[UA] Cruel One Cosmology

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

The Eumenides also had a place in hell, originally. 
They were the servants of Hades and were used to keep
shades in line.  Hades gave them to Zeus, in some
accounts, as a show of loyalty.  The Kindly Ones are
certainly a good image to invoke with the cruel ones,
particularly if you fudge things a bit and mix them up
with the maiden, the mother and the crone, ala
Sandman.

--- Tim Toner <thanatos at interaccess.com> wrote:
> 
> ----- 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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=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
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