Quote from: Catelf;631878So, my point is:
Racism and similar functions is the only thing that has defined the Deep Ones as genocidal as a species.
That do not mean that they are.
But, if you think that they must be in order for the Mythos to be "correct" .... then there is just no point in arguing this line of thought.

I don't know if you can really look at the Deep Ones or other antediluvian races as just another ethnic minority though. They do after all worship Cthulhu as well as a couple of other deities whose avowed goal is to eat humanity.

My own pet theory (after one too many eldritch tome consultations) is that Cthulhu was among the first intelligent species to arise in the chaos of the early cosmos, which evolved ultimately to draw both nourishment and knowledge from other intelligences, the last word in brain food.

"The void laughs again, unfriendly: "There is life eternal within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death, you know.''

Possibly this is the end result of all amoral species, merged into one entity, like a singularity, but across multidimensional planes. The ability to manipulate intelligence and minds for sustenance could be called "eating souls". This entity would have completely mastered technologies so far beyond our current understanding that it would make FTL drives look like banging two stones together to make fire.

Ah the joys of evolution across astrological time scales.

The Deep Ones would be a more recent species who while having mastered trivial stuff like immortality and many scientific advances are still very far from the level of singularity reached by the Cthulhu-mind, while recognising it for what it is, and make use of human "sacrifices" to study its means of assimilating intelligences in the hopes of some day being able to do the same. Similarly their merging people with their own species is another part of that process.

They walk a fine line between posing as ignorant supplicants and studiously building their knowledge over millennia of millennia in order to ascend to the next level, regardless of the cost - it is entirely possible that becoming such an entity requires conditions only found in the primal universe, so if need be they will destroy this universe to achieve their ends.

So while they would be amoral and utterly alien, as far as humans are concerned they should be treated with extreme suspicion and generally shot on sight. They might not have any particular problem with humans, but they'll wipe out the species without hesitation if it advances their agenda one iota.

There could be a compelling game about PCs as deep one researchers or as rebels when the order comes down to extinguish the human race as part of experiment nyugglathar'alnoan (X3482-A in English).

For me, I look at D&D through a somewhat OD&D lens, with the paradigm that we mash up Vance, Howard, Burroughs, Tolkein, Greek mythology, etc. and make an adventure game out of it.

The Mythos, just like orcs and Dracula, are perfectly good game pieces for D&D.

Quote from: Catelf;631878But, really, considering the "fuel" used for the Mythos, namely rampant fear of the unknown + racism ....
A new take on the Mythos would be to see it for what it is ... a racism-driven nightmare that isn't really true. Thing is, today, the tables have seemingly turned to instead pinpoint the racism as the bad thing.

Depending on where you live, that may have been happening for many decades.

The underlying themes of fear of the unknown, isolation, feelings of helplessness as the world changes about you to become a place you do not recognize, horror as changes occur to yourself that you have no control over - these themes are timeless.

I know I am risking opening a can of worms here, but taking the labels and descriptions of things - the tropes - from one milieu and then grafting them onto another produces something else entirely. Dropping Cthulhu, Hastur and Yog Sothoth on Monster Island is more Kaiju Smackdown than Lovecraft.

Quote from: The Traveller;631918I don't know if you can really look at the Deep Ones or other antediluvian races as just another ethnic minority though. They do after all worship Cthulhu as well as a couple of other deities whose avowed goal is to eat humanity.

There are three possible other points to this argument, still, that i can make:
One:
That they worship Cthulhu en masse is not nessecarily correct either, it is just another part used to make it horriffic.
After all, Witches were once belived by "christians" to worship Satan ... and they never really did.
Two:
For all their knowledge, the Deep Ones may not be immune to mob mentality or group preassure ...
Essentially, they might worship Cthulhu seemingly en masse the same way "all germans" supported Hitler during and before WWII ... wich is not very much at all, he just seem like a great leader, not fully understanding what it may lead to in a longer run.
Three:
The situation with Set.
You might not know what i mean with this ... but bear with me.
It seems Set originally was a fertility god, one of the good ones ...
But then, a cult with grusome practices started worship set, practically turning that divinity into a malevolent entity.
Perhaps the Deep ones used to worship a "good diety", but it was gradually replaced by Cthulhu, for some reason.

