{General} Mad ideas

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Magister Militum
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Magister Militum »

Vagrant Orpheus wrote:But... but... I don't want LA to become nicer :(

I want it to remain such a festering hellhole that if the city were to be transported to a hell dimension, with demon gangs roaming the streets, the residents more or less wouldn't care too much :P

I mean, sure, Crowtalon is all Gothic-y and Gotham-y. But I want LA to be like Bludhaven or something!
Considering the fact that the real-life LA is already full of lunatics (drive along any given freeway in LA to see for yourself), I'm pretty sure any other additions to the hellhole that is LA would be moot. ;)
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I HAS AN IDEAS!

The alien invasion in '96, our ID4 ripoff, was... well, just initially a reference to ID4 I put in my SDI article. It didn't sit well with some peoples, since it's just a reference for the sake of referencing, but it has ended up being referenced in other articles as well, such as Malachuschuses and I think Magister's alsos. So it is a big historic event in Comix, one of the few historic big alien invasions (other than the War of the Worlds, since Mogar's routine visitations to try and beat Archwind's ass while making proclamations usually just ends up humiliating himself, and the Second War of the Worlds was just Orson Wells dicking around in the radios), but still its contents was just... "ID4 reference lulz!" which might have struck some as LAEM.

But I has an idea to un-LAEM it.

Dig this, it wasn't a one-sided affair with the aliens coming in and LULZ PWN! until Doctor I.M. (Ian Malcolm) Goldblum pwned them with LULZ APPLE VIRUS. I mean, we have fucking superheroes and Runaway Defense Budgets and shit. Earth fought and fought hard and gave the aliens What For and ruined the invasion force's shit like the Goddamn Spartans ruining Persian Uruk-hai from Iran, while oiling themselves in their naked nudery. We owned wave after wave of shit. It was an One Week War.

But the damn thing was that for that week, the aliens didn't let up. Space Invaders style. It was a grueling endurance test for Earth's defenders, heroes and militaries alike. There were so goddamn much of them, with just a few hours or days reprieve between each wave of motherships and city-killers. Fuck, maybe Earth's combined military arsenals got depleted at one point - leading to the Russians conscripting their women and children to work in their atom bomb factories. They didn't stop until the biggest goddamn worldship came in for the Final Countdown.

Why? It's because the Goddamn Aliens were actually Space Jews. Space Hebrews. Mogar ruined their shit - he killed all their firstborn sons while they slept, made his great world-spanning proclamations as their homeworld's continents were shattered into molten rock, as their oceans were turned into clouds of steam that boiled their entire populations. Mogar made their women bear the seed of his grotesque progeny.

So they fled, whatever remnants of their once-proud solar system-spanning civilization. Packing up in a magnificent worldship flanked by a hundred thousand million warships to protect them from the baying hordes of sycophantic spacers in the Mogarian Fringes. They fled in search of a new home, far away from the horrors of their old home. Looking for a habitable world, one that turned out to be Earth.

They would be like the Hebrews as they came to Canaan in search of a promised land. Generations have long passed and the stories of their once glorious homeworld were told from father to son, and they longed for a new world of their own. It's something that can drive an entire civilization, and entire species, to the brink of all-encompassing madness. Like how the Hebrews slaughtered all the men, women, children and livestocks of the City of Jericho in their mad god-driven search for a place to call their own.

They didn't stop. They sent billions of their soldiers in thousands of their city-killers to Earth, and we beat them back and gave it our all. Heroes and militaries alike. When their worldship came for a Final Countdown, they were incensed that we wouldn't just lie down and die and become subservient to them. They would've probably tried to plague-bomb us, wiping out humanity and preserving the ecosystem, Day the Earth Stood Still style.

But dig this. We stopped them. When the heroes of Earth, Archwind and Tellurianite and Wayward (was he active then?) and Professors Andrews and Quartermass, all stepping into that worldship to confront the alien leaders to tell them to cease the pointless war - to tell them that we won't ever stop in the defense of our own homeworld, that if they forced us, then we would break them. There would be peace, but not a peace of plenty. The vagabond aliens would've picked up the bodies of all their slain soldiers, hauled the wreckage of their crashed city-killers, and they would've licked their wounds and go and find another world - shamed and despondent and their defeat and loss.

It would be an awesome thing. And for the first time, the world would know that Mogar was not some mere maddened alien coming to battle Earth's so-called world champions, that he truly was king of countless planetoids, capable of crushing entire star nations with but a thrust of his jewel-encrusted codpiece.

[Because no one knows that Mogar's attacks on Earth, particularly his vendettopathy against Archwind, is merely a test. That he comes regularly to test Archwind, for he knows that Earth's 'worldchampion' has been imbued by the Power Cosmic Mogar himself once used to slay those Anti-Gods of old - back there on that hill atop of a galaxy on the darkside of the sun. But no one knows this, until Mogar tells Archwind or something. After Shining Sun?]

Oh, yes. That's an AWESOME spin to the whole goddamn thing. It won't be just a goddamn ID4 ripoff - it would be an epic thing that greatly contributes to the entire mythos of Comix.

It'd give Earth's militaries a reason to go on Runaway Defense Budgets. VAG, Saintly, they'd all profit from this. The UN gaining a HUEG Spacy, and each superpower and great power possessing one Cosmic Battleship to call its own - Britain's Thunderchild, America's Valley Forge, France's Les Miserable and Russia's Arkangel - in a treaty that nullifies the previous one preventing the weaponization of space. All that stuff.

