From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 7:47 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: RE: Inside the Deep Ones gothedhel, a moron who cannot trim replies, wrote: > their selfless sacrifice still makes them die as individuals. So their > suicidal attitude would make immortality impossible for them *as > individuals*. The same can be applied to Deep Ones. Even if their society > survives for all eternity, the Deep Ones who die fighting will *obviously* > not live forever. I'm guessing that the Deep Ones place religious fanaticism above their insignificant lives. Everyone is ignoring the fact that they *are* immortal and that they die in combat, not like Lemmings (TM) or Orks (who are pathetic compared to the iron discipline of my Orcan Horde), but like creatures in war. Remember, the longer they live, the larger they get, so only the puniest show up to chuck spears at tommy-gun wielding Gunnery Sergeants. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Michael Layne [theherald@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 7:47 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Useful Resources for Deep One Society and Technology On 26 April, 2000 AD, EdDrWho@aol.com says: >In a message dated 4/26/00 1:41:29 PM Central Daylight Time, >theherald@hotmail.com writes: > > > But I, too, remember the major weapon employed against the Deep One > > underwater installation as submarine-launched torpedoes. > >A special deep-diving submarine, I believe HPL calls it. Keep in mind, >however, that USN torpedoes were grossly defective until late WW2...one >reason why the DO city survived, no doubt. > Quite possibly! The Mk 10, which I personally believe was the fish used in the 1928 Devil's Reef op, had problems with depth control -- over long ranges, it tended to run about 4 feet deeper than you would set it to. Depending on the bottom topography, this could have led to some of the fish striking the bottom rather than the walls of Deep One structures. The Mk 10 had apparently been successfully tested in live-fire trials, and lacked the more "advanced" detonating systems that seem to have been introduced with the Mk 14 -- the WWII torpedo, developed from the Mk 10, which had the sundry problems you mention. In particular, the Mk 10 probably lacked the defective contact detonator which was more likely to set off the warhead if it hit at an angle, than if it hit the target head-on, as it was supposed to do! And it definitely lacked the infamous magnetic exploder, which was designed to set off the torpedo under the target's keel, blowing the ship in half -- but which more often prematurely triggered the warhead, or didn't work at all! The Brits tried such an exploder on their aerial torpedoes early in WWII, and it saved the cruiser HMS "Sheffield" -- during the hunt for the "Bismarck", a flight of Swordfish torpedo planes mistook the Britsh cruiser for the German battleship, and attacked it with torpedoes, which detonated almost as soon as they hit the water. ("Oops! Sorry, chaps!") The magnetic exploder was found to be at fault, and was disconnected in the next batch of torpedoes, carried by the British planes when they went up against the real "Bismarck"! It took a surprisingly long time for the USN to correct the problems with faulty torpedoes, because, at first, the ordnance authorities refused to believe their wonder weapon could be at fault. Even when faced with the reports of the exploder malfunction in the British torpedoes ("Well, that's a _British_ torpedo, not _ours_!") and reports from surviving US submarine Captains ("It's obviously _your_ fault, Captain! If it didn't work properly, you employed the weapon improperly! And if you try to modify it yourself so it works, then we'll see that you're court-martialed!") they insisted for a long time that the weapon wasn't faulty. The people who had worked on the Mk 14 were very high-ranking by then, and it was far more important to them to establish that they could never have made any mistakes with their wonder weapon than to correct the problems with said wonder weapon! (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?) It took several years, and far too many enemy ships surviving attacks (and US subs not surviving) for the experts to admit that maybe the wonder weapons had just the teeniest little problem, and might need to be modified... (Interested folks can find a slightly fictionalized treatment of the problem in Edward Beach's novel "Dust on the Sea".) By the way, besides the problems with the detonators, the Mk 14 was even worse at depth control than the Mk 10! In my earlier post, I considered suggesting the S-boat shooting at the Deep One installation might have used a handful of prototype Mk 14s. (The fish was introduced into fleet service in 1931, but a few experimental prototypes might have existed as early as 1928, and could have been armed with warheads from Mk 10s...) But, even assuming that someone highly placed could pry such prototypes loose from the officers at the Naval Torpedo Center at Keyport (and these would have been the same officers who later ignored all the evidence the Mk 14 was malfunctioning in combat!), these weapons would have been (in the manner of prototypes) even quirkier than the production Mk 14s which were such a problem in early WWII! Had the Mk 14s been used at Devil's Reef, and their problems been noted, and, had the report reached the NTC uncensored (and had the ordnance people believed it), the production version of the Mk 14 might have had fewer problems, and the early submarine war in the Pacific might have gone differently... (A lot of "ifs" there, I know...) I think under the circumstances, the Navy would have stuck with the proven Mk 10 for the Devil's Reef op! Re the "deep diving sub"... "Deep" is relative. This could have denoted a sub operating at its deepest rated depth (about 200 feet for an S-boat, according to most of my sources). Or maybe this was a more advanced sub than the S-boats (I'll check and see if any of the later classes had been launched by 1928...) rated at 250 or even 300 feet? Michael Layne DGGF#688 theherald@hotmail.com ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 7:57 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: