are born through superstition. And they are now less common because we believe in them lesser and lesser everyday?
Origins of Religion: A Defense Against the Supernatural
-Perhaps supernatural beings truly appeared in ancient times and people were forced to fend against it with their own magics. But this will be their own undoing because the paranormals feed on people's thoughts and beliefs, so if people believe in them... they will get stronger?
-Or will we somehow manage to create new spirits and new gods based on our thoughts? Even if they are reasonable... they could result in something paranormal.
Creating Faith: A Guide to Spirit Cooking
-Since Gods become what they are through the purest form of thought called "worship" we are merely the ingredients of its power and well... they tend to reward people who do believe in them... such as me.
-If so then the greatest invention of humanity is not centered in technology, but in religion. We invented God.
-Hm, if a God wanted to be more powerful then that deity would incite us to create a cult in order to be more powerful.... Hmmm...
The Paranormal Big Bang: Architects of the Divine Universe
-There was a "Big Bang" that created the physical universe. Perhaps we are the "paranormal" Big Bang that creates the paranormal universe. We are... the agents of thought and we have created our own souls through it.
Eschatology: Prophecy or Threat?
-Is this simply punishment from the gods for not worshiping them? A threat?
Known Paranormal Weapons:
-Simply a collection of materials that I personally used against monsters.
1. The Cross
-Good old fashioned Jesus kicks ass even in the 21st century, he's even nailed while doing it.
2. Prayer
-Communication with the Lord helps.
3. Bible Verses
-The roots of our faith makes you stronger.
4. Bullets that have been blessed thousands of times and have a Cross on it
-I got this from the local churches. The reverends sure know how to combat their assholes when some random freak gets possessed and starts railing the air. Now that they have made these weapons, the poor bastards are afraid to even go near the church yard.
5. Faith
-With this alone I can kick ass.
Personal Encounters:
-Partly because I like to brag and claim the glory...
Editing Notes: Grggh needs more detail... and I bet that without even checking it has loopholes.
edited 1st Oct '15 3:14:27 AM by Victor_Skye
"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
That's a lot.
Reminds me of the stuff from Hellsing. No doubt some of the stuff will need to be revised as soon as I can get a read tomorrow.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
Hot-blooded Catholic Space Nazi
Yep, quite long and hard to read too. I'll probably have to learn the markup tricks.
edited 29th Sep '15 8:03:13 AM by Victor_Skye
"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."
The Man in Black
Appended to a copy of the above draft is a sticky note marked "Really???"
Out of character, what kind of system are we working with here? Hunter: The Vigil, Dresden Files, Laundry Files, Iron Druid, Night Owls...?
EDIT: Should probably elaborate. Are we going for creepy-crawlies under the bed like H:TV or Laundry, influence of small gods, faith, and/or the White God like Dresden or the Iron Druid series, or a mix? I feel like this is a decision the GM needs to make before everyone else can pitch in with ideas. If we don't know what direction this game is going, we can't help.
edited 29th Sep '15 8:58:49 AM by Wysp
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
@Wysp
- A legitimate question.
The RP is partly based on the Hayarigami games only released in Japan, where players investigate urban legend cases in Tokyo to determine if it'll have a paranormal or a scientific basis. The X-Files does have some influence in it too, but partially as well. Scooby-Doo came to mind, but only for cases that criminals use them to hide their activities in a darker and edgier fashion.
As for what the unit will investigate, the SCS will investigate cases that is set on urban legends and determine if criminals are using it to cover their tracks or if the paranormal is involved and will have to figure a way to close it. So no Eldritch stuff and monsters unless an urban legend does suggest a monster as its basis (Again, no eldritch stuff. That's gonna be too much for me to handle).
Hopefully it answers the question.
edited 29th Sep '15 10:01:07 PM by Ominae
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
The Man in Black
Okay, so creepy crawlies it is then. Cool, I can work with that. I'll see what I can come up with.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
Sure.
If you or anyone else has questions they need to ask, feel free to ask away.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
Hot-blooded Catholic Space Nazi
Anyways what do you think of the "Theories of the Paranormal" post? It's a new idea and it'll get better as the months pass by.
"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
Looks okay.
Perhaps someone needs a look over.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
The Man in Black
Somewhere in a dark basement, a copy of "The Theories of the Paranormal" by Billy Macklin is covered in red ink.
Next to the note-smothered draft is a notebook of experimental data.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
I'll see maybe about adding another GM/GM - player post to move things and to end the Action Prologue if no one is posting later.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
The Man in Black
The notebook is filled with half-legible scribbles, some half-formed ideas, others collections of numbers and data, and some are blends of both. Dots of blood speckle one or two pages.