Again, i know this goes against the alleged "truths" about the Mythos, so it is not an option that seem usable by hardhore mythos fans.

Quote from: Lynn;632238Depending on where you live, that may have been happening for many decades.

The underlying themes of fear of the unknown, isolation, feelings of helplessness as the world changes about you to become a place you do not recognize, horror as changes occur to yourself that you have no control over - these themes are timeless.

I know I am risking opening a can of worms here, but taking the labels and descriptions of things - the tropes - from one milieu and then grafting them onto another produces something else entirely. Dropping Cthulhu, Hastur and Yog Sothoth on Monster Island is more Kaiju Smackdown than Lovecraft.

I agree about the Kaiju Smackdown, but ... when i think of it, is the Great Cthulhu really that much more than a giant monster that stinks immesureably?
It is said to cause Horror, insanity, but how much of that really comes from the size?
Imagine imagining a sky-scraper high monster in a time where not even skyscrapers existed ... would that not be insanity-like?
Then add to the fact, that that monstrum is the representant of most or all that you fear ....
It really would nearly cause insanity to even imagine that.
There is the "extra-dimensional" thing, perhaps, but that is really just another part of the things that are feared, not understood.

Today, we are so used to giant monsters and mecha in fiction, that we barely lift an eybrow at it, even thinking of things like "Kaiju Smackdown".
We understand enough of the idea now, it isn't horrifying anymore.
But, Remember that Godzilla is a God, and many monster-battling big mecha is also referred to as Gods in japanese.

My point?

It seems the Great Cthulhu isn't really much of a threat seen from a Kaiju perspective, it is more like all the things before that is far more terrifying.

Quote from: RPGPundit;631860The deep ones aren't "co-existing" or "living in relative peace", they're hiding out and biding their time for when they can destroy all of civilization.

Quote from: The Traveller;631918I don't know if you can really look at the Deep Ones or other antediluvian races as just another ethnic minority though. They do after all worship Cthulhu as well as a couple of other deities whose avowed goal is to eat humanity.

The above works as an interpretation of the stories, and is probably closest to what Lovecraft intended.  

However, I think that one can run a game with a different interpretation that still fit the text of Lovecraft's stories.  The easiest is allowing that narrators like Zadok could be wrong about things that they had no first-hand knowledge of.  Even without this, though, I think there is a lot of range.  The Deep Ones could worship Cthulhu in the same way that human religions would worship scary-seeming figures like Kali, Shiva, or the Horned God.

Quote from: Rogerd;629397Fiction-wise a Xeelee would be perfect Lovecraft material, a 19th Century person seeing one run off screaming.

Hell yeah, the Xeelee are perfectly Lovecraftian - an intelligent species as old as the universe, having nigh-omnipotent power and inscrutable motives (well a war against an antimatter universe basically) it doesn't talk about? Oh yes. That the Xeelee are basically benign, or at least non-evil, doesn't really change that, either. They're weird enough, and cosmic enough.

Also Xeelee is pronounced lots like "Seelie" wich got me thinking...

Machen. Arthur Machen. I love his works, wich while predating HPL are pretty Lovecraftian (the Deep Ones are basically HPL's take on the Little People, not to mention Dunwich Horror's debt to The Great God Pan), and think that say focusing on HPL's Dunwich Horror and its Old Ones, with Machen's works as an extra, would be an interesting take. This isn't entirely my idea. There was a TBP thread about making an alternative CoC setting - "Yog-Sothoth Mythos" - mostly based around Dunwich Horror, years and years back.

Quote from: Catelf;632314There are three possible other points to this argument, still, that i can make:
One:
That they worship Cthulhu en masse is not nessecarily correct either, it is just another part used to make it horriffic.
After all, Witches were once belived by "christians" to worship Satan ... and they never really did.
Two:
For all their knowledge, the Deep Ones may not be immune to mob mentality or group preassure ...
Essentially, they might worship Cthulhu seemingly en masse the same way "all germans" supported Hitler during and before WWII ... wich is not very much at all, he just seem like a great leader, not fully understanding what it may lead to in a longer run.
Three:
The situation with Set.
You might not know what i mean with this ... but bear with me.
It seems Set originally was a fertility god, one of the good ones ...
But then, a cult with grusome practices started worship set, practically turning that divinity into a malevolent entity.
Perhaps the Deep ones used to worship a "good diety", but it was gradually replaced by Cthulhu, for some reason.

