Saturday 13 October 2012

Apocalypse come (1) - Your actual eaters of worlds




In sixth edition 40K some factions can only ally come an apocalypse. Trouble is, a 41st millennium apocalypse might just end up being moar of everything available, rather than something suitably eschatological and worthy of the game that gave us Realm of Chaos.

But then a lot of apocalypses can seem fairly samey. In an effort to help I thought I'd run a series with a few slightly lesser-spotted ideas, but not for any one system or setting.

The first theme I've had in mind a few weeks, but a comment at BoLS recently prompted me to post. The context was the idea that the new Horus Heresy releases mean people start playing what is effectively a new game - Warhammer 30,000 - just space marine on space marine. The commenter joked there could be a Warhammer 50K of Tyranids only.

In case this is all new to you, and don't feel bad about that, the Tyranids are a biological, self-evolving, nomadic civilisation from the intergalactic gulfs or beyond, directed by their psychic hive mind. They consume pretty much everything and evolve around problems.

That was a pretty freaky idea once, but today, for me - and without the infiltration of the genestealer cults especially - they're just a more colourful, general purpose armed force.

So how to get the horror back, but without the cult body horror? It could be by homing in on the broader existential aspects, and going for a more save-or-die cosmological tone.

What if the aliens didn't come in a fleet, land their armies on your planet and kill you in a way you more or less kill the other lifeforms on the planet and elsewhere, and only then eat the earth and suck up the seas? What if they just swallowed you whole, in the pitch black, then digested everything you know, sarlacc-style. Crawling over you in the dark?

In-game, they might do it with a huge humpback anglerfish-like creature, or a worm - a kind of Jörmungandr - which they developed up from swallowing stations and asteroids, through moons, to large planets. It may not be a creature that's recognisably a creature. Why not just a portal to a digestive sac in the warp, spread across a ductile membrane?

Maybe this is old news. Maybe in some distant galactic cluster some long-lost cousins of the Tyranids have already evolved a sac large enough to swallow a galaxy whole? And it's been on the way for aeons. It will just slip over and close. How long would that take?

Moving beyond 40K, this could be an explanation for a fantasy world sky: the world was swallowed long ago, and the sun, moon and stars are the perforations made by lucky escapees in the distant past. Or maybe orifices leading to different inner chambers?

That kind of escape could be the basis for an unusual campaign. How to get that high? How to break through? Is the outside actually that way? Does anyone know? Especially if there's no light, or alternative energy source, and the world's starving, and going crazy.

And then the gut flora start to arrive...

If the creature were multidimensional, in the physical sense, it might be able to emerge inside the world and eat it from within. If it couldn't reach the surface, because its footing was too far off say, you'd get a fine lower level for a megadungeon, hive or not, especially if the creature stayed close by ready to lunge up those thousands of leagues. Assuming the inhabitants survived the loss of gravity of course, and the atmosphere just drifting off.

Anyway, that's just the tip of the iceberg for this theme, let alone all the others that are waiting. Looked at like that, with so many options, it's almost surprising we're still here.
_

3 comments:

Minitrol said...

Interesting concept. Of course the classic in recent media terms would have the to be the end on Men in Black where we stablish the universe is baubles in a mass game of 'marbles' in an even bigger universe.

That way lies madness....

You piqued my interest I think there is easily scope for books to be released featuring Race V Race. Tyranids could well be presented in this way as two divergent strains clash to drive the superior strain. I am thinking of the Borg versus -Species 8472.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Borg-Species_8472_War

In another note you brought back some memories when the first Tyranid codex arrived we played their inaugural game versus Squats foreshadowing their eventual fate a desperate last stand against wave upon wave of Tyranids....

This was the last big game I played with my Squats which I then shelved in favour of Eldar then sold.

Was it my fault Squats got lost in the warp forever. Dirk Gently suggests yes.

Bush Craft said...

I wish I was that high...

"Maybe in some distant galactic cluster some long-lost cousins of the Tyranids have already evolved a sac large enough to swallow a galaxy whole? And it's been on the way for aeons. It will just slip over and close. How long would that take?Moving beyond 40K, this could be an explanation for a fantasy world sky: the world was swallowed long ago, and the sun, moon and stars are the perforations made by lucky escapees in the distant past. Or maybe orifices leading to different inner chambers? That kind of escape could be the basis for an unusual campaign. How to get that high?"

Porky said...

@ Minitrol - I'd forgotten that scene, but it's good fun. It reminds me of an artefact in the Discworld novels and the intro to Contact, and it seems both films were actually released in the same month.

Hopefully it's a useful madness at least, maybe even a necessary madness, for opening the mind to all the things we might not know yet, fact or fiction. With how much we've discovered, think how much there could be to discover still. I'm not expecting galaxy-sized Tyranid digestive sacs, but I wouldn't claim to be right on that either.

I'd imagine a minidex or two or a single scenario book on internal conflicts could be very popular, especially in larger gaming groups where there's duplication of factions. With marines and Eldar we already have a lot of tools, and with Orks too maybe, but it does get interesting with the Tyranids for sure. It might not be too hard to create a simple mechanism for an evolutionary spiral as two fleets went at it, going beyond biomorphs into whole new creatures and roles, one that could feed back into the main game. It could delve more into the inner workings of the hive mind too.

I often get the urge to build a new Squat force, not with more of the original minis, but with new bits from various current producers posed and converted to reflect that classic tone - a ragtag blend of the uniformed ranks, the greasy bikers and engineers and the adventurers, but playing down the runes and playing up the rugged, jury-rigged tech. I have a lot of what I'd need to put a Killzone-sized force together, except maybe the time given how much work it would take.

On the subject of the disappearance, Hungry Ghosts has been recording details for posterity - if you scroll right the way down to White Dwarf 240 here, there's a look at a key moment in the creation of that Tyranid myth, when it could have gone one of two ways, the other being sacrifice to the Empperor...

@ Bush Craft - I did drink a couple of strong black teas before I wrote it, and the honey I use to sweeten them is good stuff.