"Unravel the hyperconspiracy" is a good motivation for dero to have. I suppose if I was running a dero adventure I'd be asking myself how they planned to accomplish this goal.
What seemingly mundane human activities are actually inflicted on us as bizarre dero experiments? Maybe the players encounter a madman who's running around trying to convince everyone that pigs are obviously sapient and that underground dwarves are compelling us to torture and eat them using secret rays. Or the sun never actually goes down and "night" is just an enforced pause in which the dero can come out and meddle with our organs.
d10 table of things that are actually dero conspiracies:
1. Pigs. See above.
2. Night. Also see above.
3. Aging. Just pick any Francis E Dec rant--the dero surgically inflict the ravages of age on us to keep us from eternal life as immortal reincarnating beings, and keep us distracted in general. Also they think it's hilarious.
4. Metal-working. Stone tools are far superior to anything made of metal, but the dero want to keep that power for themselves. The cheap flimsy iron blades they provide us with can't stand up to a flint spear, but all evidence to the contrary gets erased.
5. Gender. All sentient beings are naturally hermaphroditic. In order to control population numbers and limit self-spawned offspring, the dero implanted the illusion of different biological sexes. Gender roles were added as a sadistic twist that got out of hand.
6. Literacy. Whenever you think you're "reading", you're actually going into a hypnotic trance as dero programming encodes the message into your mind, as well as whatever post-hypnotic suggestions they want. The only way to be free is to unlearn reading, or go blind.
7. Domesticated animals. Every cat, dog, or hawk is actually a severely surgically altered human, after their mind was so fried by the dero they could no longer operate as one. We care for them and clean up after them because the dero would rather not do that.
8. Humour. Have you ever wondered what it is that makes nonsense--meaningless information--enjoyable, or why "funny" things make you convulse and wheeze? That's right, it's a dero scheme, a prototype for inducing new and stranger emotions in us.
9. The surface. The entire world is a series of starving Veins after some great catastrophe, or possibly all non-Vein adapted life was created by a magical/mutative fluke. If you serve the dero well, they'll hand out a hallucination of sun and food as a reward.
10. The dero conspiracy. You see, the air looms mutated their users into degenerate monsters that are addicted to air loom usage, but there's only been one user and he creates the hallucination that there are more using the air loom, but the air loom itself has no hallucination power because it's just a fissure of toxic gas that gave him psychic powers and he used the psychic powers to make a real air loom which he got addicted to and it's at this point you notice that my eyes no longer seem to be focused on what's in front of me and blood is pooling at their corners.
9) would be a good lead-in to a Veins campaign. The players realise their idyllic sunlit village is actually a dero concentration camp deep underground and have to get back to the "real" surface, assuming it exists.
Love the dErO, possibly my favorite part of the original book, although I'm an absolute sucker for postmodernist, metatextual tricks like the Conspiracy Pills. My wishlist for them basically amounts to "even more of that please". I recall that, when planning a potential Veins campaign, I spent a bunch of time cruising ebay looking for a properly odd and obscure-looking random machine part, with the idea of mailing it to one of my players with desperate scrawled pleas to figure out a way to get this actual physical object into the hands of their game character.
This new gross ogreish (Harkonnenish?) version is a surprise, as I always pictured them as D&D's deep gnomes / svirfneblin crossed with Terrence McKenna's machine elves. Insofar as it's possible to picture that. Of course since you didn't describe them physically at all in the original book, anything went. Maybe I only thought the dErO look like that because that's what they wanted me to think they look like. Maybe now they want me to think they look grotesque, and have taken the advanced step of making you think they look like that, so you'll write it into the book for me to read.
This sounds plausible to me. I expect the dero are actually kind and beautiful. We should give them our organs to further their no doubt benevolent goals.
There's an interesting irony that despite being described as and embodying certain elements of modernity, despite possibly being a delusional and deranged super-organism themselves, that actually they may be the cause of cyclical myth and the denigrator of some progressivist, unifying end-state of civilization.