The acquisition of Mythos magic by human societies On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Andy Robertson wrote: > So I fudged it a bit . . . but actually that's the most impressive part of > all. How did these islanders get Elder Signs? We don't know that they had them at all. We just know that the signs were there when Obed Marsh returned. > However it happened, these pretechnological human beings were using > hypergeometrical Mythos magic, and using it very effectively! That's another assumption. For all we know, the neiboring islanders could have been manipulated into attacking by ET remnants, Mr. Shiny, or whatever. > They deserve our respect! No one ever gets my respect, for I have none. > They found a way to surround themselves with "radiation" that the Mythos > entities they were fighting could not stand. They did not properly > comprehend what that "radiation" was, perhaps - but they knew it worked! > > If they can do that, we should be able to. Non-sequitur, It does not follow. We might be able to. But your whole supposition relies on the assumption that the Elder Signs were of human origin and used by humans in their attack. If this is so, it leads me to wonder why they abandoned their POW 2 signs all over the evil island. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 8:06 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Useful Resources for Deep One Society and Technology On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, James Holloway wrote: > Or... fiendish Deep Ones... they knew that the narrator's document would > sooner or later fall into the hands of P-Div. They told (or dreamed to) him > a lot of rubbish about how badly they were hurt, in order to save their base > of operations. This requires quite a bit of "if's" and "or's" and "maybe's" to be likely. Much more probable is that Y'ha'nth'lei was blown up by torpedoes, just like the story says. Not destroyed, cause people still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but just as blown up nevertheless. > As for the baby-eating thing, there's a DO female in "Escape" who is being > confined specifically so that she will not attack her _own_ young. Why the > DO sent a baby-slaughtering female to take part in their topside breeding > program in the first place is a good question. I'm guessing that the whole instinct due to subconsciously perceived population pressure thing kicked in. There's nothing to say she was or would be that way forever. She was certainly fertile. I even go so far as to submit that future births would suppress the need to feed long enough for cultists to sequester the infant hybrid. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 8:16 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [DG: THE GUN EATERS] On 26 Apr 2000, Nick Brownlow wrote: > On the other hand, I've been anticipating the GLASS FoREST sequel for more > months than I like to mention- back to work I think, saucer-man. HEY~! That's Triangularly Shaped Object Man to you, punk! Saucers indeed! Next thing, he'll be wanting to drink tea out of the Cup in Black. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 8:49 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: My Funeral In a message dated 00-04-26 20:12:59 EDT, you write: << Damn - the Dave's, Le Roi Lizaard and the MiB have given me a case of inadequacies.... >> We all started small. Perhaps one inciteful observation a day, or such. Why I can remember back when the MiB's entire posts were just random slaps at the keyboard followed by a sig. Also, when Davide started, he didn't use English at all, which was both charming and painful to see. David Farnell mystified most of us, until we realized that he thought he was on another mail list entirely. I was relieved, certainly, since finding that out relieved me of fitting his grandiloquent musings on gerbil husbandry into the DG world. And me? Well, I didn't have my Crossing the Streams of Consciousness style worked out yet, but I still ruled because, you know, I do. Write a full page of prose a day, whether you post it or not. Eventually, you will talk through your fingers. Mark McFadden From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 9:35 PM To: The MiB's Mailing List Subject: DG: The Needs of the Many Here's something I came up with just today which some might consider Off-Topic, but others might find nifty and useful. I will probably make a story out of this sometime or other. I'm pretty sure someone someplace came up with something similiar before, but I can't recall. Anyway: ******* THE NEEDS OF THE MANY - a different sort of roleplaying. This is a potentially challenging concept for some gaming groups, and is definitely non-traditional. Each player plays a different personality of a single person suffering from multiple personality disorder. Among the many personalities is a Very Bad Individual, possibly more than one. The object of the scenario is to prevent the VBI from conducting whatever very bad activities they might be engaging in. This could be anything from mundane activities like serial killings, child abuse, and suicidal behavior; to supernatural horrors like blasphemous worship of ancient gods, hideous sorceries, and so forth. I recommend five levels of consciousness for the personalities: Control Conscious Subconscious Unconscious Disintigrated The Control Personality is the one currently in control of the body. It walks the walk, it talks the talk, and generally assures the nice psychiatrist or police officer that everything is alright. Conscious personalities can perceive what the body perceives (making any perception rolls seperately from other personalities) and can interact with other willing conscious personalities. They can also attempt to wrest control of the body for a time, either wholly or only a single limb. Subconscious personalities cannot perceive what the body perceives without significant concentration, but can interact with other willing subconscious pesonalities. Unconscious personalities are sleeping, perchance to dream, while disintigrated ones are no more, having shuffled off this mortal coil. Competant psychiatry can target a given personality for disintigration, especially when the body is institutionalized or