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Last Light of a Dark Age (Warhammer 29K/Disco Elysium)

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IronKnightofSilv said:
Every day, we take a step closer to the goal of winning the yandere olympics, and I am all for it. Let the world drown in more love than it ever imagined possible. Also, as far as I know, there has never been a good example of love and mercy in Warhammer. The closest ever to that was Shalya in WF, the god of healing and sole provider of mental health care, who incidentally was the daughter of Morr, the Warhammer god of death. Also, I see you @Cetashwayo and your desire to create easily hateable characters with cute redeeming traits that tempt voters into hoping they are spared. One is a one-off (Gen), twice is a coincidence (Pennitence), and three is a pattern (D5h).
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People are complex. That doesn't make them morally ambiguous, but it does mean there is nothing inhuman about being an atrocious being.
 
What strange and beautiful things there are in every update of this Quest. I don't understand everything happening, but gosh darn if it doesn't tickle me brain.

[X] Dreamsong: Hopes, dreams, beliefs, and aspirations. The song of the shape, and the song of the dreamer. Gain visions of the wishes and ambitions of others.
 
[X] Dreamsong: Hopes, dreams, beliefs, and aspirations. The song of the shape, and the song of the dreamer. Gain visions of the wishes and ambitions of others.
 
[X] Whalesong: Time and space, history and geology. The song of the whale, and the song of the eater. Gain visions of the causes and material conditions of others.
 
[X] Whalesong: Time and space, history and geology. The song of the whale, and the song of the eater. Gain visions of the causes and material conditions of others.

Time to learn what these whales are singing about.
 
[X] Snakesong: Hatred and passion, emotion and suffering. The song of the snake, and the song of the warp. Gain visions of the feelings and the desires of others.
 
[X] Whalesong: Time and space, history and geology. The song of the whale, and the song of the eater. Gain visions of the causes and material conditions of others.
 
Trying to decide if finding your police partner hungover in a crummy hotel having just achieved enlightenment is funnier than finding them with one shoe and amnesia.
 
Try speed running the quest to restore god only to discover that god is dead, the throne is empty, and everyone is trying to revive their candidate's (still living?)corpse, only to be stopped by the divine equivalents of an Uncle Sam "I want you!" poster. While the prime souls are great characters, I still see them as obstacles.
 
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"Yes, yes, we are all made of strings. Now can you string together a meaningful report, or perhaps a sentence about something other than the true nature of existence in our cursed world?"
 
[X] Snakesong: Hatred and passion, emotion and suffering. The song of the snake, and the song of the warp. Gain visions of the feelings and the desires of others.

I think Harmony can do more with this, since understanding the emotions and feelings of others is one of her strong suits. Though I do think Dreamsong is better for helping to determine if someone is trustworthy.

UARTman said:
So, uh, this is about our alter-egos, right? Pandora had Eleusia, and Roxana had that mecharaja I can't remember the name of right now? It would be a honking-ass reveal if it turns out they also have all this stuff going on as well (I can't help but notice how many thematic-and-power votes recently have been out of three options), but I personally kind of doubt it. Still, it's good to know who would our Sympathy-figure be had we chosen other origins.
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Imagine if while Harmony is dealing with a Dreamshape, Pandora and Roxana are being separately preyed on by a snake and a whale.
 
Even if this ended now it would still be one of the best things I've read in the past couple years. I love how it flips the nihilistic themes of Warhammer 40K on its head and engages with the spiritual content that Warhammer nominally has, but doesn't really seem to know what to do with, beyond its flanderized semi-orientalist Catholic aesthetic. But it still feels like it takes place within the same universe just from a different perspective. As someone who practiced American secular Buddhism in the past and is now kind of getting into spirituality from an academic perspective (and consequently Eastern religions borrowed from by Western mysticism), I was kinda nervous about this most recent update but found myself almost brought to tears at how you connected the idea of compassion and no-self/impermanence and just how freaking scary that is, and how if applied wholeheartedly it upends systems and society. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I can tell you definitely know your stuff about the themes you're drawing on and I really admire the way your writing integrates it into its narrative. it's honestly inspiring me to maybe try and do more in my own writing. I'm really looking forward to reading more.
 
Incredible update...and I gotta admit that haemic ice joke got me good, goddammit

[X] Whalesong: Time and space, history and geology. The song of the whale, and the song of the eater. Gain visions of the causes and material conditions of others.

