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beccaelizabethSo, I have to take library books back. I should in theory take them back to Norwich because they asked this time. But I had decided to take them back to Dereham because it's quicker. Only now I'm sitting here at half past three and hey, wow, I do not appear to have taken library books back. If I don't get them there before 5 it's fines time.
... still not moving.
... on the plus side, still breathing, so that's nice.
So I had plot bunny for my random not Stargate Atlantis with the serial numbers filed off world.
They arrive at the alien city and find increasingly scary variations on Keep Out. Deciding this is promising some idiot fails to Keep Out. And then the whole city goes dark. And none of the the transport circles work. And there's a forcefield up to stop them getting away, so strong it turned day into night. They so screwed.
Turns out the city was abandoned not just because of the weather (horrible, verging on ice age) but also because they'd been doing experiments there for a long time and some of the results... well, the best they could think to do with them is lock the door and run.
The whole place is a containment facility and once some idiot breaches the Keep Out layer the city switches all resources to keeping them all in.
Since they are not super hackers of alien languages on their first day there, their only option on ever getting out is to restore the original barriers. But since they are also not more kick arse than the original inhabitants, this involves quite a lot of screaming and mangling, but eventually negotiation and willingness to treat even the horrific as people with their own goals.
Earth type humans have already met Far Away type humans (this planet needs a name). They're all exploring the lost city together. Far Away type humans are all about five feet to five four tall and they're all ridiculously pretty. They are kind of creeped out by the very short astrophysics guy (think Warwick Davis). If cast is large, there could be other people with visible disabilities to react against. Far Away people have a standard of physical perfection and when they meet those who don't match all they can think about is sending them to be fixed to match. Far Away people therefore creep out Earth type humans.
(Some Far Away humans have subversive views; some Earth humans are right there with them on cures.)
When the monsters get out, the Earth type humans are better equipped to deal, since they were expecting aliens, are big science fiction fans, and don't have instant ick reactions to the idea of sentient but different.
The Far Away people have advanced biotech. They engineer their livestock to do pretty much anything they can think of. Yet they're all recogniseably human. Since they have the capacity to be very unrecogniseable indeed, that must mean they've got strong pressures to conform. Probably the whole range of apparatuses, ideological and otherwise. So they meet the unrecogniseable yet claiming to be human, and they've got a lot of pressure not to... recognise them, not to see people there.
Otherwise, with their technology, they'd easily be a full on D&D fantasy world with multiple expressions of body type that still have a mind in them.
And, because that's a fun idea, the exiles must somewhere have a planet just like that. There could be an agreement where everyone that didn't fit went to build their own planet. If you have a lot of planets to go around there's less pressure to just make the other guy do like you want. They can go live in the wild instead.
But those in the lost city are not so much the nice stable fantasy race types. They're the one off monster types. The ones nobody wants for neighbours.
So, there's a planet full of nice looking people with biotech and politics and a vendetta against difference, a planet full of very many differences that may or may not get along with each other or still have the technology to swap types if they want to... make that two planets and one can swap and one cannot and there's different stories. And then Earth. And the lost city would be the only place that you can get to all of these, like changing trains in London. So they've all been isolated for as long as Earth has been cut off from them, thousands of years.
... if the biotech dudes are still all human after thousands of years then those pressures have to be freaky strong. They're scarier now.
So, pretty short people and diverse Earth people go and break in to the Lost City, which is city of the Lost Things. The things they wanted to get lost.
There can be space vampires in there if you want. Or anything else from the Horror bestiary. I have half a shelf of game books full of suggestions. It should be rare that any two of them are the same though, since they're all mistakes nobody wanted to make twice. And they've all got to have a certain health resilience, a genetic toughness, resistance to change. Else they'd just biotech them back to normal again. So, a bunch of super healing monsters in the basement. And the only way people can have power, light, and probably water and air, is to persuade them to go back in the basement.
There would obviously be one woobie Beast character willing to help out the pretties and fall in love with one.
And the mutant seperatist lot who only want to go to their own homeworld.
And the angry ones who want to kill them all for locking them up for thousands of years.
So are they going to be the type of undead monsters who can hang out in a crypt for thousands of years without water etc??
I already have a plot for VR worlds. Rhodri goes into VR because it's nice and safe and he can still be clever. Sean tempts him out because they miss him. Even though Rhodri tries to tempt them all in. VR research is useless because the rules are whatever they get set up to be, and the people that need protecting need their bodies protected. Though obviously there'll be ghost in the machine issues where nobody in VR really ends.
So, they explore the Keep Out zone and find the VR pods, ie great big coffin looking things. Full of monsters. Except some pods are smashed. Some are smashed in from the outside, full of rotted wisps of something twisted. Some are smashed out from within, and quite clearly empty...
So the monsters have been living in VR for a few thousand years, in a world where nobody ever dies, and the rules are what you make of them. They'd have their own personal areas and common areas to interact in. They'd have avatars... hmmm, depends how people set it up, maybe some would have plural and most would have just the one. Some would have avatars that matched their monster and some would look like angels. Obviously to figure out who could be worked with would not be so simple as looking. But the Far Aways have set themselves up for falling into that particular trap. Pretty people must be more like them, right?
So someone finds out the coffins are VR... they're designed as containment for monsters, so they'd have restraints and grab you and kind of eat you into the box. Someone goes in first that way and there's screaming. They find themselves in a common area designed for acclimatising newbies. There's lots of people with an interest in newbies. Adventure! But then the pod spits them out, because it finished its diagnostic and found no genetic anomalies and no reason to keep them. So they get out into the real world like waking from a nightmare... only by then the real would be pretty nightmarish too.