I could imagine using this to create something like X-Men's Mojo / Mojoverse; commenting on empty and cyclical narratives, false catharsis, an unwillingness to change, reality vs. reality tv and the way life can come to imitate art. Although in other ways the idea lends itself more so to perhaps a Mojo who is instead like an Alex Jones or Joe Rogan conspiracy theory podcast / Rush Limbaugh AM talk radio host. The actors or hosts or whatever wouldn't be the dErO themselves of course, but people enthralled by them or unwittingly participating.
I like the idea that they can compensate for the limitations of the air looms; they don't have to alter all of reality, just a sufficient critical mass that the ideas they impose self-propagate. They spread a conspiracy that is able to take on a life of its own. However, this also suggests that they may not have as much control as it seems, and likewise, to do this the most effectively would require a level of planning and discipline they are likely not capable of, and so their own conspiracies may turn against them.
It's also interesting that their powers are psychic in nature, and reality altering, in a way that perhaps implies maybe a panpsychist multiverse or metaverse.
My favourites from the original--I'm a sucker for conspiracy and metatextual bullshit.
There's a pleasing cyclicality to the dEr0, here. Their looms and knots and hooks are, although that's not their intent, designed to make humans just like the dEr0 themselves--grotesque, isolated, paranoiac, unable to understand quite what they're doing, and submerged in endless fear. Fear of the world, fear of what's hidden in themselves, fear of the dEr0 in the dark operating on them. Maybe there were never any humans, just an endless chain of dEr0 yanking on each other's wires worried that they're failing the inscrutable plan of the next dEr0 on the chain.
You made me think of a load of other cultural production that might either be dero-authored distractions or special revelations gifted just to me because I'm the chosen one.
1. Shaver's bad dero/good tero reminds me of Saussure's work on language - d/t is the minimal structural distinction, like a single-point mutation. Whether it's d or t is the good/bad switch on a giant mind-control switchboard, right next to the switch for milk/dark chocolate preference. In some American accent groups, d and t sound the same, so those speakers can't tell the difference.
And of course it was Saussure's structuralism that led to post-structuralism and therefore to post-modernism and the loss of any belief in truth, so maybe calling attention to the dero/tero distinction collapsed reason as we know it.
2. furthering this important work on how the surface is a dero plot: The flying saucer craze, which Shaver tied to the dero... might also have been a fleeting glimpse of the ceiling of the cave (Plato’s cave)
a. Bruno Taut's "Alpine Architecture" feels like it conflates the open sky of the mountaintop with the enclosed cave-spaces of the mountain roots, like the ancient Persian mythical Mount Qaf, which is connected to everywhere in the world via a chain of "underground mountains"
...so there's a whole mental genre from 1860-1960 about shining worlds underground, bright darkness, mountains as revelations, which coincides with the rise and fall of the Upstate Asylum Program. I feel like the dero must have set this meme off to get the humans to build/dig neutrino observatories, which only let the best radiation in. Maybe you already covered all this in DCO, though.
3. I love that our secret masters are idiots. We got the bad ones. Golgafrinchans, incompetent Mormon losing the tablets. Jeff VanderMeer's Area X _and_ Southern Reach are better explained as a zone of air loom breakdown than any other explanation given in the novels. But maybe the problem is that the aliens can't stick to a single idea.
4. Shaver was keen on ziggurats, too, right? What if a ziggurat is a mold/negative space of the cave? Like Rachel Whiteread's negative rooms:
"Unravel the hyperconspiracy" is a good motivation for dero to have. I suppose if I was running a dero adventure I'd be asking myself how they planned to accomplish this goal.
What seemingly mundane human activities are actually inflicted on us as bizarre dero experiments? Maybe the players encounter a madman who's running around trying to convince everyone that pigs are obviously sapient and that underground dwarves are compelling us to torture and eat them using secret rays. Or the sun never actually goes down and "night" is just an enforced pause in which the dero can come out and meddle with our organs.
d10 table of things that are actually dero conspiracies:
1. Pigs. See above.
2. Night. Also see above.
3. Aging. Just pick any Francis E Dec rant--the dero surgically inflict the ravages of age on us to keep us from eternal life as immortal reincarnating beings, and keep us distracted in general. Also they think it's hilarious.
