[UA] Gaston's cryptophage

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

I think the Cryptophage should always talk in sound
bites and clips from nearby media.  He should never
appear "in person," only as an image on the TV or a
poster or a newspaper article.  You can get notes from
the Cryptophage, you can find personal ads from it
which are quite undeniably addressed to you -without
using your name.  You know the Cryptophage is there
and you know he's stalking you, growing stronger from
your secrets and, one day, he may even assume your
identity.  The Cryptophage takes every bad thing
you've done and reminds you why it HAS to remain a
secret, it tries to turn your entire existence into an
unknown and it gives you lots of reasons to do so. 
Like a Con Artist in the Blow-Off stage, it keeps you
from going out, from contacting anyone who knows you,
from expressing your existence.

Then it eats you.

--- Gaston Phillips <gaston at math.sunysb.edu> wrote:
> on 6/27/01 6:16 AM, Dylan Craig at
> wytchfynder at hotmail.com wrote:
> 
> > Cryptophage, cryptophage. Lie-eater? That word
> just won't get out of my head.
> > 
> > So, Gaston, do you have something you want to
> share with us? I'm halfway
> > through
> > a Cryptophage NPC for my game but I figured seeing
> as you're the concept's
> > progenitor, you might have something even cooler
> cooked up already.
> > 
> Not really - the name came to me first, and I hadn't
> thought about the
> character much.  Since I don't actually _play_  UA,
> I get to do things like,
> you know.  Drop a cool name and then never follow up
> on it.
> 
> I pictured it as something like... The Corinthian(?)
> from sandman, for some
> reason.  The dude with the mouths where his eyes
> should be.  I'm not sure if
> I mean that I actually want him to have mouths for
> eyes, or just that I want
> him to be a really creepy serial killer, or else
> just a being called "The
> Something" - which is always neat and a bit spooky.
> 
> But The Cryptophage is basically, as his name
> suggests, a being who eats
> secrets and lies.  Normal people don't have much to
> worry about, but if you
> live in the Occult Underworld, he's a boogeyman and
> a half - he'll tear the
> secrets from your skull and leave you bleeding from
> the ears.  Or, if your
> existance is a secret - if there's something at the
> core of your essence
> that's a secret, he may eat more than that.
> 
> Something about him should be scarier than the
> sleepers.  Since, like, no
> matter how quiet or secretive you are, he'll still
> hear - or, rather, the
> quieter and more secretive you are, the louder you
> are to him.
> 
> Foucault's Pendulum tells us that the potency of a
> secret is inversely
> proportional to the number of people who know it. 
> I'm not sure if it also
> says that the potency chould be directly
> proportional to the number of
> people who want to.  So, for instance, say there's,
> like, 100 people who
> know the ritual of immortality.  There are still
> billions more who want to,
> making that secret awfully potent.
> 
> Basically, I dunno who or what the Cryptophage is. 
> But it sounds really
> cool, dunnit?
> 
> gaston
> 
> 
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=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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