Making less-terrible Cthulhutech-esque RPG

[Koumei]

I stand corrected. WTF, Evangelion writers?

Ha! And you thought I was to blame for that one.

[hyzmarca]

The important thing about all this is that with the playable races being:

• Humans
• Deep Ones (and Deep One Hybrids, who might or might not be classed separately)
• Ghouls (Cat Girls)
• Goat Spawn

That all of these races joined the Earth Government more than a hundred years ago if we set things in 2097. That means that no one has to play a character who by all rights was born and raised under a different planetary flag, who thus can be expected to have no real loyalty to Earth.

The big question is how to fit in the obnoxious aliens from Urusei Yatsura/Disgaea. If they are Underworlders, they could jolly well join the Union when the Ghouls do. If they are from another world conquered by the Dark Young, they could join when the Goat Spawn do.

The Men of Leng potentially work for cute horned aliens, if you don't mind goat-legs. As staunch allies of the Moon-beasts, then sort of got steamrolled when the UN forces swept through the Dreamlands and the Plateau of Leng was occupied. Since the Lengian government was really shitty and the UN was in no shape for a large-scale nation-building project, the occupation just naturally turned into an annexation and the Men of Leng were actually alright with that, since the UN governor was a much better rulers than their former leader was.

Anyway, having just written that, it occurs to me that the Earth government, being formed from the ashes of the United States and the Soviet Union and the European Union should just be called "The Union".

-Username17

That works. I was thinking that instead of a full-on one-world government, it would basically be an alliance between the two superpowers, which remain so despite the damage caused, and cooperation between the two naturally approximates world domination until it slowly slides into something more stable. The USSR, of course, doesn't give up Communism, and the USA doesn't give up capitalism, so you basically end up with an arrangement that could be called "one planet, two systems."

[Grek]

If we're going to have Yig running Cobra Command out of Mexico, the Union should have a green triangle on a white background as their flag. And for cults:

• The Slaves of the Flame Undying, who are a cult worshiping Cthugha, an Elder God that is currently imprisoned inside the star Arcturus. His cultists aspire to be transformed into fire vampires and have a space ship that's disguised as a comet.
• The Brotherhood of the Beast, who are like the Masons, except even more Egypt themed than normal and secretly worship Nyarlathotep and work to open portals to the Abyss. Their symbol is an onyx sphinx.
• Some kind of immortality cult founded by a medical researcher that's been researching the spines of Glaaki. Basically, they inject rich people with needles full of slime, which makes them younger but also enslaves them to an Elder God.
• The Elder Things from the Mountains of Madness should probably show up, but I can't think of a good plot hook for them.

[hyzmarca]

Different Source Material [NSFW]

I stand corrected. WTF, Evangelion writers?

The story goes that the guy in charge of the series was clinically depressed, didn't want to do the redo the ending, got death threats, and was seriously creeped out by the way male fans fetishistic Rei. Thus, that scene (all of End of Evangelleon, really) was a giant and intentional fuck-you to creepy obsessed fans.

Loving the timeline, but I think hyzmarca's comments on art go a bit too far. Deep One supermodels, sure. Colours and sounds that humans don't normally see are common, but it's because the cone cells in Deep Ones eyes are attuned to blue teal and yellow instead of red blue and green and because Deep One ears can hear in the 40-50 kHz range in addition to the 0 to 20 kHz that normal humans can hear. Not because of a fundamental wrongness in the laws of physics. And we should probably specify whether Deep Ones are into hyperbolic or elliptical geometry. I personally vote hyperbolic:

Hyperbolic, certainly.

Some of those concerts and art exhibits are going to take place in the dreamlands, which run on dream physics. Once you've got the tech to physically cross over people will take advantage of it. It's a place where you can row a boat to the moon. Certainly, artists will take advantage of the bizzare physics of the realm.


Actually, the Dreamlands issue is kind of important. Dream physics means that you can fly to Pluto in a rowboat in a reasonable amount of time. Indeed, the Moon-beasts flew around in oar-driven gallies crewed by Men of Leng and propelled by slaves.

Once humanity gains Dreamlands access space travel becomes absurdly easy. You don't even need to build pressure domes, so long as you keep your colonists on the Dreamlands side they can breath in space.