4. Metal-working. Stone tools are far superior to anything made of metal, but the dero want to keep that power for themselves. The cheap flimsy iron blades they provide us with can't stand up to a flint spear, but all evidence to the contrary gets erased.
5. Gender. All sentient beings are naturally hermaphroditic. In order to control population numbers and limit self-spawned offspring, the dero implanted the illusion of different biological sexes. Gender roles were added as a sadistic twist that got out of hand.
6. Literacy. Whenever you think you're "reading", you're actually going into a hypnotic trance as dero programming encodes the message into your mind, as well as whatever post-hypnotic suggestions they want. The only way to be free is to unlearn reading, or go blind.
7. Domesticated animals. Every cat, dog, or hawk is actually a severely surgically altered human, after their mind was so fried by the dero they could no longer operate as one. We care for them and clean up after them because the dero would rather not do that.
8. Humour. Have you ever wondered what it is that makes nonsense--meaningless information--enjoyable, or why "funny" things make you convulse and wheeze? That's right, it's a dero scheme, a prototype for inducing new and stranger emotions in us.
9. The surface. The entire world is a series of starving Veins after some great catastrophe, or possibly all non-Vein adapted life was created by a magical/mutative fluke. If you serve the dero well, they'll hand out a hallucination of sun and food as a reward.
10. The dero conspiracy. You see, the air looms mutated their users into degenerate monsters that are addicted to air loom usage, but there's only been one user and he creates the hallucination that there are more using the air loom, but the air loom itself has no hallucination power because it's just a fissure of toxic gas that gave him psychic powers and he used the psychic powers to make a real air loom which he got addicted to and it's at this point you notice that my eyes no longer seem to be focused on what's in front of me and blood is pooling at their corners.
You got the spirit kid! Would you like access to protein or prisoners?
Well obviously if I wait long enough the prisoners *become* protein, so...
9) would be a good lead-in to a Veins campaign. The players realise their idyllic sunlit village is actually a dero concentration camp deep underground and have to get back to the "real" surface, assuming it exists.
Love the dErO, possibly my favorite part of the original book, although I'm an absolute sucker for postmodernist, metatextual tricks like the Conspiracy Pills. My wishlist for them basically amounts to "even more of that please". I recall that, when planning a potential Veins campaign, I spent a bunch of time cruising ebay looking for a properly odd and obscure-looking random machine part, with the idea of mailing it to one of my players with desperate scrawled pleas to figure out a way to get this actual physical object into the hands of their game character.
This new gross ogreish (Harkonnenish?) version is a surprise, as I always pictured them as D&D's deep gnomes / svirfneblin crossed with Terrence McKenna's machine elves. Insofar as it's possible to picture that. Of course since you didn't describe them physically at all in the original book, anything went. Maybe I only thought the dErO look like that because that's what they wanted me to think they look like. Maybe now they want me to think they look grotesque, and have taken the advanced step of making you think they look like that, so you'll write it into the book for me to read.
This sounds plausible to me. I expect the dero are actually kind and beautiful. We should give them our organs to further their no doubt benevolent goals.
This is awesome stuff!
There's an interesting irony that despite being described as and embodying certain elements of modernity, despite possibly being a delusional and deranged super-organism themselves, that actually they may be the cause of cyclical myth and the denigrator of some progressivist, unifying end-state of civilization.
I could imagine using this to create something like X-Men's Mojo / Mojoverse; commenting on empty and cyclical narratives, false catharsis, an unwillingness to change, reality vs. reality tv and the way life can come to imitate art. Although in other ways the idea lends itself more so to perhaps a Mojo who is instead like an Alex Jones or Joe Rogan conspiracy theory podcast / Rush Limbaugh AM talk radio host. The actors or hosts or whatever wouldn't be the dErO themselves of course, but people enthralled by them or unwittingly participating.