Plus Ian Malcolm (I.M.) Goldblum would profit huegly from being the first person to decrypt the alien's coded transmissions to ascertain the position of the alien's worldship (hidden inside Jupiter!). Due to the crazy frequency scrambling of their tachyonicommunications, only the algorithms of Chaos Theory could decipher them or some shit. Then he'd become a narcissistic rockstar type and go around collaborating with everyone from Hero Labs and the Quartermass Experiment, to GenInc. and stuff. But his fat head and his odious demeanor would mean that no one would bother sticking with him for too long. But he's big since he's in all the TV documentaries and books and magazines and shit. Even those guys who publish the sporadic and erratic Weird Science magazines would dislike that fucker.

IT ALSO HAS AWESOME RAMIFICATIONS FOR THE SDI.

Dig this, originally Von Reagan's proto-SDI had only one base of operations in the Arctic Circle - Base Zero. But then it was attacked by the aliens since I guess when the first city-killers came, Base Zero fired its superlaser to wipe out as many of the first-wave as it could. But it didn't kill as many as it would've liked, so the aliens came in to ruin its shit.

Base Zero tried to hold them off with its superlaser and its LIGHTNING SHEILDS, but to no avail. So SAC-NORAD had to send in a Megafortress to hold the city-killers off, cue massive nuke-chucking fest while the SDI evacuates in huge supersonic VTOL Hercules transports and so on. But the alien fighters get to them, cue massive dogfight between USAF F-15 ACTIVEs and F-16XLs and SDI enhanced versions of those planes, plus proto-F-22 Raptor Xs. But the transport planes get shot down and land in Canadia, and the SDI begins its Resistance there.

The massive assistance of the Canadians, particularly from the evacuated NORAD peoples (since the aliens tried to take the Cheyenne Mountain Complex for some reason) who are a mixed US-Canadian thang, endears the SDI to 'em somewhat. This is in the 90s and there's a clash between the oldschool Von Reagan AMERICA FUCKYEAH crowd and the GODDAMN LIBERAL new administration (Cliton?) crowd.

[Since the SDI was a crazy von Reagan project, the new administrations would try to fuck it over but the goddamn SDI guys were too militant to be put down so the new administrations would instead try to water them down by sticking the SDI staff who WEREN'T rabid von Reaganites. To try and change the organization from within. Jason Goldstein the Robo Jew would be one of the key players of SDI's De-Reaganization. Besides, the SDI was too useful an organization to just fold up and junk.]

Meanwhile, ANOTHER squadron of city-killers go to Washington and the PRESIDENT makes his escape while another Megafort is sent to cover his escape. The Megafort is not authorized to use nuclear airbursts over the airspace of American cities, so it tries to hold them off using concentrated nuclear beams instead (YAMATO BEAMS!) plus Macross missile swarms using all sorts of cruise missiles and kinetic penetrators and shit. But since its primary weapons are useless, it gets punked and it CRASHES AND BURNS in Washington.

Rumor says that the crashed Megafortress was repaired and hidden UNDER Washington so that the next time, the POTUS'll make his escape in a fully armed and operational aerial battleship.


AMYWAYS (haha, AMYway), imagine HUEG ground battles as crashed alien city-killers disgorge their armed crews to take and hold territory to defend themselves, while ACTIVATING RAY SHIELDS and ship weapons to provide cover fire for their forces. Then we have the US ARMY and the Canadian Royal Marines going in to beat their ass and take their shit - led by heroes and villains and motherfucking Omega Troopers. Yeah, that's what SDI Base Zero's Omega Units did when they had to fight in Canadia against crashed city-killers. With the assistance of Canadian Royal Marines and The Resistance, werewolves who hid in the forests and stuck twigs in their arms and called themselves THE WOLVERINES.

The aliens would've known how to damage our military infrastructures, though. The alpha-strikes and such, despite the defense of heroes and stuff, would've still caused massive devastation to the US military and the other militaries of the world. I mean, it's like Space Invaders when all those bloop-bloop-bloop things destroy all your bases despite all your attempts to shoot em down. Leading to rather impromptu alliances, like between the Americans and the Canadians and stuff, as their chain of commands get intermixed and stuff. Coalitions of the Willings!

OTOH, Castle von Reagan would've withstood all of this. Thanks to START 3, shitloads of "decomissioned" (but actually armed and fully operational) nuclear weapons would've been stored there like how decomissioned nukes were stored in the Shadow Moses facility. Castle von Reagan could've created a proverbial fucking no-fly zone around the Los Angeles area, protecting those goddamn celebrity personalities and rich people under the watchful eye of von Reagan.

He could've led the West Coast resistance! Him, half-senile and communicating exclusively in German, and his wife serving as his translator and lieutenant. Hah!

In Russia, the Chrono-Kremlin could've placed parts of Moscow including the Kremlin itself in a TIME PARADOX or a TIME WARP or under a void shield while the area's ABM system shot nukes at the city-killers.


Before the invasion, the aliens could've snuck their fleet inside Jupiter to do preliminary reconnaissance of Earth. Then their thousands of warships could've emerged from the gas giant all dramatic-style to ruin our shit.

Yeah.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Siege »

I like it :D.

I think Von Reagan should mutter something like "Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle castle!" moments before his Castle fires its death rays and blows up three city destroyers at once.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Magister Militum »

Wait, why would the SDI have their main base located in the Arctic Circle instead of some undisclosed location in CONUS, with satellite bases spread out for the first response units? Aside from secrecy, I don't see any practibility to placing it there.