Reminded of our promise to the chandlers, also adds a different dimension to our "social toolkit"
 
mynameisyouQQQ said:
Even if this ended now it would still be one of the best things I've read in the past couple years. I love how it flips the nihilistic themes of Warhammer 40K on its head and engages with the spiritual content that Warhammer nominally has, but doesn't really seem to know what to do with, beyond its flanderized semi-orientalist Catholic aesthetic. But it still feels like it takes place within the same universe just from a different perspective. As someone who practiced American secular Buddhism in the past and is now kind of getting into spirituality from an academic perspective (and consequently Eastern religions borrowed from by Western mysticism), I was kinda nervous about this most recent update but found myself almost brought to tears at how you connected the idea of compassion and no-self/impermanence and just how freaking scary that is, and how if applied wholeheartedly it upends systems and society. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I can tell you definitely know your stuff about the themes you're drawing on and I really admire the way your writing integrates it into its narrative. it's honestly inspiring me to maybe try and do more in my own writing. I'm really looking forward to reading more.
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Thank you kindly, it means a lot. I actually started getting into Buddhism partly because of this quest lol, I was nervously trying to understand Nagarjuna as I wrote this.
 
[X] Snakesong: Hatred and passion, emotion and suffering. The song of the snake, and the song of the warp. Gain visions of the feelings and the desires of others.
 
[X] Snakesong: Hatred and passion, emotion and suffering. The song of the snake, and the song of the warp. Gain visions of the feelings and the desires of others.

Understanding immediate wants feels more revealing to help with proselytizing selflessness.
 
Also, if you are worried that when you wake up you'll be too godly: don't be. The modifier here for the roll was very specific to the circumstances, and the consequences of Abyssal Pressure if you fail a roll are, ah, different, in the materium.

You will not be waking up and taking names. You should probably be more concerned about your blood alcohol level. This is not the end of Harmony's character progression
:)

And because I was asked on a discord I'll post something here, on DE and Harmony being "special" (and whether that is concerning from a thematic perspective):

Another thing I was actually thinking about when writing Harmony was specifically thinking about Innocences like Dolores Dei, and what they mean. 40K is a universe where an Innocence would not be like, a metaphorical being but literally true. That's interesting to me and something I wanted to explore. You can see how much here the "legend" of Dolores Dei has very little to do with Harmony at all. You're a mid-level officer propelled to higher office by your skill as a soldier who does some very controversial things, achieves the status of an ace, and then disappears after the war and her deification.

Insofar as anyone is 'special', they basically get lucky with their material conditions, like Lenin or Napoleon did. Men make their history but they don't it as they please, etc. It's just that in 40K your material conditions also include spiritual conditions, because there's no functional division and souls are real. It's hard to convey this because Harmony has absolutely no sociological education whatsoever, so things which are contingent seem a lot more miraculous.
 
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Regency said:
Incredible update...and I gotta admit that haemic ice joke got me good, goddammit

[X] Whalesong: Time and space, history and geology. The song of the whale, and the song of the eater. Gain visions of the causes and material conditions of others.

Reminded of our promise to the chandlers, also adds a different dimension to our "social toolkit"
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Yeah, that one got a good laugh out of me as well. It was just the ticket to snapping Harm out of a sad thought spiral. Also, the horror of selfness can be that how can you kill something that lacks a self? If a self has no self but is connected to others who worship it, then is there not the potential of it spreading like a memetic virus or manifesting in a new body when destroyed? Come to think of it, Event Horizon keeps saying Harmony will never die. At first, I thought this meant she would become a god, but as we know, gods can in fact die, but you know what can't die and are sometimes referred to as gods when they are not? C'tan.
 
[X] Whalesong: Time and space, history and geology. The song of the whale, and the song of the eater. Gain visions of the causes and material conditions of others.
RHETORIC: Finally! Now that all that religious nonsense is out of the way we can get back to the most important thing: Building Communism.
INFOWAR: You're not supposed to be here! Go on, scram, go back to a game where you're contextually and narratively appropriate!
RHETORIC: You're not supposed to be here either! This is just some random comment trying to be clever. Look, it's not even getting our character voices right!
THE NARRATOR — None of us are "supposed" to be here. We don't even exist. We're just a clever textual metaphor used to personify abstracts concepts of thought.
INFOWAR: One more crack like that and you're out of here!
THE NARRATOR — No, please! I have three kids!
 
Cetashwayo said:
You're a mid-level officer propelled to higher office by your skill as a soldier who does some very controversial things, achieves the status of an ace, and then disappears after the war and her deification.
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In a universe built on the rule of cool, belief and strong emotions run amok, and people who would rather believe lies with every ounce of their soul rather than break under the truth that they and all their sufferings do not matter beyond fueling the narrative, are lies not the metaphysical duct tape holding everything togethor?
 
Cetashwayo said:
Thank you kindly, it means a lot. I actually started getting into Buddhism partly because of this quest lol, I was nervously trying to understand Nagarjuna as I wrote this.
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If overviews are helpful for you before you dive into stuff like that, I can recommend the history of philosophy without any gaps podcast. It's by an actual philosophy professor and they have a fairly complete series on India and have covered lots of medieval European and Islamic philosophy. Plus each episode is granular enough that it's fairly short and has a list of sources and further reading.
 
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