[Whipstitch]

Including Elder Things would be tricky. They have a lot of things going for them in that they bury their dead, appreciate history, have purely corporeal bodies and use a lot of hyper advanced but recognizable technologies like bio-engineering, hypnosis and the manipulation of atomic energies. So presumably they'd be one of the easiest mythos critters to deal with, whether that be in open combat or by coming to some sort of understanding--part of the reason Madness is so effective, after all, is the implication that the Elder Things weren't even the scariest thing that come up in that story.

Unfortunately, in a game where mythos monsters roll out in force that actually leaves them with a case of relative pants smallness as baddies even before you get to the bit where they may either be all dead or hopelessly degenerate because they couldn't effectively deal with climate change, star spawn and getting their heads chewed off by their former servitors. I'm also not really sure where they'd fit in on Team Good Guy either, given that Deep Ones already have icky characters covered and have human interaction baked into their backstory. So as much as it pains me, it might be better to leave them dead, since that's actually a big part of why they were sorta cool.

[hyzmarca]

Lets talk about mecha.

Thrones are literally lobotomized Star Spawn. They're created by taking a Star Spawn, either captured or cloned, scooping out most of its brain, and installing a cybernetic interface. Since Star Spawn exist in four spacial dimensions, this surgery is more of an art than a science.

Plugging your brain into a Star Spawn's central nervous system is a really bad idea, in the same sense that playing Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol is a bad idea. Adults can pilot Thrones once; they can even survive piloting a Throne once, if they're pulled out soon enough. The world record is 17 minutes. But they can't have anything resembling a life afterward. Even if an adult pilot is pulled out before his brain explodes, he will suffer irreversible brain damage leading to the total loss of motor control and impairment of higher cognitive functions.

Children have sufficient neural plasticity to adapt to the Throne's nervous system, but suffer the opposite problem. As their brains adapt to controlling the Throne's four-dimensional body their own bodies begin to seem limiting. Over time they eventually reach a point where they can't stand to disconnect from the creature.

Teenagers can safely (for certain very loose definitions of safe) pilot a Throne for over a year before burn-out begins to set in. Some exceptional pilots can keep going for two or even three years. Still, most retire with full benefits by the time they're 16.

The Union doesn't want to use Thrones, but has no other weapon capable of permanently killing a Star Spawn, or fighting one on equal footing.

Gunboys
When UN forces first struck back against the Lunar Army bases in the Dreamlands, they discovered that armored vehicles didn't work that well there. Indeed, the dream-logic upon which the realm operates allows a spear-wielding tribesman to stab an APC to death through its armor as if it were nothing more than a giant herd animal. Extensive studies of Dreamlands physics determined that the rule-of-cool is a major deciding factor in Dreamlands combat. Thus the all-terrain humanoid fighting vehicle was conceived. Nicknamed Gunboys, ATHFVs are optimized to fight in the dreamlands, where all the reasons why humanoid mecha suck are conviently handwaved away.

Gunboys have been modified for use as police vehicles in cities that have significant Ancient (Giant-Sized) Deep One populations, multipurpose construction vehicles (less effective but cheaper than buying several specialized vehicles), and for close-combat against hostile Kaiju.

[Maxus]

Including Elder Things would be tricky. They have a lot of things going for them in that they bury their dead, appreciate history, have purely corporeal bodies and use a lot of hyper advanced but recognizable technologies like bio-engineering, hypnosis and the manipulation of atomic energies. So presumably they'd be one of the easiest mythos critters to deal with, whether that be in open combat or by coming to some sort of understanding--part of the reason Madness is so effective, after all, is the implication that the Elder Things weren't even the scariest thing that come up in that story.

Unfortunately, in a game where mythos monsters roll out in force that actually leaves them with a case of relative pants smallness as baddies even before you get to the bit where they may either be all dead or hopelessly degenerate because they couldn't effectively deal with climate change, star spawn and getting their heads chewed off by their former servitors. I'm also not really sure where they'd fit in on Team Good Guy either, given that Deep Ones already have icky characters covered and have human interaction baked into their backstory. So as much as it pains me, it might be better to leave them dead, since that's actually a big part of why they were sorta cool.

They can stay dormant for practically forever.

So given their knowledge of science, there could be a very small number of Elder Things which have survived into the EarthGov age and serve as a science think-tank/R&D as they try to reverse-engineer their own technology and so on. That could be a plot point on the timeline, potentially leading to mecha which can fight back without using Thrones.