Other than that, I like this version much more than the, to be frank, cheesey rip-off that was its predecessor. The political fight for the SDI's survival is interesting, as is the De-Reaganization of the SDI (Goldstein is not the type of person who enjoys partisan bickering in his outfit), although I would suggest that you tone down the level of destruction that this alien invasion would bring because, at the moment, all this makes it sound like Earth is going to be massively fucked no matter what they do.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

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The destruction will be variable. I don't know. The aliens DID plan on just subjugating humanity and keeping the Earth intact and largely habitable. Nukey nukey wouldn't be conducive to that.

Think of it as Earth in a Battle for Britain scenario. The aliens are the Luftwaffen, and the upper atmosphere the Channel. The aliens would mostly focus on attacking foes that attack them, though. They won't level cities indiscriminately if the cities don't do shit like fire superlasers at them. But the heroes and the militaries MUST attack them because if they don't kill them before they land, then they'll disgorge entire invasion armies. We will see some HUEG land battles, but only in a few select places. It'll mostly be between the alien destroyers and the heroes and militaries, with the world's populations being spectators cowering from the super spectacles sights of stellar skirmishes and stuff!


The SDI during the Reagan years and the early 90s wouldn't be the pro-active organization it would be today. Base Zero would be research and tech-development, since the SDI was still a secretive organization. Although it did ruin the shit out of things that go bump in the day, it did so clandestinely - perhaps through smaller units deployed in various theaters (in and out of the CONUS), all coordinated in the main Arctic stronghold.

Those smaller units deployed in various theaters could be the origins of the modern SDI's Bases One, Two and Three - in places like Guam and the East Coast and stuff.

Plus, having the SDI's main stronghold in the Arctic would've allowed it to quickly deploy the Omega Unit to DEEP STRIKE probable places in Siberia (*wink* *wink*) where the Second Coming of Stalin might occur. A contingency factored in all of Von Reagan's plans.


Los Angeles would be a literal no-fly zone. Superlasers and all those nukes von Reagan promised to "disarm" for START 3... :twisted:
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

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Can we have a Battle for the Pyramids? Where the aliens disgorge a landing force to capture the pyramids which they believe to be the landing site for Earthly spaceships?

(I know it makes no sense, but I find it a hilarious idea- and I've been playing a lot of RA3 recently...)

Besides, it makes for an awesome scene, where people shout things like "Britannic! Stop! You can't throw the Sphinx at them!"
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

It is a strategic necessity for battles to occur in locations such as awesome monuments and landmarks.

It will be a tacticool assessment!
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Peregrin »

Taking Independence Day and making it... NOT STUPID? You're a fucking genius, Shroomy. However, I think that rebuilding all the cities and other stuff damaged during the war would take a really long time. Perhaps by 2008 the world economy would still not have recovered properly from such an invasion, though of course this could have been mitigated by supers helping get things back on track. :)
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Malchus »

That actually sounds like an awesome idea, Shroom. Certainly more fun than an alien curbstomp via Computer Virus Ex Machina. A desperate global fight would also make for a fertile ground for possibly dozens of stories... or more! I wonder exactly how much damage was done, though. Human infrastructure can't have been trashed too much, or the world will be in a global recession so severe in makes the real life one now and the Great Depression combined look appealing. If the aliens just want to keep the environment relatively intact they don't need to go nukey-nukey to utterly buttrape human infrastructure. What's to stop them from hurling kinetic weapons at factories, military bases, and whatnot from orbit? I mean, we're not exactly gonna follow the retarded ship designs of those city busters, right? And I have difficulty comprehending how an alien race advanced enough for interstellar travel couldn't come up with something like a simple kinetic strike weapon.

Maybe we could tie it in with the discussion of a possibly militarized Cold War Space Race. You know, with NATO-sponsored NASA and the Soviets militarizing space and even putting bases on the Moon. That way, there'll already be some rudimentary military space presence to attempt to intercept at least some of such orbital strikes and do some damage to alien ships in orbit. This would force the alien invasion force to land without prior total annihilation of most of the Earth's logistics. This would also deprive them of effective orbital cover (which I imagine will be a great asset). The resulting treaty after the invasion could be to unify all space assets under a UN Spacy rather than having them controlled by their respective power blocs instead of space militarization only conceived after the event.

EDIT: Plus, think of the possibilities. Soyuz-style space fighters (they'd look like Russian TIE fighters!) and weaponized space shuttles duking it out with alien craft. Space stations acting like orbital AEGIS cruisers and missile stations. It'll be glorious!
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

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I'm certainly behind this idea for a couple of reasons. First, huge land battles. And I mean huge artillery bouts, with tanks and supertanks and walkers and jeeps and motorcycles and mecha and scarabs and stuff (yeah. :) ). Second, the characterization of the aliens is awesome. They're not generically evil, but are desparately on their last knees. Cornered and all that shit.

Oh, and Wayward's been active since the mid eighties, so he's almost certainly mucking around in this. It'd be a well known fact that he played Come Sail Away to beat the alien's shit during one of the week's battles. :)
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

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As for the reasons why the invaders simply didn't orbitally bombard Earth... we'll chalk it up to several factors.

First, the great powers of Comix Earth have just spent an entire Cold War trying to one-up each other in all sorts of ways to mass murder the world in the event of World War 3. There was even a Doomsday Device built in the 1960s, using Cobalt Thorium-G, but it was deactivated after a while. In a world with heat rays and laser beams and tesla coils and LIGHTNING SHIELDS, strategic weapons systems defeat all sorts of absurd ABM systems - systems that can be used to defeat the alien invaders' orbital attack. The Cold War saw the East and the West deploy more than a million nuclear weapons ( :twisted: ), some of which can bypass LIGHTNING SHIELDS and the like by coming down in ballistic trajectories that bypass the right angles of reality - projected by private think tanks like the BLAND Corporation to be capable of killing gods, perhaps.