Well what I'm saying is that it properly speaking isn't worship at all, except in that the actions of prayer and worship might create measurable scientific effects. To our eyes it might look like sacrifice when it's really a very advanced form of experimentation.

Even more entertaining is to consider how this works with older religions - Buddhism for example holds that it is the stress of death which creates the energy for rebirth. An entity that can capture the information structures we call spirits and cause them to die over and over again would be a thing fuelled by fear, growing ever more powerful with each civilisation it consumes. This has wider implications for beasties like vampires and those who feed on death as well of course.

It follows a kind of monstrous logic.

Quote from: Catelf;632314I agree about the Kaiju Smackdown, but ... when i think of it, is the Great Cthulhu really that much more than a giant monster that stinks immesureably?

Not to keep banging on about it, but the Cthulhu depicted in "A Colder War" causes whole continents to go insane simply by waking up. How this jives with the Cthulhu that was rammed by a steamship, maybe it wasn't fully awake then. I think the concept has evolved from the fragility of the human mind in the face of the incredible to a more general purpose cosmic horror.

Quote from: jhkim;632352However, I think that one can run a game with a different interpretation that still fit the text of Lovecraft's stories.  The easiest is allowing that narrators like Zadok could be wrong about things that they had no first-hand knowledge of.  Even without this, though, I think there is a lot of range.  The Deep Ones could worship Cthulhu in the same way that human religions would worship scary-seeming figures like Kali, Shiva, or the Horned God.

Oh sure you can do what you like, but the Dances with Wolves/Lolita/Avatar thing has been done to death in my opinion. For a change in this interpretation, humanity is the hapless native population at the mercy of a vastly superior species. Admittedly maybe not that much of change, but different strokes I guess.

Quote from: The Traveller;632375Not to keep banging on about it, but the Cthulhu depicted in "A Colder War" causes whole continents to go insane simply by waking up. How this jives with the Cthulhu that was rammed by a steamship, maybe it wasn't fully awake then. I think the concept has evolved from the fragility of the human mind in the face of the incredible to a more general purpose cosmic horror.

How old is the story "A colder war"?
The title makes me think of The Cold War, which would place it in a time when the definition "The Cold War" had been established, meaning King Kong and even Godzilla had gotten fairly known in the western psyche.

Ok, it may be notably older than that, but if it isn't, then it is obvious that that writer had understood more about the workings of horror, rather than just letting the climax be a giant monster ...

Quote from: The Traveller;632375Oh sure you can do what you like, but the Dances with Wolves/Lolita/Avatar thing has been done to death in my opinion. For a change in this interpretation, humanity is the hapless native population at the mercy of a vastly superior species. Admittedly maybe not that much of change, but different strokes I guess.

Different strokes indeed ...
It is like ... when the odd and the weird do something bad, they are worshipping an evil diety, but when humans, usually of the abramic beliefs, does exactly the same, they are "a few rotten eggs", or doing "what has to be done", or even worse: "doing what is right" ...
Really, if making a mirror-version(really?) of that, one could say that the actions at Wounded Knee (i think it was) really was instigated by white men that was bent on sacrificing women and children to whatever depraved god they was worshipping ....

Quote from: Catelf;632399How old is the story "A colder war"?
The title makes me think of The Cold War, which would place it in a time when the definition "The Cold War" had been established, meaning King Kong and even Godzilla had gotten fairly known in the western psyche.

Ok, it may be notably older than that, but if it isn't, then it is obvious that that writer had understood more about the workings of horror, rather than just letting the climax be a giant monster ...

You can read it for yourself here if you like, for free.

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

Stross put that together back in 1997.