Also, there should be mecha-sized critters for each faction. Leviathans for Dagonites to oppose the Cthuloid Star Spawn. I'd have to check around for stuff from Dreamlands and the Abyss..

[Username17]

It occurred to me that rather than having Irhaqua's Boreans invade because climate change uncovered their ancient stargates, it should be that the Boreans invade because climate change sank their ancient stargates. Thus, they have to gate their troops to Pluto, and then have them transported from Pluto to Earth by Yuggothian space ship.This makes them feel really different from the Shub Niggurath forces that gate in Kaiju.

As for Evas being hollowed out Star Spawn, I'm not sure I like that. For one thing, it sets up a chicken/egg problem in how R'lyeh could ever get defeated in the first place once their Kaiju come online in 2035. You have to have thrones to beat a star spawn, you have to beat a star spawn to make a throne. It's a problem. So for this, I favor a more direct Evangelion rip: the Eva units are cloned giants grown from something horrible and ancient found in the Antarctic in the early 21st century. So, presumably from Elder Thing ruins.

I suggest then that the Eva knockoffs are actually big molds into which Shoggoth has been poured. So like unto Evangelion, the "armor" is really a set of restraints that imprison the monster and force it to do what the pilot wants it to do. This has the advantage of allowing us to have Evangelions that are in whatever shapes we feel like having. So if you want human forms, you can do that, if you want quadrupeds or chicken legs, you can do that too. And if the robot armor gets destroyed, shit goes crazy. And that is I think pretty important for an Evangelion clone, you want it to go berserk sometimes, rather than just lying there drooling like a pithed squid.

-Username17

[Whipstitch]

So given their knowledge of science, there could be a very small number of Elder Things which have survived into the EarthGov age and serve as a science think-tank/R&D

I was actually thinking along those lines at one point, since there's even the bit in At the Mountains of Madness where Dyer calls the Elder Things scientists to the last, but I discarded it since I didn't want to undercut their dead civilization shtick unless it was in the service of something genuinely vital to the setting (or, alternatively, if people really, REALLY wanted to play or murderate them). Frank's shoggoth armor instead of lobotomized star spawn tweak might provide such an impetus, particularly since the Elder Things have warred with star spawn before. It's not entirely unreasonable that the surviving Things might be willing to assist in shoggoth wrangling again if they have allies and the alternative is earth and the last records of their civilization being expunged. They seemed big on history, after all.

[Username17]

Also, there should be mecha-sized critters for each faction. Leviathans for Dagonites to oppose the Cthuloid Star Spawn. I'd have to check around for stuff from Dreamlands and the Abyss.

The big advantage as far as the Dreamlands stuff goes is that the Earth-Moon War ended a hundred and fifteen years in the past. The Moon Beasts don't need to have had mecha sized monsters or war machines, because that war has been over for a long time. That being said, the Ghasts in The Underworld of the Dreamlands could have an uprising at basically any time, and they come equipped with Gugs.


The Abyss has no problems with Kaiju. Shub Niggurath breeds the Dark Young, and these numberless offspring are compared to trees, and are basically Kaiju to begin with. Also, Shub Niggurath has a bunch of named character Kaiju offspring:

Dark Young (Generic Kaiju)


Lloigor


Zhar

Nug & Yeb: The Twin Blasphemies

The other side is that Shub Niggurath also has the power to breed with man-sized things, and to infuse power directly into normal creatures. This allows the Abyss to also be what is effectively the Negaverse: transforming ordinary people, animals, and captured heroes into Youma by filling them full of "Black Goat Energy" (that is actually what it is called). Then the newly transformed monsters go on a rampage until they are healed by magical girls. Youma can kick it up a notch and either grow into Kaiju or gate in Kaiju, and then you'd better call in your Zords because shit just got real.

Team R'lyeh has the whole Kaiju concept all sewn up:


Team Cthonian is 100% composed of tentacled giant worms of various sizes ranging from "really big" to "fucking huge", so their deployment on the Kaiju battle map is assured:


Team Borea/Yuggoth has both Ithaqua and the Shantaks as far as straight monsters go, and the Mi-Go can jolly well pilot actual robots themselves.

Ithaqua


Shantak


Mechs of Yuggoth

I don't think "Cult" factions need to have mechs. They are fought by police units, pokemasters, and magical girls for the most part. That being said, Yig's cultists can easily enough produce a giant feathered serpent at an important plot juncture if they aren't accomplishing enough as drug runners and terrorists with implanted poison fangs. The King in Yellow can of course pull out the stops and go monster if he really wants to.