We have lots of weird stuff, like actual-factual time machine Chrono Kremlins, built as weirdo weapons by both sides (the effectiveness of SOME of these weapons are debatable).

So, yeah. A million nuclear missiles in silos and subs and airplanes and Megaforts and space platforms (?), all pointing up. The aliens might decide that it would be better to attack within the Earth's atmosphere, they might decide it would be better to park their destroyers OVER the cities (hence city destroyer), to dissuade humanity from using nuclear weapons on their own territories and peoples.

The destruction, on a global scale, wouldn't be THAT MUCH. The aliens would follow the rules of war and would only engage military targets (they don't really give a fuck about humanity - if they won, then they probably wouldn't have exterminated mankind but just put them in Reservations or wall them up in West Banks or Gaza Strips or something... I guess they aren't that Biblical and are definitely nicer than God's Chosen people). It would be an epic engagement, though. One of the most massive military battles ever, on a global scale!



For two, these ships have been traversing space for generations. There is atrophy, there are maintenance issues, there are certain shortages in some fuels - Elerium, FROD says. Whatever an Elerium is. Anyway, the point is that the aliens' destroyers aren't as hot as shit as they would like 'em to be. They would be more powerful than most of what we have, but they're still no longer 100% powerful. They may be no longer able to chuck shit from orbit. It's like putting tanks in Minas Tirith - eventually the battle tanks will run out of fuel, negating their awesome advantage in mobility, but still they will be awesome because of their guns and armor (but no longer THAT awesome). The alien weapons will no longer be absolutely awesome in ALL fields.

The aliens have resource shortages, their worldships are full of too many people crammed in tight, all wanting to find a new home, all voting that their government and military takes puny Earth for itself. They're running low on food and parts and fuel, even resource rationing can't fix the problem indefinitely, they have to divert resources from their militaries to feed their women and children. Basically, they're going to be fucked. If they don't act now and take Earth for their own, then in the future they WILL run out of resources and they WON'T be able to do about anything if they act too late. If they act too slow, they will have degenerated to the point where they can't act at all.

They had to strike then.

Another reason for their assault would be that, a few years earlier, in the 80s, they sent envoys to the one who they thought was the Worldking of Earth. The most powerful man of all the continents of our blue planet.

Ronald von Reagan.

The senile Alzheimers ridden president would've told the aliens to go fuck off and crawl into a blackhole and die, and that would've further pissed them off.

Oh, and maybe these aliens could be of the same species as Mogar - from a dissenting space province whose rebellion he quelled with extreme prejudice. It explains why they're quite a bit... angry.


EDIT:

This resource and fuel energy shortage could be a reason for Doctor Difference - Anthony Andrews to finally shine in his big superhero debut. He's the first one to figure out that the aliens have NOT ENOUGH LUMBER and require ADDITIONAL PYLONS, and his power is that of entropy - of sapping away at energy, force and power. So what does he do?

He builds himself a powered spacesuit that'll launch himself into space, so he can ruin the shit out of the aliens.

He'll be hot shit!
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

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Yes, the ID4 is very possibly the kind of huge event that propels Anthony Andrews the mild-mannered high-tech CEO into the high-profile armored crusader Doctor Difference. I've been struggling to find a reason for him to do this, but the alien invasion is the perfect excuse: Mark I of the over-the-top power armor was built back then to let him survive to get close enough to use his metahuman powers. Any other nifty features it had were just bonuses.

I also completely endorse the plan to shoot Andrews into space to de-energyfy the alien mothership - although Hero Labs was far smaller and less powerful back then. He also probably got to know the meta Colin Newgate, his current Chief of Security, back then.

The alien invasion is also the perfect background for introducing a character idea I have - an American-built Ai supertank, rather like a Bolo. In the 80s, at the very height of Cold War paranoia and Reaganite military excess, the US military decided to build its very own high-tier superhero which would be entirely loyal and reliable. They ended up with a gargantuan nuclear-powered death juggernaut on treads, which was the only way to pack so much power into a single unit. It had all the good stuff - bristling with nuclear howitzers, lightning shields, ASAT batteries and automatic heat rays. It was powered by a good ol' nuclear fission reactor, which generated too much radiation for any living crew to handle - so the DoD decided to install an incorruptible AI into the tank, which had the bonus of being programmed to be utterly devoted to the American cause. It was basically tasked to survive the American mainland being turned into a Fallout-esque nuclear wasteland, crawl across the Atlantic sea floor and exact revenge on the damn Ruskies, as von Reagan himself put it - a sort of reverse Metal Gear, which instead of launching the first strike would bring the massive retaliation.

This supertank may even have been built to be the aging Baron-President's invincible new body, his mind uploaded into its cold silicon matrices when his fleshy shell finally gave out. In this way, von Reagan hoped to lead the charge in World War Three. And if Armageddon did not come by the time von Reagan's term is over, then his mind will slumber within the tank, in a special bunker under Castle von Reagan itself, ready to awaken when America is in peril. Of course, with von Reagan becoming senile and mind-uploading technology being nonexistent in the 1980s, this scenario never came to pass. The ex-president in his sad final years could have thought so anyway, which may explain why he occasionally rolled out of bed and began undulating across the bedroom carpet, making motor noises with his mouth.

