This is truly incredible, wonderfully dense in vocabulary, metaphors, and visual imagery. It paints an incredible picture of a hellscape of man's own creation. These awe inspiring, in the truest sense of the word, acts of creation turned into weapons of destruction in ways the mortal mind trembles to comprehend. It's a crime that few responses have come close to scratching the surface of the literary stratigraphy in the opening posts. The jargon is excellent, truly high grade esoteric conceptual sci-fi and fantasy terms. I feel like Kirkbride hit the keyboard after consuming Disco Elysium, Eclipse Phase, Alpha Centauri, a few more books on Buddhist and Hindu theology, and an ethical amount of LSD.
In a word: fucking peak.
The terminology is dense, and I think the posts deserve a bit of a break down.
Koinon a Greek word. It means common thing, but should be thought of as terms of public and community. It is the polis of the city state, the demos of a democracy. It's unsurprising then that Koinon appears very Greek inspired. This universal brotherhood of mankind is all embracing, yet only psykers can be siblings. The mass appearance of psykers is interesting, though that assumes they're very common. As a blank, Normal is the lowest of the low, yet at least not a slave, in term only perhaps, we shall see. Isolation is an interesting punishment because of the subtle differences between it and alienation. I feel the former is the lack of community in the first place, while the latter implies an explicit reject from a community, though this is perhaps splitting hairs.
It is amusing that despite being stratified, Koinon appears to champion itself as a liberator compared to the god-kings and god-machines ruling the land. Orphaned Copies is an interesting word as well. I wonder if that's perhaps clones spat out of vats with no direction or maybe infomorphs separated from their bodies and stuck in virtual space? I don't know what a reality-pen is, other than a worrying name. The ultimate tablet/ipad kid: hook us up to the Matrix to hold us? Normal is a member of a polis, but not a citizen of it. At least though, there is a place for blanks in it, even if it's not a good one.
Titanagalbat's vibe is impeccable. Someone pulled a God-Emperor on a smaller scale, a powerful warlord and perhaps a psyker or "simple" super soldier carved a bloody path across the continent, forging an awesome empire in His wake. Mecharajas is likely derived from the term Maharajas, a title in India, basically a prince. Mah simply replaced with Mech because they have giant ass DAoT Titans as warmounts. It could also be a reference to Rajas in Hinduism. It's less likely, but worth mentioning cause it's kind of fun. It's a philosophical and psychological concept, meant to be understood in tangtem with other ideas. From wikipedia cause I won't pretend to be an expert on it, "Rajas is the quality of passion, activity, neither good nor bad and sometimes either, self-centeredness, egoistic, individualizing, driven, moving, dynamic." Mecha-Rajas is then a title apotheosis, one who's perhaps bonded with or tamed the ego of their throne-titan and bent it to their will or achieved some heightened state of consciousness and achieved some form of enlightenment.
It's a very spiritual society. Monad in this context refers to the deity, GOD, in its absolute perfect state, almost the platonic idea of a god. Gnosis is spiritual knowledge, secrets, and truth, and in this case the disdain for digital uploads/infomorphs reveals perhaps an ironic invocation of the term by the Titanagalbat. Gnostics believe that the physical world is a trap crafted by the Demiurge, a being that is either god or usurped god or tricked god, etc. They regard the spiritual metaphysical world the real world, untainted by physical reality. The Bronze King's destruction of Freespace thus makes him a Demiurge like figure, trapping his enemies in prisons of flesh and steel to deny them the world of pure information/imagination.
I feel like Chehrazad made an insightful post about Kora's Progeny. The monastic forest communes give major Gaian Stepdaughters' vibes.
The skills have some great language in them too. It's telling that red, Appetite, does not necessary mean physical body like it does in Disco Elysium. It's not exactly our strength, but primal urges and instincts. It's very interesting that Reliquary and Noosphere provide different information. I dig it, honestly. Noosphere is perhaps more bookish, encyclopedic in its knowledge, much like the Disco Elysium skill. Reliquary doesn't have a direct one to one, which I like. It's a sense of community, maybe similar to Esprit De Corps and others. I dig it. Sacred Geometry is fun too Conceptualization and Visual Calculus merged together. Symbols maintain a lot of meaning. The mind wraps its secrets in symbols.
A skill that stands out to is Axiomatic Chamber. That's ominous as fuck.