I was thinking that instead of a full-on one-world government, it would basically be an alliance between the two superpowers, which remain so despite the damage caused, and cooperation between the two naturally approximates world domination until it slowly slides into something more stable. The USSR, of course, doesn't give up Communism, and the USA doesn't give up capitalism, so you basically end up with an arrangement that could be called "one planet, two systems."

Sort of. The Supreme Soviet and the Washington Consensus went up in mushroom clouds in 1970. While the USSR doesn't give up "Communism", the top-down Soviet system had its head ripped off at the beginning of hostilities. While the US doesn't give up "Freedom" (remember, this is 1970, and that is what we called the system), the entire set of people who defined what that meant in terms of tangible policy got incinerated in nuclear hellfire. Where the Moon Beasts really fucked up was in their assumption that just because the systems as they had been running were no longer viable, that humanity would just give up. Of course, what actually happened was that the world had been chugging along without direct oversight for most of the previous twenty five years anyway. Generals didn't have anyone to report to, but that mostly just meant they had no one to tell them to stand down.

So it's not really "two systems", it's a fuck tonne of systems. The world is divided into zones that spent the years from 1970 to 1985 with their own home-grown government system. Some zones were commandeered by admirals, other zones had new executives drawn from councils of regional governors, some zones turned into anarchist communes, some zones got run by crime families who were to one degree or another patriotic to "The Earth", and so on and so on. Various zones will tell you that they are part of the "Freedom" system or the "Communist" system or the "Third Way" system, but the reality is that they way they really do things isn't likely to be that much more similar to another zone that claims to be in the same system as it is to another zone that claims to be otherwise. Remember, the entire system of creating, promoting, and enforcing policy orthodoxy on both sides of the iron curtain was melted into slag overnight and things were far too desperate for another fifteen years for anyone to be able to even try to create a new one.

The unifying idea though is that every zone was cobbled together based on the idea of being part of the global alliance defending The Earth. So while different zones run the gamut between totalitarianism and direct democracy, they still coordinated whatever their production and military contributions were with whoever was available to talk to. The Union was defacto a dozen years before anyone made it dejure.

This is an important difference from CthulhuTech's "New Earth Government", where supposedly all the different regions are the same. The different zones in The Union aren't even remotely the same. There are zones that are run by noble houses (crime families that stepped up into the seats of power when the shit hit the fan). There are zones that are run as military directorates. There are zones that are run as bottom-up Marxist collectives. There are zones that are run as corporations. There are zones that are run as merchant republics. But every zone is fiercely loyal to The Union and every zone runs strong "us vs. them" propaganda where at the very least every Human counts as "Us" (so there's no Apartheid South Africa Zone, but there are some zones that don't accept Deep Ones, Ghouls, Oni, and Goat Spawn).

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Anyway, having just written that, it occurs to me that the Earth government, being formed from the ashes of the United States and the Soviet Union and the European Union should just be called "The Union".

-Username17

what are Asia n' Africa doing in this setting?

[Maxus]

Depends on if Africa got together some kind of unified large-scale power bloc instead of a ton of little individual fighting nations.

Africa and Asia are geographically -huge- and filled with places that are hard to get to. Same with Polynesia. Those places are probably ground-level warzones with cults and government officials all engaged in a bloody multiway war. In the case of the Pacific, you have Team Dagon doing island-by-island fighting with Team R'lyeh.

If I recall right, Cthulhu's island was in the South Pacific, down close to Antarctica. If you assume R'lyeh to be the base, then there's a war for control of the Pacific, divided into North vs. South. The Panama Canal (or kaiju-dug replacement) is probably one of the heaviest concentrations of military power in the world, due to the defenses set up on it.

In fact, I think you could say that Cthulhu controls the oceans of the Southern Hemisphere and Dagon owns the northern hemisphere. More or less, anyway.

Edit: Oh, and since everyone's posting cool pics:

[Username17]

what are Asia n' Africa doing in this setting?

The big dogs in Asia are China, India, and Japan. Japan's "export boom" of the 70s doesn't happen, because of the war. India is front and center for the Men of Leng, and China fragments into zones right off as Lin Biao and Mao Zedong are both murdered by alien hellfire before they get a chance to have a falling out and attempt to murder each other.