There are other reasons why such a supertank may have been mothballed until the alien invasion - cost overruns leading it to be completed just as the Cold War ended, for example. It is also the exemplar of 80s post-apocalyptic armor doctrine, entirely unsuited to modern network-centric warfare - it can't pop drones to extend its sensor horizon, utilize centralized fire control or hack the Internet, and its AI is rather outdated. It was designed to be a blind, barreling behemoth with more armor than God, a one-tank army which could plow through an endless number of Soviet armor divisions and shoot Mir out of the sky because at that point the United States would have nothing else to lose and everything that wasn't itself was probably an enemy. And unlike the Omega Troopers, it was too expensive to re-task and frankly, everyone was a bit afraid to go near it.

And waking up to defend Earth from the aliens would be its final mission.
Last edited by Invictus on Sat Jan 03, 2009 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

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If it was stationed at the East Coast for the eventuality (eventuality) of going apeshit and crawling under the Atlantic to ruin the shit out of the Goddamn Russkies (and possibly those motherfucking French), then when the city-destroyers started hovering above Washington, the Bolo might've gone and turned around and made its way for the capital - ruining the shit out of everything in its path! And when the President was secure, it would catch word that Castle von Reagan was being besieged in LA, and it made its way to protect its true master and creator - the real Baron-President of the US of A!

As it ventured across the CONUS, from the East Coast to the West Side, it beat all sorts of ass and ruined all sorts of shit. It would've shot down city destroyers, wasted entire fighter squadrons, ran over ground offensives, but it would've sustained massive damage. But it would reach Los Angeles just in time to as the LIGHTNING SHIELDS of Castle von Reagan began to falter. As the senile Baron-President gazed out his balcony in blubbering fear, beholding those monstrous sky fortresses as they came down to ruin his shit, the Bolo would save the day and kill the city destroyer with its final finishing move - cmd: RAM THE KREMLIN

As von Reagan watched his only child lay waste to the goddamn alien scum, he would've shed a tear because it wasn't just the Bolo that laid waste to the goddamn alien scum... it was him.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Invictus »

And the nuclear death tank will be named REX, after Reagan's puppy.
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
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Malchus
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Malchus »

Apologies for the off-topic post, but where in the nine circles is that sig quote from Vic? I know I've seen that somewhere, but try as I might I can't quite place exactly where.
Last edited by Malchus on Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Ford Prefect »

I did not like this idea ... until Invictus told me that via some quirk of programming, REX exclusively refers to Von Reagan as MEIN FUHRER.

Incidentally, it is conceivable that Tony Saint was involved with building the REX AI, given how him and von Reagan were BFF.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Then you learned to love it.

Sure, this AI thing could've been how Saint started out and how he became big.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Ford Prefect »

He started out during the Vietnam War, and he got big from his own twists on technologies he encountered in other universes, such as those present in the Mu-Frame he stole from himself.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

We know that in the 1980s, von Reagan made America an awesome place. Deregulating the environmental laws allowed The Corporations to make places like Los Angeles into violent pollution-infested dystopic cyberpunk shitholes. And deregulating other laws allowed The Corporations to practically buy out the ailing Detroit economy and the car companies, filling the streets with shitty Japanese cars like Maibatsu Thunders while privatizing law enforcement - which made police officers unionized, which led to massive strikes and shit, which in turn forced The Corporation to try out cyborg policemen.

Due to a little tech-acceleration, maybe the Intertubes were also fledgling at that time? We have kids trying to hack into defense computers and crap, people getting absorbed into computer programs and fighting for their lives in psychadelic cyberspaces, etc. Now, The Corporations would also try and get their hands into this - they'd try to dominate this new avenue of information so that in the near future (read: today), they could make information 'Fair and Balanced' ;)

Well, aside from that they would also be trying to rule the world and make a buck or something. Anyway, The Corporation would be Bad and there must be people out there who will stand against them!

The Cyberpunks. A group of brave and anonymous geeks and dorks and hackers and college professors and punks and junkies way ahead of the curb, with stylistic stuffs and fashionably odd clothing like Cato masks and Rayband sunglasses, with weirdo weapons like primitive artificial muscle nunchucks, roller blades and skateboards, all sort of... Radical 80s Cool Stuff! Their few female members would have Big Hair! :lol:

It'd be so technoir! They'd be warriors, warriors without a cause, sticking it up to The Man!

They will don their powergloves and wear their 3D goggles and traverse into the fledgling internets, full of shitty graphics and special effects, to fight the Corporations in cyberspace! The ensuing battle would end in the defeat of The Corporations and the beginning of some minor financial crisis in the 80s. It would lead to the Internet being the free flowing information superhighway it is today, rather than some constrained Right Wing corporate-owned propaganda piece and brainwave avenue as Von Reagan's best friends at OCP and Weyland Yutani and Tyrell would like it.

The Cyberpunks would be a group of secretive digital freedom fighters, and they would pass on the mantle to the next generation of technologically literate crusaders - giving them the honor of the PowerGloves and the 3D Goggles and shit, their equivalent of decoder rings. They'd obsess over high tech machinery that would become comically obsolete in just a few years' time, they'd communicate in secret internet cafes hidden in shitty back alleys, they'd be their own awesome counterculture and crap.

Their original ringleader could be Al Gore! :lol:

EDIT:

Some of their members could be soldiers from the future, a future gone horribly wronggo! Or one of them could be a police officer who became a failed cyborg experiment at The Corporation! Another could be a cousin's of Ian Malcolm Goldblum who got fucked up and insectified in an accident with teleporter machines. Keannu Reeves would be their leader!

Hrm... some of them might have awesome DeLoreans to cruise around in.


