[UA] Cruel One Cosmology

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: Shultz, Andrew <Andrew.Shultz at Winwin.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2001 12:36 PM
Subject: [UA] Cruel One Cosmology


>
> I recently had an inspiration about what the Cruel Ones might be and how
to
> use them in my game.  This only comes up because I'm running a fairly
> high-powered Inqusition game, so no one else may have a need for the idea,
> but why not post it anyway.
>
> I visualize the Cruel Ones as primal forces - the three that have appeared
> in recent game episodes are Creativity, Connections, and Decay.  We're
> talking the Big Nouns here, the non-concrete inhuman ideas that run around
> the universe.
>
> The archetypes, then, are the masks that these forces wear, or the prisms
> that refract their existence into what humans can understand and become.
>
> The Cruel Ones exist beyond time ("Time" being another Cruel One) and
> outside of the cycle of the universe.  Out there with them are all human
> souls.  It's easier to contact ghosts associated with the present cycle,
and
> ones that are already dead when you're doing it, but only because that's
> expected.  The ghosts call these forces the Cruel Ones because their
motives
> are completely outside of human comprehension and their force is so
> incredible.  It's the same way that ants must call humans cruel.

Y'know, I was trying to think of a way to compose an adequate response, and
after reading a previous post, it came to me.  I wanted to twig on the
name--the Cruel Ones, which evokes Eumenides, the last part of the Orestaia,
where the Furies swoop down on Orestes for the crime of matricide, and the
keen legal mind of Apollo comes up with the defense that mothers are merely
the fertile soil upon which the father (the true parent of the child) plants
his seed.  So it's okay to kill Mom.  As any fan of Neil Gaiman will tell
you, Eumenides is Greek for "The Kindly Ones," because one never risked
pissing off the Furies by actually calling them "Furies."  I like the idea
of something equally ironic happening with The Cruel Ones, in that they're
NOT cruel, but in fact serve the greater needs of the Universe in
reinforcing certain positive attributes.  They seem evil to those who would
do evil, but those who feel their attentions find themselves alive and well,
somewhere else on the planet, totally unaware of what just happened, but
filled with a sense that they've been spared from some awful fate, and that
further transgressions will bring the hammer down swift and sure.  But
that's only half the story--telling what they do.  More important is what
they are, and why they do what they do.  It then occured to me that we're
really travellers in another person's dream--333 persons, to be more
precise.  They will this universe into being, and almost right away (as soon
as the First and Last Man incarnates), their grand plan starts to be
unwoven.  The new members of the clergy inflict their will on your dream,
and you start to lose control of something you've worked so hard to create.
I know this has been suggested before, but with all this in mind, I think
The Cruel Ones are the remnants of the last Godhead, the echoes of
individuality that gave birth to the present universe.  Somewhere in my
perverse little mind, I think they hang on to watch the show, and are given
a choice.  Most of their power has gone away, but a little still remains.
They can choose to reincarnate, as The First and Last Man always does, and
thus live a mortal life in the world they've helped to create (though none
so long as TFaLM), OR they can perform one last great act, to correct a flaw
in the world.  If they choose the latter, they fade into non-existence.  So
there really are a finite amount of Cruel Ones, and once they do their
business, they are unmade.  Most choose to stick around, to try to affect
the world in the latter stages, when it really matters, but as the new
Clergy grows, their powers fade almost to non-existence, so it's a
calculated risk.  The end result is that they never pass beyond the Veil.
They've tied their existence to here and now by becoming members of the
Clergy in the first place, and the one great question the universe holds for
them (is there more than this?) will be denied to them forever.  They're
'kind' in the sense that they're trying to save the world from a greater
threat--one that we can't appreciate from our diminished altitude.  We just
see the 'cruel' manifestations of their regard, as god decides to blow out a
candle with a hurricane.

Anyway, that's my theory.


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