So you have zones like Hong Kong, which are Triad-back Merchant Republics. You have zones like Inner Mongolia, which are military directorates. Hong Kong is really rich, Inner Mongolia is really poor, but of course that can't be generalized to every zone with various government types.

Japan starts their investment into heavy industry in 1965, but the Earth-Moon War gives them an early gut punch as they run out of oil in 1970 instead of 1973. This means that they invest more in nuclear energy and semi-conductors than they did historically, making them if anything even more tech-focused than the Japan of our world. Nevertheless, we're looking at slower economic growth, to the point that they never have the overvaluation singularity in the late 80s that made people think Japan was going to take over the world when Shadowrun was being written.

India gets invaded by Men of Leng in the middle of the Bangladesh Liberation War. Given the Moon Beast's predilection for decapitating governments, and the relative ease of attacking the leaders of India and Pakistan, the leadership of both countries is wiped out even without having atomic weaponry to spare for that purpose. The Indian Subcontinent fractures pretty hard, with Pakistan breaking into much more than just East and West, and India shattering into nominally allied states.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

It occurred to me that rather than having Irhaqua's Boreans invade because climate change uncovered their ancient stargates, it should be that the Boreans invade because climate change sank their ancient stargates. Thus, they have to gate their troops to Pluto, and then have them transported from Pluto to Earth by Yuggothian space ship.This makes them feel really different from the Shub Niggurath forces that gate in Kaiju.

As for Evas being hollowed out Star Spawn, I'm not sure I like that. For one thing, it sets up a chicken/egg problem in how R'lyeh could ever get defeated in the first place once their Kaiju come online in 2035. You have to have thrones to beat a star spawn, you have to beat a star spawn to make a throne. It's a problem. So for this, I favor a more direct Evangelion rip: the Eva units are cloned giants grown from something horrible and ancient found in the Antarctic in the early 21st century. So, presumably from Elder Thing ruins.

In Eva, there is something called Non-nuclear mines, essentially tactical nukes that aren't nukes (because Japan hates nukes), which can hurt weaker Angels. The idea is that you can injure Star Spawn pretty badly with sufficient massed firepower, on the scale of kilotons, but they'll eventually recover. This is where the first Thrones came from. Obviously, throwing nuclear weapons at the giant monster attacking your city is, ultimately, impractical.

Shogoths work, too. The Elder Things actually fought the Star Spawn, presumably they could hurt them, and the shogoth going berserk would have some interesting results.

You also potentially have this really creepy side-effect where children who pilot them too long start becoming more shogoth-like in thought and mannerism, and have a really hard time re-adjusting to their tiny vertebrate bodies.

[DrPraetor]

First Principle - No John, you are the mythos.

+1 this.

For additional source material, there is Rah Xephon of course, although the big reveal isn't so hot. That said, the Rah Xephon conceit, that the government is actually aliens using the human population as human shields, is I think a good one. I'm not sure how you might fit such a conceit into your timeline. One possible "reveal" is that the UN and the aliens are just two different mythos factions, with different agendas in terms of how they want to corrupt/destroy humanity.

The alien-human hybrids from the X-Files - whatever they were eventually supposed to be - are suitably creepy, and should probably be playable. I suggest a hybrid of the alien-human hybrids from the X-Files and the Devo from the Island of Dr. Moreau. The hybrids are raised by monstrous aliens who perform horiffic experiments on them and try to use torture and drugs to get them to adopt a more alien sensibility and aesthetic. These would be a suitable substitute for Zentradi, if you want aliens who look like weird sexy humans.

Finally, a hybrid of alternate Cloud Strife (the protagonist from FFVII) and Ayanami Rei. FFVII was natch an awesome game, but at one point you are made to suspect that Cloud Strife isn't a real person at all, and is actually a failed biological super-weapon experiment carried out by the villains. Ayanami Rei from Evangelion is pretty much this as well. So obviously should be a playable type, but I think it's better if these artificial un-people don't know they aren't really human. Why tell them, when it just risks compromising their loyalty? They're fostered out to human families who raise the strange, creepy children without real love or affection, in order to make them even more emotionally dysfunctional when they reach adolescence.

[Dr_Noface]

Just chiming in to to say this is dope.

[DrPraetor]

They can stay dormant for practically forever.

So given their knowledge of science, there could be a very small number of Elder Things which have survived into the EarthGov age and serve as a science think-tank/R&D as they try to reverse-engineer their own technology and so on. That could be a plot point on the timeline, potentially leading to mecha which can fight back without using Thrones.