EDIT 2:

FIEN, since FROD was on the verge of gouging out his own brain, I shall make retractions and modilifications!

For one, THE CORPORATIONS won't be comically evil. They'll just be... Corporations. Von Reagan's deregulation won't mean the Corps will be immediately out to rule the world and own the Internet, but it means that it'll be a HUEG window of opportunity! The Corporation that manages to be the one who gets the chops in developing the internets, or develop the latest softwares for that (like Microsoft's operating systems, or Google's googles), would get MAJOR MONIES! The fledgling Internet would be a very fiercely competitive place.

Some Corporations would, however, try to cheat. Because, well, that's what they do. Corporations are amoral and so some of them resort to corporate sabotage and espionage. Other Corporations that become victim to these things then resort to retaliation and reveangance. Even more Corporations don't want to get fucked over in the first place, so they preemptively defend themselves.

Instead of being a plucky band of heroes out to Save the Internet, the Cyberpunks will become instead a bunch of Go To Guys for all of these Corporations. The cyberpunks won't be a single secret society, they won't even be a single "side". Cyberpunks would generally be techno-mercenaries out for a quick buck, hackers for hire and that sort of stuff! They can go and do all sorts of zany missions involving their 3D Goggles and PowerGloves, surfing in the fledgling Internet! They could include all sorts of guys, from likeable asocial hero loners like Keannu Reeves, to total shitpieces like Dolph Lundgren with his blood-stained priestly robes, cyborg endoskeleton and Jesus Knife.

But still, they'd have AWESOME retro-fashion tastes and would be all technoir! It'd be more like.. stories with mobsters and hitmen and Private Eyes! Total technoir, mang!

They'd be all colorful and funky and zany, totally 80s style. Some of them could be bulked up Austrians with tenuous memory! QUAID! SCREEEEW YOOOUUUU!!!!! Mars!

Hey, yeah. Siege has mentioned the Martian infospheres and how his Hank deBruce (i.e. New NOVA) surfs the Red Planet's datanet. This could have something to do with our Austrian cyberpunk and his obsession with Mars and his TOTAL inability to RECALL his memories.

:lol:
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Peregrin »

I think we should follow through with this and have the Comix! 1990s would look like how we in the real 1990s imagined the near future to be like, perhaps after the Cyberpunks succeeded in toppling the megacorps or at least weakening them through the eighties. To keep things realistic, the Cyberpunks should probably at best end up pushing society a little bit in their desired direction but not all the way, either because they assumed things would take care of themselves after they got any changes in social structures at all, or because they found out it all was easier said than done and truly changing society for the better would take a long long time, and today their intellectual heirs (the Cyberpunk subculture not being as big in Comix! 2000s as it was in the eighties at all) are still fighting that struggle but fewer because the megacorps don't rule quite as unjustly as they used to. Sorta like the hippies in the real world, only a decade later.

Or maybe they just started a development that didn't go the direction they wanted, like the Communist revolutionaries earlier in the 20th century. In any case, the efforts of the Cyberpunks should result in the Comix!verse's 1990s resembling the near future envisioned by that decade's sci-fi in Real Life. Can't think of any good examples myself right now, though - Demolition Man? Neon Genesis Evangelion? Perhaps the Evil Power Vacuum(tm) would get taken over by alien conspiracies in the style of X-Files and Men in Black, which would end up having something to do with the mid-nineties alien invasion?

Perhaps some of the Cyberpunks would, after seeing that they did make society superficially more just but still hadn't managed to change the same profoundly dysfunctional social structures, radicalize and become more extreme... so that they'd turn into NINETIES ANTI-HEROES! :lol:

EDIT: I apologize if this comes across as poorly thought out, because it is. Gotta save all my actual concentration on exams right now.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Nah, I don't think I'll follow through with THE CORPORATION versus CYBERPUNK thang. Corporations aren't comically evil, as FROD says. They're just out to make money, and they might do it through underhanded means.

The Corporations might actually hire cyberpunks to commit acts of espionage or sabotage, while the other Corporations will hire cyberpunks to protect themselves or to engage in retribution. The fledgling internet will see some fierce competition, and the cyberpunks will be the face of how seedy and shitpieceful the Internet can get.

Cyberpunks will be more like the contract killers and private eyes of technoir. Neither enemy nor friend, ambiguous like the Corporations.

There would be SOME Cyberpunks with all that anti-corporation mentality, idealism, and whatnot. They MAY or MAY NOT be good guys. For every good-natured heroic plucky and scruffy Keannu Reeves, we've got a dime a dozen antisocial anarchistic assholes out to ruin not just the shit of The Corporation, but common people as well. For every cyber crusader, we've got scores of Anonymous 'tards.

I do like about the idea of radical extremist cyberpunks. HACKERS ON STEROIDS!


Some cyberpunks will drive DeLoreans because the stainless steel bodywork can be modified into some kind of Faraday Cage. When the Corporations or other cyberpunks come in Little Bird helicopters and shoot EMPs or circuit-fucking weaponry (be they EM or microwaves, or sonic-electronic ball breakers), the punks can make their quick escape in the shielded DeLoreans. The DeLoreans can protect all of their computer gear and while the driver drives, the passenger can totally continue surfing the 'net with his VR Goggles and PowerGloves.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Peregrin »

Yeah. I still think that in the 1990s the information age and stuff will become a less dystopian place than it was in the eighties, or something similar would happen mirroring the transition from cyberpunk to postcyberpunk in the real world's science fiction literature, at least until the aliens invade. Perhaps some of the radical cyberpunks could be the unwitting pawns of those alien conspiracies who'll eventually lead to the 1996 invasion. Which then will shake up everything.
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Re: {General} Mad ideas

Post by Invictus »

Fear what I start doing out of sudden urges.

