Contrary to popular belief I am still working on my game. I’ve made some important decisions about it, too. Most importantly, I’ve decided it’s going to exist in its current form as a proof of concept, and I’m going to try to pitch it to a few different places, and I’ll self-publish if I have to. I’d like to just release it as an RPG Maker game, but the fact is it’s a little too limited to do everything I want to do. Originally I was willing to just work around the limitations as best I can, but I’ve decided that since this is going to be the culmination of my life’s work up to this point, I want to do it right, and that’s probably going to mean developing a whole new game based on the RPG Maker proof. I think I could potentially make it into a product that would be marketable to at least a few publishers, and I’ll have the advantage of having everything but the actual engine itself finished. Script, designs, characters, music, plot, everything; it would be like buying a new car that just needs a paint job.
Anyway, enough about that.
Today’s post is going to be about the various “real”-life concepts behind a lot of the plot elements in Navaratna. Anybody that has been following along with these posts (basically, myself, and no one else) knows that the game comes from a melange of influences, and among the biggest ones are pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and conspiracy theories. I make no attempt to hide it; I eat that stuff up like buttered tits. I don’t actually believe anything I read about them (mostly because 99% of those theories can easily be disproven), but I find them absolutely fascinating for reasons I don’t understand. Specifically, I look at them in almost the exact same way as I do comic books: there’s something so inherently intriguing about something that is obviously fictional just because of how ridiculous and yet serious it is. My entire life revolves around absurdity. If you’ve ever seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, you can look at me like Larry David. I’m a person who feels like the only one who sees how ridiculous every little thing around them is, and who can find humor and absurdity in anything, no matter how mundane or ridiculous. Of course, things are always much, much funnier and more absurd when they’re serious. And to conspiracy theorists, EVERYTHING is serious business. Andrew W.K.? He’s no musician, he’s an Illuminati and Masonic tool used to control you and keep you in a state of hedonistic stupification. Just look at Steev Mike: it contains an I for Illuminati AND an M for Masons! (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should really read up about it. It’s easily the most fascinating thing to happen in the music industry in fucking decades. Start reading here. Feel free to ask me about my theory on the topic. It’s looooooong.) Probably my favorite thing about conspiracy theorists is that they tend to act like ridiculous arguments are assumed as fact. For example: “Everyone knows that hot dogs were invented by the Illuminati in conjunction with George Burns and the Trix Rabbit to deliver radioactive mind control devices to Babe Ruth, but did you know that when Babe Ruth pointed out his famous “called shot” that he was actually pointing at a Bee Man from Dongulaar 9? That’s why, as I’m sure you’re aware, they replaced him with a Ruthbot that fired baseballs out of a bat-shaped cannon attached to its wrist.” No single part of that sentence is less retarded than any other part, but they use the technique of assuming facts so that it seems like there fewer completely retarded ideas to accept at once. (See: Fox News)
So how does this relate to my game? Well, the most obvious way is in the premise and main characters. The Nine Unknown Men, as I’ve discussed before, are based on a concept that represents the holy trinity of fringe theory bullshit: the conspiratorial, the pseudohistorical, and the pseudoscientific. It even gets bonus points for being developed by the Theosophists, godkings of impossible, easily disproven ideas. Other than the Nine themselves, I’ve borrowed several concepts both directly and indirectly from the impossible science canon. For example, there are a few different organizations in the game inspired by a few different real-world concepts:
- The Cult of Zalmoxis is a real cult, or was at any rate. In real life, the Cult of Zalmoxis (also spelled Salmoxis, Zamolxis, or Samolxis, but I prefer the more awesomely correct spelling because it sounds like an alien from the 50s) was/is a group in ancient Dacia (modern-day Romania and other areas in southeastern Europe) that worshipped a god named Zalmoxis, who was apparently also just some dude that Pythagoras taught. I doubt he was really divine, but if he was taught by Pythagoras, he could probably make some pretty kickass triangles. I’d probably worship someone if they were good enough at that, I guess.