That's a very logical extension of At the Mountains of Madness, yes. The thawed-out Elder Things are specifically more like humans than other Mythos things are.

So, let me ship a Fallout II / Rah Xephon / Nadesico hybrid faction setup.

In space (or under the sea, there's another anime with that conceit - but underwater is pretty crowded already), there are "Pure Strain" humans who hate the mythos-contaminated humans of earth. Like in Nadesico (where the outer humans are called "Jovian Lizards" as a matter of propoganda) the earth government PRETENDS that these enemies aren't human; but they totally are. Like in Rah Xephon, pure strain humans are kept around to-some-extent as human shields. Like in Fallout II, these space humans consider themselves the "true successors" of the seven member expanded security council (France, England, the US, Germany, Russia, China and Japan); and there are factions in space who are perfectly happy to wipe out humanity on earth and start over.

Meanwhile, both some of the alien teams, and team Earth have uplifted humans; the Elder Things (many of whom are secret allies of the Permanent Earth Transitional Authority, PETA) regard what they are doing as Biological Uplift because humans have no reliable psychic powers so we are really little better than animals. See previous post - Island of Dr. Moreau, Eva, FF VII. Question then being, are Deep Ones, Goat Men/Ghouls (minor point - Lovecraft ghouls have goat feet and probably should be what the Dark Young make out of humans) game-mechanically different from humans who have been more recently mucked with? Elder Spawn probably don't care what humans look like, so with the uplifted, all of the corruption is on the inside, and in the unnaturally sinuous way they move and so forth.

Does that sound cool with all n' sundry?

[JigokuBosatsu]

Africa is cthonian central, at least according to Campbell. I don't recall how much that changed over the run of CoC.

[Ancient History]

Africa is cthonian central, at least according to Campbell Lumley. I don't recall how much that changed over the run of CoC.

Fixed that for you.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Derp. I even had a moment where I vacillated on that. Should have listened to the inner voice.

Don't tell anyone, they won't have me back at the HPL fest.

[Username17]

Classic Mythos is way too full of goat-parts. The Ghouls have goat parts, Men of Leng have goat parts, Ghasts have goat parts, Goat Spawn have goat parts, hell Shub Niggurath doesn't even limit herself to having one flavor of goat parted humanoid: in that she also has the gof'nn hupadgh and the children of the goat (who are both totes different from the goat spawn). And that's not even vaguely comprehensive. There are no less than three flavors of goat humans native to the dreamlands and another three flavors of goat humans powered by the abyss. That is uncreative.

So:

• Ghasts: Replace with D&D ghasts or Minecraft Ghasts.
• Ghouls: Now Catgirls, no goat parts.
• Men of Leng: we use the sources that conflate them with the Tcho-Tchos. So now they are evil hairless Dwarves with mouths in their hands.
• Child of the Goat: Deleted. Now the same as Goat Spawn.
• Gof'nn Hupadgh: These guys can still exist, since they are basically humans that are upgraded to being Satyrs rather than an actual race.

In space (or under the sea, there's another anime with that conceit - but underwater is pretty crowded already), there are "Pure Strain" humans who hate the mythos-contaminated humans of earth. Like in Nadesico (where the outer humans are called "Jovian Lizards" as a matter of propoganda) the earth government PRETENDS that these enemies aren't human; but they totally are. Like in Rah Xephon, pure strain humans are kept around to-some-extent as human shields. Like in Fallout II, these space humans consider themselves the "true successors"

Well, humanity has been openly allying itself with Deep Ones and allowing hybrids to hold political office and stuff for over a hundred and twenty years. That is plenty of time for a group of people to secede and flee the planet via portal over the right to segregate themselves from non-humans. I am not sure it's enough time for them to have fled the planet by space ship and have gotten anywhere colonizable. Bonus points for these human separatists to be following Nyarlothotep or their charismatic leader to be a flesh puppet of the Great Race, or both.

Finally, a hybrid of alternate Cloud Strife (the protagonist from FFVII) and Ayanami Rei. FFVII was natch an awesome game, but at one point you are made to suspect that Cloud Strife isn't a real person at all, and is actually a failed biological super-weapon experiment carried out by the villains. Ayanami Rei from Evangelion is pretty much this as well. So obviously should be a playable type, but I think it's better if these artificial un-people don't know they aren't really human. Why tell them, when it just risks compromising their loyalty? They're fostered out to human families who raise the strange, creepy children without real love or affection, in order to make them even more emotionally dysfunctional when they reach adolescence.