I read through all 50 pages of this thread and summarized all the bits of world-setting that got discussed by us. I didn't include stuff like story ideas or details in character histories, since that stuff is less far-reaching. But I get the feeling that half the canon of Comix! seems to exist in this thread and nowhere else. Hence the executive summary:

- Kamin’s suggestion of a “Hell invades America” plot was quickly rejected (By Shroom, who by the way wrote the very same thing into his history of the SDI). However, this led to a discussion on the nature of religion and gods in Comixverse. The general consensus was to keep no defining pantheons or cosmic principles in place, just because everyone has written down too many mutually contradictory deities already. Retconning real-world religion into the mess creates an even bigger one, especially concerning the metaphysical monopoly of the Judeo-Christian god.

- Cydonia Academy’s field trip to the Hero Labs Experimental Science Center. Remember, Ford.

- Ford’s idea of Tony Saint’s previous excursions into other universes ruled by alternate versions of himself, killing them and taking their stuff. This led to the introduction of a number of technologies into mainstream Comixverse, such as artificial muscle suits and homing lasers. There were no objections to this.

- Malchus’s idea of parabolic memory wipers and armed golf carts for the Blacksuits, which have already appeared in other threads so I won’t elaborate. There is also, however, using the Black U-2 as a transdimensional spy plane. The up-armed Black Patton idea got shot down though.

- The Seven Serpents of Crime are go already.

- Orson Nate and Fidel Castro unite against Aztec death-cults, as proposed by Shroom. More of a story idea, but it confirms the presence of overt Aztec death-cults running around in South America, presumably with period getup.

- Everyone agreed that it is more reasonable if Archwind is married and has a family. Peck’s wife may be called Cass and works currently for the SuperDep, and is an ordinary human. When they met, she was either a Crowtalon attorney or a UN diplomat – something that influenced Archwind the farmboy’s own political stance.

- The Maverick Three are go.

- Siege’s the Clockwork Wars between France and Britain in the early 19th Century, involving steampunk hacking. Siege, however, later withdrew that one for more consideration.

- The Holy Inquisition being an active anti-supernatural organization in the modern day, also suggested by Siege. He objected to them being a bunch of ineffectual sadists and casts them as the world’s oldest intelligence agency instead, which IMO is a nifty angle.

- A city of nymphs in the Mediterranean Sea, again from Siege. Objections were raised over such an overt supernatural presence.

- Ford’s general reminder that vampires and werewolves in Comixverse are not entirely hidden and not generally evil for evil’s sake either.

- Shroom’s idea of people who are psychic “blanks” got shot down, because technology makes them redundant. This confirms that anti-psychic technology is relatively easy, too.

- Comrade Felix using his abilities in Russian nuclear disarmament: i.e. absorbing all their energy and doing something more useful with it. Still in the air.

- THE ORIGINS OF RONALD VON REAGAN (I had to quote all this because it was so awesome):

“In the 16th, 17th, 18th or whateverth centuries - House von Reagan falls out of favor of the Kaiser or of the other noble houses due to some court intrigue and shit. Sort of like House Hasburg (sp?) in good Old Familiars. Except, perhaps, maybe Ronald von Reagan's venerable ancestors were up to von Reagan-brand dickery back in the Fatherland, pissing off all the Counts and Barons and the Kaiser himself. As in, royally pissing them off.

So when we say "proud Germanic Heritage of the American West Coast", it's actually more like everyone who hated House von Reagan, which is everyone, told the whole clan to GTFO and so the von Reagans snubbed their noses, adjusted their monocles, and transfered their entire castle brick for brick to a plot of land in the New World that would one day become Californication.

Along the way, I guess at some point they ended up becoming something of a Colonial Company - like the East Indies or some shit. Except since the Other Houses don't like them, the von Reagans didn't get to become THAT big. They were still majorly influential, though.

Aaaaanyway, a few more centuries of bad blood later, when the Imperial Germans start calling their American cousins and asking them help for World War 1 - the von Reagans would promptly tell them to shove a pickelhaube up their arshlochs.

Austerlitz would HAET the von Reagans. So much.”

“Refinement therefore of the concept proposed by Shroom: I would propose that House Von Reagan controlled a piddling city-state in Bavaria, did what it did best (the Runaway Defence Budgets of the 18th century!), resulting in some truly oversized cannonry and a military might completely disproportionate to the size of their territory. After some antics that would have made Von Munchausen proud they draw the ire of the Archdukes of Austria, who conspire to have them Driven From The Land. In 1750 the Von Reagans end up with a ridiculous assignment to colonize California in the name of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, although it was a public secret that it was actually an exile orchestrated by his wife Maria Theresa, the Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Bohemia and Hungary (because she was furious that then-Baron Manfred von Reagan spurred her avances and declined to be her male courtesan!) who had an ally in the nefarious Baron Rudolph von Austerlitz (who wished to usurp the lands of the Von Reagans!)

And so House Von Reagan ends up in hostile California far from their beloved Black Forest, but like the Atreides ended up on Dune and made the best of it, Manfred von Reagan rebuilds his proud castle on the Hollywood Hills and fights off Indians, Spanish/Mexicans, Texans and dirty Confederates to establish the noble Barony Von Reagan in Exile! Which later joins the USA in a similar vein to the Indian reservations (EG it's defacto a state within a state - considering Skyhaven and the undoubtedly bizarre history of the West Coast I think this wouldn't be too much of a stretch). Because they had so little help from Germany to thank for their troubles they wouldn't exactly feel like helping the Imperial Germans out in return - particularly since their perpetual nemesis House Von Austerlitz was firmly in the Imperial camp. And so, WW1 sees an American Von Reagan duking it out with a Von Austerlitz whilst trading insults such as "Traitor!" and "Usurper!"