You can tell he's in a cult. He has oddly shaped, nonfunctional, impractical headwear.
In the game, the Cult of Zalmoxis is a small, mysterious group with pockets of support all over the world. Despite their relatively small numbers in comparison to other religions around the world, they have a ridiculous amount of resources. Like, Chicago meat packing industry magnate-sized bank accounts. The kind of money where if the leader wants to go to Olive Garden, he just goes. And when he does, he gets an appetizer, and an entree, and a dessert. In the same meal. He might even get two entrees, just to prove he can do it. And drinks? You better believe strawberry lemonade, with no free refills. So, with this immense amount of money to pull from, the cult can afford recruitment pushes, and it’s expanding quickly. Quickly enough that it’s starting to frighten the larger religions. Ordinarily, this would spell doom for the leadership involved with the cult, but their skilled PR team always manages to turn public opinion in their favor before the other churches can act. They generally act ambivalent to your party, but you’ll get involved with them at least a few times.
-The Lightwood Orrenshain Science Team, or LOST for short, is a team of superscientists led by Lightwood Orrenshain, an odd, but seemingly friendly old man responsible for a lot of the chronologically questionable scientific advancements made in last 50 years or so, beginning with electric light and steam power, all the way up to magnetic railroads, hovercars, and all kinds of other crazy shit. Most people can’t fathom his genius, and think he’s allied with the devil, Zalmoxis, or some other sundry god of evil. Orrenshain refuses to release his research papers, so that belief may not be entirely unfounded.
Messed up, crazy colored hair is a prerequisite for mad science.
The LOST actually goes out and does crazy field science, testing hypotheses, turning ducks into cats, building ice volcanoes, all kinds of mad science stuff. They’re also crazy badasses in their own right, trained in various forms of martial arts and, more significantly, carrying giant-ass lasers and shit. You know that alien gun in District 9 that just explodes people on contact? The LOST uses it. You know, for yard work and picking off squirrels. It’s got nothing on their real weapons though. They can kill you outright with not much more than a thought, and can even levy worse punishments against you. Remember the time you shit yourself in front of your 2nd class and cried so much they had to call your parents to get you? The LOST does, and they’ll make you relive it over and over if you piss them off. And if you didn’t do anything like that? Well, they’ll make you shit yourself in front of your 10th grade class. Try living through that over and over again. Cyrus and the group will run into the LOST several times, and maybe even Lightwood Orrenshain himself. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to talk about a character and then not show him, so you can probably guess if you’re gonna see him or not.
The LOST is largely based on real life theories about superscience teams that have made significant shifts in human progress behind the scenes, including the Nine Unknown Men themselves. They’re also sort of based on Marvel Comics’ AIM, but AIM is equal parts business, science, and politics, whereas the LOST is pretty much all science. The LOST’s homebase, Lightwood Orrenshain Labs (LOL. Awesome.) is based on imaginary or semi-imaginary laboratories such as Area 51 and Camp Hero, a massive, tightly-guarded haven of psuedoscience where the impossible is done everyday, even though it’s impossible. Does that sound like a dungeon? Who knows.
-The National Social Movement Party, are essentially based on the Nazis. No reason to dance around it, it should be pretty obvious. They’re a fascistic group dedicated to abolishing individual nation states and unifying them under one world government, led by themselves of course. However, they are at least based on the fictional Nazis, the ones that have magical artifacts and superscientific devices and such. They’ll have plenty of my own demented creations. Like laser alligators.
Ok, maybe that's not an entirely new creation on my part.
The Somos are a bit more benign than the Nazis, which I suppose isn’t saying much. They aren’t committing genocide or anything, at least not yet. They genuinely think that their style of government is going to solve the world’s problems. The only thing is, they haven’t quite figured out exactly how they’re going to get from being a small group in one city to controlling the entire world. With few people, fewer resources, and almost no popular support, it’s going to be quite an uphill climb for them. But stranger things have happened. Like laser alligators.
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