Quote from: Catelf;632399Different strokes indeed ...
It is like ... when the odd and the weird do something bad, they are worshipping an evil diety, but when humans, usually of the abramic beliefs, does exactly the same, they are "a few rotten eggs", or doing "what has to be done", or even worse: "doing what is right" ...
Really, if making a mirror-version(really?) of that, one could say that the actions at Wounded Knee (i think it was) really was instigated by white men that was bent on sacrificing women and children to whatever depraved god they was worshipping ....

You're thinking about them as just another kind of human, this is the problem. They really aren't.

As I said though, there's no consensus and no need for one, do what you like.

Quote from: The Traveller;632403You can read it for yourself here if you like, for free.

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm

Stross put that together back in 1997.

So it was done in -97?
That explains why Great C is far more powerful in that one than in any of the original stories ...

So no, i think the big C that was rammed by a steamship was fully awake ...
And by that standard, there has been a lot of Kaiju of far more direct power than Cthulhu ...

The one in "A colder war" is then a different version than the original.

Quote from: The Traveller;632403You're thinking about them as just another kind of human, this is the problem. They really aren't.

As I said though, there's no consensus and no need for one, do what you like.

You keep forgetting that ... darkskinned africans ... was long considered to not be humans .....

I look upon most beings as i look on humans .... they are not inherently evil.
If bad things are done, there is a good reason for it, but what is a good reason for one, may not be a good reason for another.
Also, if they doesn't have "broodmentality", there are at least individuals of differing opinions.... and even if they do, then differnt broods may have different mentalities, as well ...

Quote from: The Traveller;632403You're thinking about them as just another kind of human, this is the problem. They really aren't.

As I said though, there's no consensus and no need for one, do what you like.

Deep Ones aren't "really" anything.  

I think there is plenty of room for them to be distinctly non-human, and yet not be the stock villain interpretation that is most obvious.

Wait...what does Dances of Wolves and Avatar have to do with Lolita?



He must have for some reason mistaken Lolita with Ferngully.

which is kinda a creepy mistake, actually.

Quote from: The Traveller;632375Oh sure you can do what you like, but the Dances with Wolves/Lolita/Avatar thing has been done to death in my opinion. For a change in this interpretation, humanity is the hapless native population at the mercy of a vastly superior species. Admittedly maybe not that much of change, but different strokes I guess.

I was picturing something much more like the latter, where the Deep Ones establish a public foothold and there is a tense Cold War between the humans and the Deep Ones, possibly with some places on the borders.  I'm not sure how you read Dances With Wolves - because I mentioned old religions, maybe?

Quote from: jhkim;632518I was picturing something much more like the latter, where the Deep Ones establish a public foothold and there is a tense Cold War between the humans and the Deep Ones, possibly with some places on the borders.  I'm not sure how you read Dances With Wolves - because I mentioned old religions, maybe?

It's the same encroaching outsiders theme:

QuoteTen Bears: [in Lakota; subtitled] The white men who wore this came around the time of my grandfather's grandfather. Eventually we drove them out. Then the Mexicans came. But they do not come here any more. In my own time, the Texans. They have been like all the others. They take without asking. But I think you are right. I think they will keep coming. When I think of that, I look at this helmet. I don't know if we are ready for these people. Our country is all that we have, and we will fight to keep it.

Almost a quarter century, sigh. The way I would view Deep One sacrifices of humans is the same way rats might watch another rat being killed in a science lab. It's not possible to deal with such beings on an even footing, all you can do is kidnap their blacksmiths and metallurgists and hope that the braintrust can figure out any of it and turn it into industry before things go too far.

Quote from: The Traveller;632540The way I would view Deep One sacrifices of humans is the same way rats might watch another rat being killed in a science lab. It's not possible to deal with such beings on an even footing, all you can do is kidnap their blacksmiths and metallurgists and hope that the braintrust can figure out any of it and turn it into industry before things go too far.

I can't tell what you're saying here.  But it sounds like you're viewing Deep Ones as an evil that has to be attacked.  

That works fine as a view, and I've run it that way before.  

However, for this alternate approach to Lovecraft, I think I'd take them as an alien civilization that have their own reasons for things that aren't necessarily good for mankind, but also aren't predicated just on being as evil to humans as possible.  I'm still pondering what I would make of what Zadok described as sacrifices.