I totally think there's space for Changelings (Ayanami Rei, RuriRuri, etc.) and for Oni (Lum, Etna), but neither of them currently have space in the timeline. The advantage of Changelings of course, is that the technology could just be fifteen years old (or less if Changelings don't go through infancy and are actually younger than they think they are) and doesn't need a place to "come from". You just put a dot in the timeline and announce that someone working for one of the various military science divisions of The Union developed Changeling technology at that point, and that's really all the background you need.

The Oni are a bit more complicated, in that they need to have a place they are from and that they have been from for at least thousands of years. They could look a lot like us for "no reason" or because they were originally cloned and modified from human stock by some interested party (Elder Things, Mi Go, Yithians, Yog Sothoth, Shub Niggurath, or whoever). And they need a reason to join us, which could be as simple as "they were beaten in a game of tag (Urusei Yatsura) or a fencing match (Disgaea)", or it could be something more complicated like their planet being destroyed by Ghroth the Harbinger or enslaved by the numberless spawn of Shub Niggurath.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

Oni would be cool only to have some Marebito-style shenanigans going on. Hell, the subterranean realm beneath Tokyo could be next door to K'n-yan and the Oni could be related to the Old Ones, if we felt like bringing "The Mound" into it and not having it suck.

[hyzmarca]

Magical Girls

Magical Girls (and Boys) are powered by equal parts love, friendship, determination, and the Necronomicon. While anyone can learn the arcane secrets of the Outer Gods, which seem like magic but are really extremely advanced science, it usually takes years of study and practice. For Magical Girl, manipulation of the greater forces of the cosmos is as natural as breathing.

Magical Girl powers usually manifest between the ages of 9 and 14 and are accompanied by dreams of a kindly old Arab man who provides the magical girl or boy with both comfort and advice. He teaches them how to make a transformation item (usually a pendant or a wand, but it could be anything) and the words that activate it.

Upon their first transformation, magical children form a costume based on their own expectations and desires. This costume can look like anything, though silk tutus are common, and serves as a suit of environmentally sealed full-body of armor no matter how thin and skimpy it is.

Basic combat spells come easily to Magical Children and most develop a personal style based around specific classical elements.

Magical Girl powers do not fade with time, they only get stronger. Unfortunately, the transformation becomes much more taxing as the magical girl grows older. Older magical girls can require weeks or months of recovery time under medical observation after every transformation, and they're rare enough that a duty rotation which accommodates this isn't practical. So the Union predominately employs teenage magical girls in field positions. The older mentors can, of course, show up and pull out their powers when things get really dire and they're willing to risk killing themselves.

Magical Girls appear randomly amongst all races and factions, because Nyarlathotep is a giant fucking troll. All Mi-go Magical Girls wear tutus. No one knows why.

[Dr_Noface]

Are you going to incorporate the Insects from Shaggai and the Hounds of Tindalos?

[hyzmarca]

In space (or under the sea, there's another anime with that conceit - but underwater is pretty crowded already), there are "Pure Strain" humans who hate the mythos-contaminated humans of earth. Like in Nadesico (where the outer humans are called "Jovian Lizards" as a matter of propoganda) the earth government PRETENDS that these enemies aren't human; but they totally are. Like in Rah Xephon, pure strain humans are kept around to-some-extent as human shields. Like in Fallout II, these space humans consider themselves the "true successors"

Well, humanity has been openly allying itself with Deep Ones and allowing hybrids to hold political office and stuff for over a hundred and twenty years. That is plenty of time for a group of people to secede and flee the planet via portal over the right to segregate themselves from non-humans. I am not sure it's enough time for them to have fled the planet by space ship and have gotten anywhere colonizable. Bonus points for these human separatists to be following Nyarlothotep or their charismatic leader to be a flesh puppet of the Great Race, or both.

A descendant of Randolf Carter named Jon buys a Black Gally and leads a group of separatists to the Dreamlands version of Mars, which they discover to be inhabited by a red-skinned iron-age tech human subspecies. They have no difficulty taking over and establishing a system of apartheid.


They can even be the Oni, refugees displaced by the human seperatists fleeing Dream-Mars in rickety unstable boats.