Returning as a war hero, the star of the Von Reagan dynasty will then rise over the course of the 20th century, culminating in the presidency of Baron Ronald "perhaps it's not called an Empire but I still rule the world! Muahaha!" Von Reagan!”

“While the concept of a German California is still awesome, there's something here that can be potentially bad. It's never stated when Von Reagan's California becomes a commonwealth (in U.S. political jargon, a commonwealth is essentially a self-governing protectorate/territory) under U.S. control, which can have serious implications regarding the Compromise of 1850 and the Civil War.

Since California never applied for statehood in Comix!, the permanent imbalance in the Senate in the favor of abolitionists would never happen, which means that the Compromise, which postponed the Civil War for a decade after tensions regarding the free/slave state status of the newly acquired territories from Mexico threatened to make war break out, would become massively imbalanced in favor of the slave states. While this might not seem like a big deal, it should be noted that the North underwent a massive surge in industrialization during those ten years, which allowed them to pursue their strategy of attrition that ultimately won the war. By removing those ten years, the nature of the Civil War could potentially change for the worse (or not; the North could still be able to pull off victory, but at a larger cost).

Granted, for most people who are indifferent regarding history (I'm obviously not one of them) this isn't really a big deal and could be whisked away via a deus ex machina of sorts (e.g., the New Mexico territory could take California's place). Alternatively, Von Reagan's California could aid the U.S. in the Mexican-American War, or vice versa, and would shortly thereafter become a commonwealth of the U.S. for protection and be given a voting senator to signify that it isn't just another territory, thus making this little hiccup in history moot.”

- The Reign of von Reagan was marked by runaway defense budgets, a national mood bordering on crypto-fascism, environmental blight and urban decay. (Note: The Culture Wars would have been so. Much. Worse.) His legacy includes of course Castle von Reagan, brooding upon a hill overlooking Hollywood, transported brick by brick from the Barony of von Reagan in Bavaria.

- Wild Manchuria has already been established, a postwar wasteland roamed by ChiCom lawgivers with red star badges, Mongolian bikers, criminals bootlegging soft drinks, Japanese remnants, Technotheocratic cyberwright-preachers, North Korean spies and xenophobic inhuman tribes.

- A brotherhood of Iron Chefs in a moon base, as suggested by Mobius.

- The increased use of airships throughout history, suggested by various people. Some may be pure dirigibles, others also use anti-gravity Cavorite. Siege wants them in direct combat roles up until WWII but Shroom is skeptic.

- The issue of your average passenger plane in Comixverse came up again, as an argument between the implications of advanced technology and keeping the universe relatively recognizable. Suborbital supersonic liners do exist, although not everywhere.

- Stuff regarding Dimitri Dzhugashvili Deschain and the Gulag of A Thousand Stalins. Largely integrated into Erika Deschain’s profile, I guesse.

- Heretic’s “The Onion”, a government agency that went around ‘regulating’ alien immigration on Earth, which other seemed fine with if they were instead a private organization funded by individuals with a grudge. Heretic did not pursue it further, though.

- Malchus’ idea of a series of short stories about the daily life of Average Joes and not so average Joes on Comix! Earth.

- Ford established that yes, there are fusion reactors that fit inside cars and fighter planes.

- Some discussion on the visibility of the Technotheocracy, which established that their all-out offensive in Things Might Get Trippy was a tad too much. They are definitely more influential in Russia and Eastern Europe, and Siege suggests that their organization be a lot more esoteric so not even the majority of their members know about the weirder stuff. There were also some arguments about its overlap with the Eastern Orthodox Church and its Cold War battle of influence with the USSR, which led into a discussion about turning it into a serious religion.

- “How's this for a start: like the orthodox church, the TTC is split into multiple more-or-less autonomous patriarchates, those being:

1. The Ecumenical Atomic Pontificate of Moscow
2. The Electrified Patriarchate of Kragoreshtan
3. The Autocephalous Electronic Archdiocese of the Far East

Since the Great Schism the Ecumenical Pontificate is the primes inter pares of the TTC, but although they are supposed to work together they sometimes also come into conflict with one another (yay intrigue and quibbling over doctrine!)”

- 38 pages later, we go back to discussing the nature of Hell in Comix. Still no consensus, though.

- The Gargoyle Initiative as an English occult watchdog organization founded in Tudor times, suggested by Speaker.

- The existence of Gatling Carriages and Mechanical Spiders in the ACW as a sign of accelerated technological development, but not much else was said.

- The Peacekeeper nuclear deterrent bomber takes shape. Another demented product of the von Reagan administration, they are presumably still patrolling American airspace today, updated with fusion engines and modern avionics. There was talk of them having rudimentary sentience.

- SOCRATES the Blacksuit AI. Already implemented.

- Shroom’s ruminations on stealth and Compressed Space technology. Black helicopters actually use cloak by ducking into another dimension, and so do Raptor Xs. This has its own side effects including the volatility of the c-space pockets when the craft itself is destroyed, but Malchus seems enthusiastic.

- Siege on the way the Martian Invasion altered 19th century European history, along with all the other events. Something which will be worked out eventually.

And I think we’re current enough that the rest doesn’t need summarizing.
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REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
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