And now, the most difficult choice, where to place Normal. The unfortunate blank living at the quite literal end of history as society has collapsed numerous times before, and only 'recovered' 'recently.' I can see the appeal of all of them. The ancient wonders of the world vibe Titanagalbat's got going on is sick, but I think I'm going to go with Hellenic inspired psychic republic of mankind. There is a great deal of irony in coming from a society literally called "community" and our punishment is "isolation."
[X] Koinon
Because we're a blank. We ain't no soul.
In a word: fucking peak.
The terminology is dense, and I think the posts deserve a bit of a break down.
Koinon a Greek word. It means common thing, but should be thought of as terms of public and community. It is the polis of the city state, the demos of a democracy. It's unsurprising then that Koinon appears very Greek inspired. This universal brotherhood of mankind is all embracing, yet only psykers can be siblings. The mass appearance of psykers is interesting, though that assumes they're very common. As a blank, Normal is the lowest of the low, yet at least not a slave, in term only perhaps, we shall see. Isolation is an interesting punishment because of the subtle differences between it and alienation. I feel the former is the lack of community in the first place, while the latter implies an explicit reject from a community, though this is perhaps splitting hairs.
It is amusing that despite being stratified, Koinon appears to champion itself as a liberator compared to the god-kings and god-machines ruling the land. Orphaned Copies is an interesting word as well. I wonder if that's perhaps clones spat out of vats with no direction or maybe infomorphs separated from their bodies and stuck in virtual space? I don't know what a reality-pen is, other than a worrying name. The ultimate tablet/ipad kid: hook us up to the Matrix to hold us? Normal is a member of a polis, but not a citizen of it. At least though, there is a place for blanks in it, even if it's not a good one.
Titanagalbat's vibe is impeccable. Someone pulled a God-Emperor on a smaller scale, a powerful warlord and perhaps a psyker or "simple" super soldier carved a bloody path across the continent, forging an awesome empire in His wake. Mecharajas is likely derived from the term Maharajas, a title in India, basically a prince. Mah simply replaced with Mech because they have giant ass DAoT Titans as warmounts. It could also be a reference to Rajas in Hinduism. It's less likely, but worth mentioning cause it's kind of fun. It's a philosophical and psychological concept, meant to be understood in tangtem with other ideas. From wikipedia cause I won't pretend to be an expert on it, "Rajas is the quality of passion, activity, neither good nor bad and sometimes either, self-centeredness, egoistic, individualizing, driven, moving, dynamic." Mecha-Rajas is then a title apotheosis, one who's perhaps bonded with or tamed the ego of their throne-titan and bent it to their will or achieved some heightened state of consciousness and achieved some form of enlightenment.
It's a very spiritual society. Monad in this context refers to the deity, GOD, in its absolute perfect state, almost the platonic idea of a god. Gnosis is spiritual knowledge, secrets, and truth, and in this case the disdain for digital uploads/infomorphs reveals perhaps an ironic invocation of the term by the Titanagalbat. Gnostics believe that the physical world is a trap crafted by the Demiurge, a being that is either god or usurped god or tricked god, etc. They regard the spiritual metaphysical world the real world, untainted by physical reality. The Bronze King's destruction of Freespace thus makes him a Demiurge like figure, trapping his enemies in prisons of flesh and steel to deny them the world of pure information/imagination.
I feel like Chehrazad made an insightful post about Kora's Progeny. The monastic forest communes give major Gaian Stepdaughters' vibes.
The skills have some great language in them too. It's telling that red, Appetite, does not necessary mean physical body like it does in Disco Elysium. It's not exactly our strength, but primal urges and instincts. It's very interesting that Reliquary and Noosphere provide different information. I dig it, honestly. Noosphere is perhaps more bookish, encyclopedic in its knowledge, much like the Disco Elysium skill. Reliquary doesn't have a direct one to one, which I like. It's a sense of community, maybe similar to Esprit De Corps and others. I dig it. Sacred Geometry is fun too Conceptualization and Visual Calculus merged together. Symbols maintain a lot of meaning. The mind wraps its secrets in symbols.
A skill that stands out to is Axiomatic Chamber. That's ominous as fuck.
And now, the most difficult choice, where to place Normal. The unfortunate blank living at the quite literal end of history as society has collapsed numerous times before, and only 'recovered' 'recently.' I can see the appeal of all of them. The ancient wonders of the world vibe Titanagalbat's got going on is sick, but I think I'm going to go with Hellenic inspired psychic republic of mankind. There is a great deal of irony in coming from a society literally called "community" and our punishment is "isolation."
[X] Koinon
Oh, I love shivers. The absence of its closest relative so far is intentional and important
Because we're a blank. We ain't no soul.