The rise of "Jediism" seems to be an optimal chance to study the formation of new so-called "small gods" by human faith. Must track attempts to draw on "Force" parallel with number of followers.
2011 census data indicates just less than 266K followers of Jediism worldwide (note: unreliable numbers? No solid census data for more than a handful of countries). Expect most of these are in jest. Numbers of "serious" Jediism practicioners likely far less, but no reliable numbers exist.
All attempts at invoking Force via canon-accurate evocation, ritual, etc. have failed. Try more traditional approaches?
Official church numbers place the size of the Church of Scientology at ten million, not including free-zoners, as the Church does not recognize their legitimacy. Accurate numbers are hard to come by.
Defectors from central records seem to indicate no more than 40K worldwide. Apocryphal anecdotes place the estimate closer to 15K.
Attempts to contact Xenu or exorcise Thetans have been unfruitful to date.
- Silver (purifying aspect? Maybe originally rooted in silver's antibacterial qualities?)
- Wooden stakes re:vampires (note to self: see if any connection between Druidism and vampire-staking. Check efficiency of different kinds of wood oak ash apple hazel alder elder
yewyew works great - blessed weapons: seem to work well so far. No reliable control group found yet though
- Iron: effective against Fae/"organic" supernatural creatures. Must keep on hand when working in lush areas. Note to self: Dryads do not like it when you try to take their branches for stakes.
- Fire: Effective for most corporeal beasties
edited 30th Sep '15 7:02:41 PM by Wysp
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
Hot-blooded Catholic Space Nazi
Post #17 Response:
"What's this about higher dimensions? Does he even know how dimensions work? He's writing like they're parallel worlds or something."
Yeah, about that... I have no idea what are dimensions... (Expects you to facepalm)
""purest form of thought"? Need to ask him how he defines "purest" and why worship matches that definition. Where's he getting his experimental data from?"
About the purest form of thought thing... it's just an expression. Since I do believe that gods come from us believing in them in the first place, worship is just a supreme way of acknowledging their existence, thus making them real.
If this is so and someone understands the workings of the supernatural in this way, perhaps cult leaders or even religious organizations exploit this form of behavior in order to attain the psychic power of their gods. Imagine billions of people pooling all of their energy into one supposed god in a crisis, say a WAR! Then there are plenty of opportunities to use this sort of power. If so, then the utilization of this so called "paranormal" ability is already commonplace in our society, and that it hasn't been leaked to the public... yet.
I have no experimental data to speak of. I haven't learned the scientific method until recently... when I bumped into this scientist that I had an argument with. He seemed stunned that I didn't even know that.
"His bit on the mind being a cooperation between the brain and soul seems right. Maybe he knows something I don't."
Even I don't know much about myself. You're way smarter than me, I don't even know what dimensions are...
In any case, I speculate we are half-physical and we are half-psychic at the same time. Think about it, it's been said that we're close to the apes and yet at the same time we can associate ourselves with the divine. The majority of the human race believes in a supreme god that created the universe through His glory at the same time they can be considered little more than highly evolved animals.
"His theory on the rolling-back of the supernatural is concerning. Must look into ways of delaying this, if true."
Rolling-back of the supernatural? Well, if you think this is a bad thing for you then it's not really a bad thing for me. If something like this is natural for a psychic race then it has equal potential for both good and bad things. Our gods can come to Earth and literally make this place a paradise or they can destroy this place for turning away from them. It all depends really.
I don't believe you can "delay" it one bit. As long as people keep on believing in their gods and as long as those gods have power they will always move on. There are some things in human nature that you can't change, Fiona.
"I doubt very much that people started off believing in things that didn't exist...they had to see something to make them ask questions first. Note to self: Investigate possible origins of the supernatural. Christian God? Azathoth? What made the first humans invent religion?"
What made humans invent religion? What made humans invent reason in the first place? Humans, even as apes, had this innate desire to explore the world and experience it in many qualities. Religion as well as reason are merely different ways to discover the hidden dimensions within this world. It just so happens there are MANY hidden dimensions in the world. That's why there's the paranormal...
"Need more experimental data on birth of gods. Lack of recorded case studies problematic. Cannot test theory that we originated gods rather than other way around."
Meh, that's my personal belief anyway so it's subject to my bias.
"Eschatology not worth considering. No event = null data. Event = experimental data to confirm or deny cosmological models. Macklin's speculations are just that."
How are we going to get all this experimental data in the first place?
"Investigate Macklin's paranormal weapons. Faith is proven factor. Do blessings and crucifixes have power separate from faith? Need to find atheist to use religious iconigraphy in combat."