undergoing serious therapy. Naturally, the VBI will never manifest itself to mental health professionals unless it is forced to by the other personalities. However, this could present greater hazards to the personalities, as each is erased in turn, leaving the body under the control of the VBI. Personality conflict in a very dramatic sense can also occur. Two or more personalities can "attack" each other in delusional, astral combat. Treat this as regular combat. This could be a fight to gain control of the body, sending the previous Control down one or more levels of consciousness. Or it could be a struggle brought on to end a interview between subconscious personalities. It should be very rare that a personality is wholly disintigrated by a psychic duel. Clues to proper resolution of this sort of scenario should be found in the "the body's" checkered past. The control personality can research the body's past. Subconscious personalities can relive flashbacks in "the body's" life or interview NPC personalities, especially vulnerable ones that may be targeted for destruction by the VBI. Exactly how personalities shift in and out of control can be handled in many different ways. Perhaps the best way is to assign a new Control each time the body awakens from physical sleep. Conscious personalities could drag the Control down and replace it. This stealing of control might quickly fade away in a few minutes, but other personalities could knock the ex-Control into subconsciousness or unconsciousness, this would certainly make the takeover last. Game mechanics for personalities should be handled exactly like normal character generation with a limitation placed on equipment, especially in regards to weaponry. When a given personality is in control, they are either better, worse, or the same at physical skills - this should be expressed minimally, perhaps +1 or +10% for example. Mental skills and attributes of the Control Personality should be treated normally. Conscious personalities should not be able to assist the control personality with physical skills or maneuvers, and should be faced with some sort of penalty when doing so with mental skills. ******* The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Dan W [minion_of_cthulhu@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 9:40 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Fw: Lumley >From: "Jeffrey Moeller" >Reply-To: dgrpg@delta-green.com >To: >Subject: DG: Fw: Lumley >Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 08:17:42 -0800 > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: >To: >Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2000 8:15 PM >Subject: Lumley > > > > I rise in defense of Brian Lumley. Enough of him quietly doing the job > > to this list. I don't know if Lumley's writing is really defendable . . . The style is good, but some of the subthemes of 'The Burrowers Beneath' never fitted my personal conception of the Mythos. Chucking holy water, the wholesale slaughter of Great Old Ones, and the waving around of ankhs to drive away the nasty shoggoths devalues the human 'helplessness' and 'insignificance in the face of true power' aspect of a lot of the Mythos. I guess I'm a bit of a purist, but . . . ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of EdDrWho@aol.com Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 11:18 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Useful Resources for Deep One Society and Technology In a message dated 4/26/00 7:51:32 PM Central Daylight Time, theherald@hotmail.com writes: >The > magnetic exploder was found to be at fault, and was disconnected in the next > > batch of torpedoes, carried by the British planes when they went up against > the real "Bismarck"! Which was fortunate, as it was a standard torpedo that eventually detonated against the Bismarck's rudder, locking her in the permanent clockwise rotation from Hell. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Daniel Harms [dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu] Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 12:50 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) >Anyone (Mr. Harms, I'm glancing sidelong in your direction, then looking >quickly away before you notice) care to furnish us with a list of the roughly >predicted EndTimes? I know there are several conflicting reports on this--some >hav us all being wiped of soon, others put it thousands of years in the future. Getting back strictly to HPL, it does seem that humanity outlasts the next few years. I've found at least two references to humans surviving in the years 2169 ("Through the Gate...") and 2500 ("Shadow out of Time") - though, for some reason, both of them are in Australia. It's difficult to tell the status of humanity in this time from the hints given, but it sounds like they're still doing all right - though little detail is given. (Another account - the vision of a future NYC from "He" isn't all that reassuring, however.) Such works as Chaosium's CENSORED starring Albert Shiny have postulated that we are in the Endtimes already, and that it will take centuries for the subtle changes to take effect. Others, such as Robert Bloch (in STRANGE EONS) make the end of the world swift and unrelenting. Which reminds me. For a mini-con coming up in another week, I'm running a CoC apocalypse scenario. The timeline goes something like this: May 12, 200, 3:45 PM: Great Old One returns. World ends. And that's about 15 minutes into the session... Yrs., Daniel Harms dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu The Internet: Learn what you know. Share what you don't. