[UA] Rebirth, Pulp Fiction, Cosmology

[Dylan Craig]

> My Unknown Armies game, which is AFAIK the only even close to completely
 > logged one on the web - is moving into the final chapter.  The world is six
 > ascensions away (well, five after the last session which isn't logged yet)
 > from the end.
Damn! Must be getting pretty frantic. A question: if the clergy are able to
replay the universe until it suits them, don't you get a universe which ends up
looking -exactly- like the last one? After all, the Archetypes get to remake the
universe in their own image; surely they'll just iterate until the world
reaches, from their perspective, an ideal state?

>  Perky: "Who's Ken?"
>  Matt:  "Ken's dead, baby.  Ken's dead."

Or (over breakfast in the diner):
Vincent: Want to play some Unknown Armies?
Jules: Naaw, man. I don't play Atlas stuff.
V: Why not? Are you a 3rd edder?
J: No, I just don't dig on Tynes, that's all.

Seeing as it's cosmology show-and-tell, in mine the Godhead disintegrates to
form six hundred and sixty-six Cruel Ones after creating the universe. Each
Archetypal component thus creates two Cruel ones - basically, the two flip sides
(like mother/dark mother) of the Archetype. It falls to the Cruel ones to "run
the machine" - keep the progress of souls going from diffuse cosmic matter, via
death, to the other side of the Veil.

Humans are basically the spiritual power source of the universe, and they do
this by breeding and dying. Each new life created at birth represents an
accumulated node of spiritual energy, embodied in the soul, which then grows and
increases in 'charge' through the experiences of life, and when it passes
through the Veil, it enters a process of rendering-down which returns the
harvested soul energy to the 'machine'. This is why the Cruel Ones treat
fugitive spirits and people who screw with the Veil so harshly; these people
(from their point of view) are knocking holes in the hydroelectric dam walls
which keep things going.

So, the universe, and its cycle of karmic rebirth, is some kind of repeating
machine, set up by force or forces unknown the go through this cycle until a
state of pure entropy or pure order is reached. To what end? The characters will
never know. Maybe it's God's kid's science project.

--
"The next instant he was one of the deadest men that ever lived."
Dylan Craig · Writer and Observer · Cape Town, South Africa
Contact Details: http://www.eyeballkid.co.za/contact.html

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua