[UA] The Metal Eaters, Dipsomancy, and thought

[None None]

So,
Metal eaters:  A combination of way slower reproduction rates, failure of 
the reproduction process (they just don't always work), and "camps" amongst 
these weird little lunch box esque things in a junkyard (the junkyard owner 
finds bits of trash around his home late at night - the left overs from the 
one group that instinvtivly acts to "protect" their "master" and the other 
group that acts to defend the master's home, the latter not recognizing the 
junkyard owner as their owner).
All hell breaks loose not when the murderous camp wins, but when the bill 
collecters/insurance adjusters/ie, PCs show up at this junkyard and find the 
owners shredded body.
This reminds me of the first UA oneshot I ran - admitedly now, a badun - 
where one of the buildings on the UC Berkeley campus has been reproducing, 
spoorlike.  Its this giant "math crypt" - a towering concrete grey box where 
math and CS majors go in but never come out. As the years have gone by, a 
number of other buildings in the same "Concrete block fell on the campus 
grounds" style were built, but with slight stylistic variations -lower, 
sectional, slightly less obviously ugly.
Over the decades, it was just taking over the campus. I'm not sure why yet, 
but it did piss off the cliomancers.
Dipsomancy: I've found that each school of magic tends to be its own worst 
enemy. Cliomancers keep their own numbers down, kleptomancers don't want 
other people bringing down the heat, and you can only have so many people in 
a town faster and stronger then a human has a right to be.
Similarly, it seems that dipsomancy and entropomancy have a *real* 
differentation between the minor chargers and the sigges. An entropomancer 
who only uses minors is to the school as a non-obessessed avatar is to the 
avatar community - not that big a bubble.  Entropomancers willing to 
*really* roll the bones are feared, powerful, and talked about.
Equally so, the sort of crazy bastard who has a sig vessel has just elevated 
themselves to the level of adept to be feared -that is, a threat to be dealt 
with.  Having a sig vessel is a great big way of saying "come get me, or 
I'll get you!"
But, as (I think) Mr. Norwood said, for the most part playing only with 
minors still makes you a fuckedup badass. Sure, minors only do hand to hand. 
At range. Invisibly. And forensics can't touch you.  And you make the person 
crazy.
Lastly:
Thought.  A lot of people pointing out how they can think in ideas, or 
images, in a sort of thought "proto language."  I'm a linguistics dork, so 
I'm relating that to
a) the theory of language being a "code" - passing information from item a 
to item b, but not actually being the information
and
b) the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that you can't actually understand something 
without words to express it to  yourself. For example, code-switching to 
better express an idea.  The idea that to someone who speaks only japanese, 
relative rank *must* be encoded explicitly into the speech.
I didn't have much to say about these and how they relate to what people 
have put forward, but I'd love to know how people think they relate.
Regards,
Patrick
The Freak never eats PCs



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