The thing is, when a believer carries some holy relic that he considers it to help him/her in combat then the "belief" in that weapon stimulates our psychic energy. It makes us more effective when fighting the supernatural.
Now an atheist? I'm not so sure, but they always beat me in arguments... damn it. On second thought, an atheist might be able to fight with a Cross if the Cross in question has been used repeatedly in Mass because many believers have already channeled their psychic energy into it, giving it adequate power to fend off paranormal powers. It works better with a believer though...
edited 30th Sep '15 7:22:42 PM by Victor_Skye
"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."
The Man in Black
Out of character, it's not Fiona who's making these notes. She is an atheist. She probably wouldn't be making notes on the effectiveness of using yew to stake vampires or iron on nature-based beasties. I apologize for any difficulty there.
Anything that is IC in this topic I will be writing in quoteblocks to make it clear that this is an excerpt from the notebook or something else, and not me actually speaking. Anything else is my clear opinion or narration. I couldn't tell if you were serious about your beliefs until you said "Fiona." XD
Personally I think a bestiary should be the primary focus, if we're going the creepy-crawly route like Ominae wants.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
Hot-blooded Catholic Space Nazi
I don't actually know much about the supernatural, but I do like to speculate about it. You seem to know a lot about things.
"In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war."
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
Hey folks.
GM/GM-player now up. Things should be concluding soon.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
The Man in Black
Most of what I know is a good Google search away. Dimensions, example, are like time. Time is most decidedly not a world separate from our own. :P Presumably higher dimensions work similarly. If you want to talk about parallel universes or pockets of space-time, then we're in business.
Numbers on Jediism and Scientology can be found if you Google them, and I felt it reasonable to say that they have not hit any kind of god-generating limit. Hence why the guy making these notes is saying that there are no results to date: he hasn't found any proof to deny the faith-genesis theory. What he's found is simply a set of cases which have not generated any gods.
Anyway, I think we should move away from this topic. If faith comes up, it should be strictly regarding who it can be used against things that go bump in the night. I think we should focus on categorizing beasties and the weapons that kill them.
@ Ominae: Below are my initial recommendations.
- Leave the matter of holy relics nebulous. Are they powered by the faith of believers or is there genuinely a God out there acting through them? Don't let this question be answered.
- I am attempting to categorize beasties based on their nature and weaknesses. I referenced Fae "and other nature-based supernatural beings" as being weak to iron, for example. I would group Greco-Roman nymphs (dryads, naiads, etc) under "Fae" because they are nature-based, even though Fae are a Celtic invention. Undead like vampires or zombies for example, I would probably identify as vulnerable to things like fire or sunlight, things that are associated with purification. I have no idea how to categorize werewolves. Animistic something-or-other, maybe.
More to follow.
"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir
Organized Canine Bureau Special Agent
Good suggestion with the first one. Since the RP is centered on the mysteries of urban legends and we can get the chance of bumping into an actual one, it's good to leave it in an ambiguous stance.
On the second one, Shin Hayarigami showed a scenario where zombies wrecking havoc were present as caused by a company's negligence... Yeah.
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"
This is the OOC/Worldbuild thread for Urban Legend Investigations. As such, this first post is for the basic worldbuild stuff behind the RP.
The worldbuild of the city/department is inspired from various nations, including Canada, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and the United States.
The city is divided into five areas. The downtown area, known as Central, is the headquarters of the GPD and the city's CBD. The four areas consist of North, South, West and East, each of them covered by a precinct. The outskirts in the four areas are home to various suburbs. If you're living in the city, you'll see various apartment blocks that cater to all classes.
The following are location of the most prominent ethnic towns:
Each of these areas have various churches/temples/etc as part of their town's unique identity. There are also other races/ethnic groups present, such as Native American, Pacific Islanders (mostly from Hawaii and Samoa), African American and a few other Asian communities.
The mainstream religion is Christianity (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Iglesia ni Cristo aka Church of Christ, Eastern Orthodox with some Independent Catholic and other christian faiths). But the city is also home to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews, albeit at a small minority.
- Patrol Bureau (Overall command by Superintendent)
- Crime Bureau (Overall command by Superintendent)
- Investigations Bureau (Overall command by Superintendent)
- Counter-Terrorism Bureau (Overall command by Superintendent)
- Support Bureau (Overall command by Superintendent)
- Training Bureau (Overall command by Superintendent)
Sedan:
Vans:
edited 4th Jan '16 5:09:10 AM by Ominae
"Exit muna si Polgas. Ang kailangan dito ay si Dobermaxx!"