What You Want

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 11:15 AM 2/11/99 PST, Craig Neumeier wrote:
>I personally would like an explanation for the continuing secrecy of the
mystic
>underground that actually works ("the claws of the tiger" is not adequate),

How about "it's just not that large?"  Think about this: the roleplaying
hobby expends a lot of effort trying to get people to even know it exists.
There are thousands and thousands of roleplayers.  Yet Joe Sixpack and Jane
Soccer-Mom have heard of D&D and M:tG - if that.  

As I see the UnAverse, there can't possibly be as many REAL adepts as there
are roleplayers in the real world.  Unlike roleplayers, most don't WANT
anyone to know what they can do (due to either the Claws argument or the
Sleepers).  

How many true adepts are there in a large city?  Maybe fifty?  There are
some avatars running around too (probably more than adepts) but even the
majority of avatars are at the low power levels, where everything can be
chalked up to "coincidence."  Furthermore, a lot of the low level avatars
don't even KNOW they're on a path.  Add to this the fact that magick is NOT
reliable, and you end up with a few adepts who try to prove that magick is
real and they fail.  So I think the secrecy is plausible.  After all, it's
not like they're running the planet or anything...

Now, the smackup to this is telecommunications, which are growing by leaps
and bounds in just the last decade.  Video cameras are everywhere, and the
internet is stringing together information that was previously separate.
Sure, the high noise-to-signal ratio is keeping the truth masked... for
now.  But when is technology going to outstrip the ability of the Sleepers
to keep things hushed up?

-G.

1899 Phrenologist: Your son has the sloping forehead of a sexual deviant:
better put him in an asylum.
1999 Gene Therapist: Your fetus has the "date rape" gene.  Better abort.