[UA] I'm stuck

[Rick Neal]

on 12/5/99 9:01 AM, James McGraw at pdytjem at nottingham.ac.uk wrote:

> Can anybody help me out with two things:
> 1. Goals for cabals, other than world domination, amassing magickal power,
> joining the Clergy etc. I am particularly thinking of a powerful Plutomancer
> cabal
> here.

My first thought for the Plutomancer cabal is, why did they start obsessing
about money? You don't get an obsession springing full-blown into someone's
psyche. Especially something like money. I'd guess that the money started as
a means to an end: say, securing financial stability and well-being for the
members of the original group. You want your family to have the best, don't
you? Then join the Midas club. They help each other out, manage finances,
share trading information, make sure that everyone is comfortable and
well-taken care of. As the club progresses through several members, possibly
generations, the focus changes from securing financial security to securing
finances. The shift between what the money can do, and the money itself.
Then, they start noticing that they can DO stuff with the money...

This would lead to an exclusive, insulated, protectionistic society, who
have the goal of making sure their members are taken care of, whatever that
requires. They're relatively harmless, as long as no one stands between them
and the wealth they want.

Just a little chain of reasoning that may or may not fit.

> 2. Alternative theories for the nature of reality. I don't want my PCs to
> start the game knowing about the IC, the 333 archetypes etc., so has anybody
> come up with any explainations for magick, avatars, ascension or the Comte
> that could plausibly be formulated by an adept, avatar or whatever that
> sound reasonable but have no connection with the truth.

Okay. This all comes down to belief. You can change the world if you believe
that you can hard enough. That's magick. If enough people feel that you
represent the stone-cold hit man they have in their minds, you get to be
able to do the things that they believe you can. That's avatars. In one
case, you force your own beliefs upon the world around you, in the other,
you surrender yourself to the beliefs of the world. As for the Il Comte,
never heard of him. Maybe he's just some guy trading off the rep of that guy
in Fouccault's Pendulum. Whatever. Just some player with a few good riffs.
No biggie. In this mode, ascension may not even be rumored. People disappear
all the time in this game. Or it may just be that, if you let go too much of
your individuality in favour of the collective unconsciousness, you fade
into it, along with the vanishing hitchhiker and that killer from the insane
asylum with a hook for a hand. Have you seen Candyman?

That's the general view of stuff in my game, outside of a few who have heard
the news about the NG tape.

Hope you find some of this useful.

Rick Neal

If the Fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

Blake, Proverbs of Hell


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