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:08 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Deep One Society, above the surface Okey dokey, we've got some good stuff on what happens below the waterline, what's it like to slip from human to DO? Some know it's coming, others are taken by surprise. Some live in a community that supports the transformation, what about those who don't? What of people unaware of the family history living far inland? Why aren't we seeing half-DOs in the tabloids? Or are we, and we don't know it? Does the call of the sea make these unaware folk drop their lives and head for the coast? Which is stronger, the call or a spouse and mortgage? How much DO DNA is the critical mass? What is the fate of, say, a DO octoroon? Say you had a half Innsmouth DO\human (perhaps an orphan) who couldn't avoid the draft and was in the Armed Forces in WWII, no choice as to service, trained in Mississippi. First ocean he sees is the Atlantic from the deck of a troop ship. Something clicks. Or not; but let's say the ocean is the trigger, so we don't have people going starry-eyed throughout the Midwest, all mutated-up and nowhere to go. However, ta da, a cool scenario could be made of triggering the DO change by other means in a land-locked locale. He leaves his genes scattered among prostitutes and farm girls and bar maids and goes home, perhaps determined to move to California on the GI Bill. The state of contraception being what it was at the time, you could have 2 or 3 bastard demi-DOs, unaware of their heritage, and USC coeds on the horizon. Someone on the list once mentioned, during the last DO city thread, that intelligent DO cities (that's what we played with last time, living DO cities, perhaps with a custom shoggoth as the heart\brain) stranded on the surface over time and geological shifting. Perhaps there are isolated inland communities that circle a buried DO city, now stranded in say, the Pyrenees? The people living around it might look mostly like the other residents (except for little things like earlobes), but the other residents know that something about their neighbors just ain't right, and they don't want their daughters marrying any. These folk, hearing the voice of the city from the ground, might have an entire DO-type culture going on in the woods, worshipping a mound and perhaps being picked up as worshippers by more sylvan deities. Shubby would of course be a natural what with the DO obsession with spreading their genes. How was that, sirs? Mark McFadden From the Submarine of Love From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Dave Farnell [superdave@disinfo.net] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:13 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) On Wed, 26 Apr 2000 13:49:37 -0400 Daniel Harms wrote: >Getting back strictly to HPL, it does seem that humanity outlasts the >next few years. I've found at least two references to humans surviving >in the years 2169 ("Through the Gate...") and 2500 ("Shadow out of Time") > - though, for some reason, both of them are in Australia. Australia...interesting. Lots of stuff going on in Australia. >(Another >account - the vision of a future NYC from "He" isn't all that reassuring, >however.) Well, it doesn't mean the world ends then--could have just been a bad spell. (So to speak.) >Such works as Chaosium's CENSORED starring Albert Shiny have >postulated that we are in the Endtimes already, and that it will take >centuries for the subtle changes to take effect. Others, such as >Robert Bloch (in STRANGE EONS) make the end of the world >swift and unrelenting. I go for the former, myself. Making it gradual is, to me, more horrific. When it's swift, it's terrifying, sure, but watching your children being born with GOO characteristics, more and more with each generation, touches more on horror than terror. >May 12, 200, 3:45 PM: Great Old One returns. World ends. > >And that's about 15 minutes into the session... A promising start. Dave From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Dave Farnell [superdave@disinfo.net] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:17 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re:DG: The Needs of the Many Yes, it was OT. But very interesting, and kewl. Sounds like something John Tynes would come up with while drunk and playing with Chinese-made firearms. And I forgot to tell you I liked the Gun Eaters, too. I'll be sure to use the Gun Eaters themselves, someday. Dave From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 8:17 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) About world ending... I'm (rather loudly) working on my pet Endtimes project... Given the Great Race of Yith has humanity many many thousands of years from now, but the stirrings of endtimes, my take is this: The Endtimes are right around the corner... but the Endtimes are NOT the same as the destruction of the human race. In my timeline, Cthulhu rules the globe by 2060. Yay. However... the human race continues. If I were to extend it, I'd probably have Cthulhu take off with his starspawn at smoe point, resuming their 'tumble through the stars'. Then human civilization would (slowly) grow again. It's only much further down the road that humans are extinguished. I've also thought about 'After the Fall' sorts of scenarios... set during Cthulhu's rule, or after he and the rest depart. -=Will ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of box_nine@ix.netcom.com Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 9:07 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) A few points: If memory serves (I'll check the End Times transcript later, damn it!), the unpublished End Times supplement had the End Times coming in the 2030s (one century after Lovecraft, more or less), with outposts of humanity on Mars. There's the Tsan-Chan empire several thousand years hence ("Beyond the Wall of Sleep," "The Shadow Out of Time,") but it's unclear if it's a human empire. I don't recall Lovecraft's opinions on space travel, but I'd think he'd have mentioned something about humanity continuing to exist off-planet if such were the case. Instead we get the image of the Earth being destroyed in much of his fiction ("The Crawling Chaos," for example). Steven From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Michael Layne [theherald@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 1:07 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [DG: THE GUN EATERS] On 26 April, 2000 AD, The Man in Black responded thus to a message from Nick Brownlow: >On 26 Apr 2000, Nick Brownlow wrote: > > > On the other hand, I've been anticipating the GLASS FoREST sequel for >more > > months than I like to mention- back to work I think, saucer-man. > >HEY~! That's Triangularly Shaped Object Man to you, punk! Saucers indeed! >Next thing, he'll be wanting to drink tea out of the Cup in Black. > Well, if he asks to do that, simply toss the Deadly Black Discus of Doom (tm) his way! (In Greek mythology, didn't Perseus accidentally kill off his father with a thrown Archaic Greek Discus of Doom (tm)?) It makes such a nice whooshing sound (accompanying the soundtrack music) as it flies through the air, and words like WHAM! or ZANG! appear in the air when the DBDD hits things! (You've figured out how to safely catch it if it comes back without hitting him, haven't you?) Michael Layne DGGF#688 theherald@hotmail.com (Who, in his much younger days, wondered why he couldn't duplicate any of Captain America's shield tricks with a trash can lid...) ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 1:21 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [DG: THE GUN EATERS] At 02:06 PM 4/27/00 EDT, you wrote: >(Who, in his much younger days, wondered why he couldn't duplicate any of >Captain America's shield tricks with a trash can lid...) You mean you couldn't? Dude, that's so lame... you weren't even trying... JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 2:08 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) In a message dated 00-04-27 05:17:34 EDT, you write: << >(Another >account - the vision of a future NYC from "He" isn't all that reassuring, >however.) Well, it doesn't mean the world ends then--could have just been a bad spell. (So to speak.) >> What possible vision of a future NYC could be worse than the present? Did the witness see the whole island, or was the view of Bed-Stuy? Sorry, it's a East Coast\West Coast thang. You wouldn't understand. ;-P Mark McFadden Pace, I'm out. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 2:30 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [DG: THE GUN EATERS] In a message dated 00-04-27 14:28:29 EDT, you write: << >(Who, in his much younger days, wondered why he couldn't duplicate any of >Captain America's shield tricks with a trash can lid...) You mean you couldn't? Dude, that's so lame... you weren't even trying... >> Michael Michael Michael. A) You can't use a standard trash can lid. You must cut the edge off to eliminate the flap effect. Leave the edge jagged and wear reinforced leather or Kevlar gloves like Cap. B) Plastic is, obviously, out of the question. However, remember you can't cut adamantium after it's cast.... C) Keep depleted uranium edge weights handy to facilitate curve and return effects. Mark McFadden Had a sidekick, but I had to pry his frozen fingers off the Doomsday Weapon wing to complete the mission and save us all, and he dropped to his death in the Arctic where he was frozen into a block of ice and was briefly worshipped by a degenerate clan of Inuit before being discovered by Namor and sent COD to Avengers HQ, where.... Well, in any case, he wasn't dead. No good guy in the Marvel Universe stays that way for too long. I'm hoping he won't recognize me and want his job back. That whole running around in tights with a young male protege was so, uh, Bohemian Grove, you know? Besides, Anne, Miriam and Dorcas don't need any help. Ow! Besides better equipment and a raise! Front! From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Steve Allison [sallison@netcomuk.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 2:28 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: THE BLOB! (in Technocolor) > Note that Shoggoths are spawned from Ubbo-Sathla, which leads me to > believe that the Mi-Go are active in Antarctica. They could even be mining > the Mountains of Madness, although Spheres of Nath seem to preclude that > possibility. Hello list-folk... Apologies if this has been mentioned already; I've been away for a week securing myself more lucrative employment and now have a backlog of 400+ messages... if I don't reply to a post whilst I'm looking it I'm bound to forget.... Anyway, some real world going on in Antarctica noted in April's issue of 'Wired' (well, 8.04, which I presume is April). A bunch of scientists are considering building a proble to explore lake Vostok. For those of you whose knowledge of Antarctic geography and glaciology is lacking, lake Vostok is an enormous great lake (30 miles long, 2 miles wide IIRC, volume comparable to lake Superior). What's interesting is that it has been trapped beneath a glacier (2.3 miles of ice!) for 30 odd million years and may contain vestiges of archaic antarctic life-forms. These fellows intend drilling a hole down to the water beneath the lake and to unleash a 'cryobot' to mooch around and report back anything interesting. Care is being taken to ensure that the operation doesn't damage the possible underwater ecosystem. Of course, *we* know that the real danger is to us clueless humans pottering about above. This operation may serve as a prototype for exploring any ocean beneath the frozen surface of Europa. Clearly these scientists don't read enough SF, or they'd know that the wilds of Antarctica and Europa are the two places where you *don't* do this sort of thing. The mag also has an article by Bill Joy (co founder of Sun Microsystems, inventor of Java and all round comp-sci god), in which he expresses his worries that intelligent robots will replace us in the not-too distant future, or that we'll be reduced do sludge by ravaning hordes of nanotech devices. Steve From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Steve Allison [sallison@netcomuk.