I like the idea that they can compensate for the limitations of the air looms; they don't have to alter all of reality, just a sufficient critical mass that the ideas they impose self-propagate. They spread a conspiracy that is able to take on a life of its own. However, this also suggests that they may not have as much control as it seems, and likewise, to do this the most effectively would require a level of planning and discipline they are likely not capable of, and so their own conspiracies may turn against them.
It's also interesting that their powers are psychic in nature, and reality altering, in a way that perhaps implies maybe a panpsychist multiverse or metaverse.
A lot to think about here!
My favourites from the original--I'm a sucker for conspiracy and metatextual bullshit.
There's a pleasing cyclicality to the dEr0, here. Their looms and knots and hooks are, although that's not their intent, designed to make humans just like the dEr0 themselves--grotesque, isolated, paranoiac, unable to understand quite what they're doing, and submerged in endless fear. Fear of the world, fear of what's hidden in themselves, fear of the dEr0 in the dark operating on them. Maybe there were never any humans, just an endless chain of dEr0 yanking on each other's wires worried that they're failing the inscrutable plan of the next dEr0 on the chain.
Thanks, I'm looking forward to more Veins of the Earth.
You made me think of a load of other cultural production that might either be dero-authored distractions or special revelations gifted just to me because I'm the chosen one.
1. Shaver's bad dero/good tero reminds me of Saussure's work on language - d/t is the minimal structural distinction, like a single-point mutation. Whether it's d or t is the good/bad switch on a giant mind-control switchboard, right next to the switch for milk/dark chocolate preference. In some American accent groups, d and t sound the same, so those speakers can't tell the difference.
And of course it was Saussure's structuralism that led to post-structuralism and therefore to post-modernism and the loss of any belief in truth, so maybe calling attention to the dero/tero distinction collapsed reason as we know it.
2. furthering this important work on how the surface is a dero plot: The flying saucer craze, which Shaver tied to the dero... might also have been a fleeting glimpse of the ceiling of the cave (Plato’s cave)
https://designwanted.com/johnson-wax-headquarters-frank-lloyd-wright/
a. Bruno Taut's "Alpine Architecture" feels like it conflates the open sky of the mountaintop with the enclosed cave-spaces of the mountain roots, like the ancient Persian mythical Mount Qaf, which is connected to everywhere in the world via a chain of "underground mountains"
https://hiddenarchitecture.net/alpine-architecture/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Qaf
b. Viollet-le-Duc, who taught us how to see the medieval, also taught his students how to draw mountains by getting lost in the crystal planes
https://drawingmatter.org/viollet-le-duc-mont-blanc/
...so there's a whole mental genre from 1860-1960 about shining worlds underground, bright darkness, mountains as revelations, which coincides with the rise and fall of the Upstate Asylum Program. I feel like the dero must have set this meme off to get the humans to build/dig neutrino observatories, which only let the best radiation in. Maybe you already covered all this in DCO, though.
3. I love that our secret masters are idiots. We got the bad ones. Golgafrinchans, incompetent Mormon losing the tablets. Jeff VanderMeer's Area X _and_ Southern Reach are better explained as a zone of air loom breakdown than any other explanation given in the novels. But maybe the problem is that the aliens can't stick to a single idea.
4. Shaver was keen on ziggurats, too, right? What if a ziggurat is a mold/negative space of the cave? Like Rachel Whiteread's negative rooms:
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-rachel-whitereads-house-unlivable-controversial-unforgettable
c. Ilkhanid tomb-towers are plain on the outside but have this richly involuted sort of paradise ceiling inside:
https://www.dreamstime.com/muqarnas-dome-pars-museum-shiraz-iran-shiraz-iran-october-cupola-hall-kolah-farangi-pavilion-pars-museum-image153585760
...except for the tomb of Sitta Zubayda, which is "inside out," showing the negative space of muqarnas
https://iwh.icesco.org/zumurrud-khatun-mosque-and-mausoleum/
making the sky into the tomb tower.
Strong Mr Quimper vibes (Grant Morrison's Invisibles).