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 2:35 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Hoyle The often excellent Andy Robertson wrote: > Science is tactical, not strategic. It provides us with stuff that is > _useful_. Who cares if it is "true?" Quite. As some well respected science type once said (paraphrasing): "All our models are wrong, but some of them are useful" Can't remember who said it though. Steve From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 1:58 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) Greetings. None less than Daniel Harms wrote.... >Which reminds me. For a mini-con coming up in another week, I'm >running a CoC apocalypse scenario. The timeline goes something >like this: > >May 12, 200, 3:45 PM: Great Old One returns. World ends. > >And that's about 15 minutes into the session... Sounds like my kind of thing. Please keep us posted! Davide Mana From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 2:44 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Deep One Society, above the surface Greetings. I'm back and feeling like Bogart at the end of High Sierra, but I'm still going. Mark McFadden writes > Okey dokey, we've got some good stuff on what happens below the waterline, >what's it like to slip from human to DO? This is the kind of thing I like this list for. Damn the torpedoes. > Some know it's coming, others are taken by surprise. Some live in a >community that supports the transformation, what about those who don't? Silly idea of the week - considering this is the age on information, what about a Help Group for people undergoing the DO mutation, publicized on the web and on specialist newspapers? > What of people unaware of the family history living far inland? Why aren't >we seeing half-DOs in the tabloids? Or are we, and we don't know it? The second you say, IMHO. The idea is, a lot of what we consider tabloid sillyness could well be far more sinister. > Does the call of the sea make these unaware folk drop their lives and head >for the coast? Which is stronger, the call or a spouse and mortgage? How much >DO DNA is the critical mass? My take on the subject, quick and dirty, is, as the DO part becomes dominant, the individual gets more attuned to nt only the call of the sea, but also to the call of the DO community/city, and ultimately the Call of Cthulhu. So, no spouse or mortgage should be strong enough. Investigations on runaway spouses could well unhearth some cases of DO metamorphosis. And what about all those missing teenagers? After all, _when_ do you start to hear the call of the sea? During puberty? After it? Is it any wonder lots of kids head for New York or Los Angeles? > What is the fate of, say, a DO octoroon? Say you had a half Innsmouth >DO\human (perhaps an orphan) who couldn't avoid the draft and was in the >Armed Forces in WWII, no choice as to service, trained in Mississippi. First >ocean he sees is the Atlantic from the deck of a troop ship. Something >clicks. Or not; but let's say the ocean is the trigger, so we don't have >people going starry-eyed throughout the Midwest, all mutated-up and nowhere >to go. However, ta da, a cool scenario could be made of triggering the DO >change by other means in a land-locked locale. Nice idea. On the other hand, the matter of population distribution is to be considered. Here I am at loss: I realize American society is much more mobile - in geographical sense - than European, but is it really likely to get a second generation DO hybrid from New England in, say, Kansas or Missouri? Also, would the family to be willing to move, considering some elements feel the call of the ocean. Or would they just relocate to another sea-side area 'just because I feel it in my bones'? > He leaves his genes scattered among prostitutes and farm girls and bar maids >and goes home, perhaps determined to move to California on the GI Bill. The >state of contraception being what it was at the time, you could have 2 or 3 >bastard demi-DOs, unaware of their heritage, and USC coeds on the horizon. As an alternative to all of the above, you just grow being a little more alienated than your average kid. Ever heard people saying that 'there's something missing in my life'? Just like that, but worse. Add to that a few weird inputs (?I keep dreaming of the sea I never saw') and individuals having just a fraction of DO blood could well just be preferential mental cases in the population. [very unpolitically correct idea - maybe all the deranged guys out there are just poor hybrid bastards with not enough DO blood to trigger the full metamorphosis.] > Someone on the list once mentioned, during the last DO city thread, that >intelligent DO cities (that's what we played with last time, living DO >cities, perhaps with a custom shoggoth as the heart\brain) stranded on the >surface over time and geological shifting. I wonder who that one could have been.... ;> >Perhaps there are isolated inland >communities that circle a buried DO city, now stranded in say, the Pyrenees? And I wonder just why the Pyrenees.... ;> > The people living around it might look mostly like the other residents >(except for little things like earlobes), but the other residents know that >something about their neighbors just ain't right, and they don't want their >daughters marrying any. These folk, hearing the voice of the city from the >ground, might have an entire DO-type culture going on in the woods, >worshipping a mound and perhaps being picked up as worshippers by more sylvan >deities. Shubby would of course be a natural what with the DO obsession with >spreading their genes. Sounds a bit like 'The Tommyknockers' - or even better 'Quatermass and the Pit' - but sounds solid. Imagine a ethnoanthoropologist discovering a culture that was never even close to the sea, and still has myths about the ocean and fish-like deities.... No, wait, I guess we already have that one... But substitute worshipping is also a good bit - what if tehy find the closest GOO to fill in their cultural crave for a GOO? I gues GOO are not that choosy when it comes to their worshippers. Or are they? > How was that, sirs? Excellent and abundant, sir. More, please.... Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of James Holloway [j_holloway26@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 3:05 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Deep One Society, above the surface > >And what about all those missing teenagers? >After all, _when_ do you start to hear the call of the sea? >During puberty? >After it? >Is it any wonder lots of kids head for New York or Los Angeles? Oh, nice. And a lot of those kids _disappear_, don't they? In the 19th century, the thing was running away "to be a sailor," but these days... Los Angeles beckons the teenagers to come to her on buses. >Nice idea. >On the other hand, the matter of population distribution is to be >considered. Here I am at loss: I realize American society is much more >mobile - in geographical sense - than European, but is it really likely to >get a second generation DO hybrid from New England in, say, Kansas or >Missouri? > Absolutely. This would not be at all uncommon. Very few of we uppity Californians like to think that we would move to, say, Iowa if the circumstances permitted, but in practice we do. Even the Call wouldn't keep them back under certain circumstances... say if the hybrid father died young, and the human mother had to move to the big city to get a better job when the child was still quite small. We know that the DO don't do such a wonderful job tracking their hybrids... why is that? Do they just not care? There were also periods of US history which saw substantial inland migration... like people from the East Coast "going West" - they may have said they were headed for California, but they seldom got there. Or poor blacks from the Deep South moving to Chicago in the early 20th century. -- James Holloway "Okay, and there's nothing in between. It's either grain alcohol in back alleys or a happy world of rodents and feetie pyjamas." "Yes." "I mean, why is that so hard to accept?" ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 3:22 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Astropalaeobiology ----- Original Message ----- From: Davide Mana > > > >My immediate response to this sort of thing is "the great problem with > >exobiology is that it's a science based on zero evidence. Ha ha". > > And what's Roswell, then? > A Mi-Go trick? My point exactly, of course > You do not know what palaeontologists can do to get grant money - Oh yes I do. I've been there. Not palaeontology - High Energy Physics. The severity of the competition for grants, in any field, is proportional to the cost of experimentation, and if you think paleontologists have it hard . . . . > > But yes, it's all prety flimsy at the moment. > On the other hand, the science fiction fan in me cheers this kind of > initiatives, and I'd love myself to get a nice little chunk of research > money to develop hypotheses about fossil traces of life in the universe. Just imagine: one fossil. > > Sorry for the brutality. > It's been a long day. > Sure, it's good for you The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 3:39 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Daniel Harms wrote: > > Anyone (Mr. Harms, I'm glancing sidelong in your direction, then > > looking quickly away before you notice) care to furnish us with a list > > of the roughly predicted EndTimes? I know there are several conflicting > > reports on this--some >hav us all being wiped of soon, others put it > > thousands of years in the future. > > Getting back strictly to HPL, it does seem that humanity outlasts the > next few years. I've found at least two references to humans surviving > in the years 2169 ("Through the Gate...") and 2500 ("Shadow out of Time") > - though, for some reason, both of them are in Australia. > > It's difficult to tell the status of humanity in this time from the > hints given, but it sounds like they're still doing all right - though > little detail is given. (Another account - the vision of a future NYC > from "He" isn't all that reassuring, however.) Don't forget Mortal Kombat... Uh, I mean the cruel savage empire of the Tsan-Chan. Sounds like the ENDTIMES will have to be placed into that catch all category for all continuity errors: the converging strands of alternate timelines. The Man in Black is : winning the flawless victory. Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 3:43 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: RE: Inside the Deep Ones ----- Original Message ----- From: The Man in Black > > Remember, the longer they live, the larger they get, so only the puniest > show up to chuck spears at tommy-gun wielding Gunnery Sergeants. > A damn good point and I did forget it. They get bigger and bigger until they reach the size of the creature in "Dagon" - twenty meters or more long. And of course once they are more than three or four meters they can't get around on land no more. Square-cube rule and all. That explains a lot. So all the fighters and colonisers are the young DO. The ancients stay permanently in the deep sea, serving and worshipping Father Dagon (Cthulhu ?) and Mother Hydra. One assumes that the psychology suitable for an immortal (basically, extreme cowardice) develops only slowly: so the young can be brave and foolhardy, "earning their place", while the Old are never seen near land. Possibly only a fraction of the DO have *ever* made it to giant-immortal status - the others die in conflict or by accident while they are small and vunerable. Though even that doesn't rule out a life that could be very long by human standards, of course. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 3:50 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Deep One Society, above the surface On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 LizardRoi@aol.com wrote: > He leaves his genes scattered among prostitutes and farm girls and bar maids > and goes home, perhaps determined to move to California on the GI Bill. The > state of contraception being what it was at the time, you could have 2 or 3 > bastard demi-DOs, unaware of their heritage, and USC coeds on the horizon. I presume that some kind of "critical mass" of Deep One genes is needed. This explains why we haven't all turned into Deep Ones by now. We might want to look at Dogs and Mutts to get some examples. Of course, this opens the door for deliberate breeding. Maybe creepy Deep Ones just don't get laid. They are ugly, fishy smelling, sea-obsessed weirdos after all. > Someone on the list once mentioned, during the last DO city thread, that > intelligent DO cities (that's what we played with last time, living DO > cities, perhaps with a custom shoggoth as the heart\brain) I would say that a Starspawn is a better choice for a city center. > Mark McFadden > From the Submarine of Love Q: What's long and hard and full of seamen? A: Mark McFadden. Q: What's long and hard and black and full of semen? A: The Man in Black. The Man in Black is : full of it. Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:04 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [DG: THE GUN EATERS] On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, Michael Layne wrote: > On 26 April, 2000 AD, The Man in Black responded thus > to a message from Nick Brownlow: > >Next thing, he'll be wanting to drink tea out of the Cup in Black. > > Well, if he asks to do that, simply toss the Deadly Black Discus of Doom > (tm) his way! (In Greek mythology, didn't Perseus accidentally kill off his > father with a thrown Archaic Greek Discus of Doom (tm)?) I carry those kewl frisbee grenades from ZANG~! Technologies (CP2k20). "ZANG~!" making weird noises a part of your life! You can set the computer controlled bounce-rim for as many ricochets as needed. Then watch 'em explode, in every zip code! BTW, isn't Perseus' dad like, you know... Zeus? > (Who, in his much younger days, wondered why he couldn't duplicate any of > Captain America's shield tricks with a trash can lid...) It wasn't made of ZANG~! A floor wax and a dessert topping. The Man in Black is : not made of ZANG~! Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of MacMourna@aol.com Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:04 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Deep One Society, above the surface << Of course, this opens the door for deliberate breeding. >> <> I do not think a Deep One, if it felt so inclined, would worry about seducing a young man or woman. They could use certain magic spells to get what they needed, and barring that, would not be above rape. Maybe this has already been touched on, but I cannot help but to think that the Deep Ones, from time to time, would kidnap humans to use as breeding stock, taking them to underwater cities, storing them in air-pocket. Perhaps cities like Innsmouth and others become too inbred, and the Deep Ones occasionally need fresh blood. This need would force them to kidnap new humans, untainted with the Deep One blood. Bruce From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of The Man in Black [mib@cyberspace.org] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:11 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: [DG: THE GUN EATERS] On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 LizardRoi@aol.com wrote: > That whole running around in tights with a young male protege was so, > uh, Bohemian Grove, you know? Yeah. Better to be like us modern dark vigilante types who carry around huge arsenals of big guns, which just keep getting bigger and more exotic looking over the years. Hmm... I could've phrased that better. The Man in Black is : packing heat. Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum "Don't make me take off my sunglasses!" - Griss, Bringing Out the Dead http://www.carnwyffa.u-net.com [EMERALD HAMMER] From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:17 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: The Wolrd Ends...When? (was Re: DG: Re: Hoyle) ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Farnell > >Getting back strictly to HPL, it does seem that humanity outlasts the > >next few years. I've found at least two references to humans surviving > >in the years 2169 ("Through the Gate...") and 2500 ("Shadow out of Time") > > - though, for some reason, both of them are in Australia. > In "the Shadow Out Of Time" there are clear references to 1) "The cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, which is to come in 5000 AD" 2) "Nug-Soth, a magician of the dark conquerors of 16,000 AD" Unless you consider these cultures to be part of a "gradual Endtimes", (a defensible position, I think) there is some time yet . . The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Davide Mana [doctor.dee@libero.it] Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2000 4:18 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Astropalaeobiology Greetings. Just a little off-topic-ish moment for we University types to share old stories and get boozily pensive.... >Oh yes I do. I've been there. Not palaeontology - High Energy Physics. Oh, dear. H.E.P.,now - do you too feel the hot breath of the engineers waiting at your back to ransack your hut, burn down the village and steal your women, not to mention get the few jobs available? Sure we geologists do. >The severity of the competition for grants, in any field, is proportional >to the cost of experimentation, Put also human stupidity and bureaucratic brainlessness in the bill.... >and if you think paleontologists have it >hard . . . . 'But all this is kind of, like, useless, right?' Try facing that at the end of a lecture on your research project. We HAVE it hard. On the other hand, many go to Private Sector Development and strike the big time. >From which.... ObDG - the already mentioned University/MJ12 connection, and more. Considering how hard is to get grants for research, how easy it is for a reasonably ruthless organization to get mercenary minded scientists with the social conscience of a gnat to do dirty work? Do they really need to be attached tyo a university? Is New World Industries getting the better brains in the market, and the least morally restrained researchers? Is this bad or what? >> On the other hand, the science fiction fan in me cheers this kind of >> initiatives, and I'd love myself to get a nice little chunk of research >> money to develop hypotheses about fossil traces of life in the universe. > >Just imagine: one fossil. Yeah.... marine, invertebrate, planctonic predator, from hot waters. Just imagine the load of infos a simple determination like that (which is pretty simple and straightforward even if the beast is crippled) can give you about the world of origin. God, I love this science! And some claim they have it - bacteria in meteorites, they say. Problem is, the poor things are so mangled that they could be anything, from cosmic bacteria to secod hand popcorn. It's the old smoking gun story all over again - theories are worth less than the paper they are printed on without a solid, indisputable chunk of something. But given what we know about the Solar System (barring the infos in the Revelations of Glaaki and other such resopurces), the likelier fossils, if any, will be in the micro or nano scale, and therefore full in my field of research. Why stop dreaming? >Sure, it's good for you Then I need more of it ;> Cheers! Davide Mana Torino, Italy doctor.dee@libero.it The Ice Cave - http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/ice_cave.htm