Astrophysics dude would be one of the first in VR so he could be offered a tall person av and reject it for a real him av. Non clunky way of saying he don't want to be elsewise.
So once people know they're VR, they have new options. With the city dark and failing they can all escape into the pods. But the world they find there isn't so much superior, and they're still vulnerable to pod smashers. Probably some would opt for that to conserve resources, civilians or injured people. ooooh, sarcophagus that keeps your mind active and takes its own sweet time on healing. Ah, and that would be why Rhodri goes in the box the first time. And the addictive and soul eroding nature of the sarc would be the feeling of being impervious from harm, and the freedom from consequence of the VR world. Like I suspected being in a time loop eroded Captain John Hart's sense of consequence, like he'd just shove someone off a roof and then think oops. Spend too much time in VR and lose the understanding you can fuck people up. But that's a long term use effect. The problem when first entering is that everyone else has been there a very long time.
There'd have to be a sleep mode. If everyone is thousands of VR years old they're all bugfuck by our standards. Variety is more interesting. Some people chose to sleep until they wake, and they're easier to get along with, mostly. Although knowing for sure all experience is an illusion has led to some religious dudes getting some nifty insights. VR Buddhas.
So they go in the city, trip the quarantine, find the VR boxes, one gets trapped a while, healing function becomes evident while they're in there, VR when they get let out. Half the expedition goes in the boxes, the other half physically protects them. Negotiations continue both inside and out. The mismatch between avs and meats leads to misunderstandings and woe. The Beast who falls for the Beauty is a little bit creepy. Or more than a little. The monster who wants to protect other monsters be a better politician for his people. They have to build a functioning society from the three internally fracture factions before they can get the city to let them out again.
That's at least a season of plot right there. And I haven't started exploring the planet of the pretty biotechnicians, let alone any other planets.
At some point I should probably do some writing.
Of course it also gives me plenty of theme stuff to do, because being locked in with/by one's monsters is all about dealing with their issues.
*stares at own front door*
*sighs*
*is leaving any minute now...*
... still not moving.
... on the plus side, still breathing, so that's nice.
So I had plot bunny for my random not Stargate Atlantis with the serial numbers filed off world.
They arrive at the alien city and find increasingly scary variations on Keep Out. Deciding this is promising some idiot fails to Keep Out. And then the whole city goes dark. And none of the the transport circles work. And there's a forcefield up to stop them getting away, so strong it turned day into night. They so screwed.
Turns out the city was abandoned not just because of the weather (horrible, verging on ice age) but also because they'd been doing experiments there for a long time and some of the results... well, the best they could think to do with them is lock the door and run.
The whole place is a containment facility and once some idiot breaches the Keep Out layer the city switches all resources to keeping them all in.
Since they are not super hackers of alien languages on their first day there, their only option on ever getting out is to restore the original barriers. But since they are also not more kick arse than the original inhabitants, this involves quite a lot of screaming and mangling, but eventually negotiation and willingness to treat even the horrific as people with their own goals.
Earth type humans have already met Far Away type humans (this planet needs a name). They're all exploring the lost city together. Far Away type humans are all about five feet to five four tall and they're all ridiculously pretty. They are kind of creeped out by the very short astrophysics guy (think Warwick Davis). If cast is large, there could be other people with visible disabilities to react against. Far Away people have a standard of physical perfection and when they meet those who don't match all they can think about is sending them to be fixed to match. Far Away people therefore creep out Earth type humans.
(Some Far Away humans have subversive views; some Earth humans are right there with them on cures.)
When the monsters get out, the Earth type humans are better equipped to deal, since they were expecting aliens, are big science fiction fans, and don't have instant ick reactions to the idea of sentient but different.
The Far Away people have advanced biotech. They engineer their livestock to do pretty much anything they can think of. Yet they're all recogniseably human. Since they have the capacity to be very unrecogniseable indeed, that must mean they've got strong pressures to conform. Probably the whole range of apparatuses, ideological and otherwise. So they meet the unrecogniseable yet claiming to be human, and they've got a lot of pressure not to... recognise them, not to see people there.
Otherwise, with their technology, they'd easily be a full on D&D fantasy world with multiple expressions of body type that still have a mind in them.
And, because that's a fun idea, the exiles must somewhere have a planet just like that. There could be an agreement where everyone that didn't fit went to build their own planet. If you have a lot of planets to go around there's less pressure to just make the other guy do like you want. They can go live in the wild instead.
But those in the lost city are not so much the nice stable fantasy race types. They're the one off monster types. The ones nobody wants for neighbours.
So, there's a planet full of nice looking people with biotech and politics and a vendetta against difference, a planet full of very many differences that may or may not get along with each other or still have the technology to swap types if they want to... make that two planets and one can swap and one cannot and there's different stories. And then Earth. And the lost city would be the only place that you can get to all of these, like changing trains in London. So they've all been isolated for as long as Earth has been cut off from them, thousands of years.
... if the biotech dudes are still all human after thousands of years then those pressures have to be freaky strong. They're scarier now.
So, pretty short people and diverse Earth people go and break in to the Lost City, which is city of the Lost Things. The things they wanted to get lost.
There can be space vampires in there if you want. Or anything else from the Horror bestiary. I have half a shelf of game books full of suggestions. It should be rare that any two of them are the same though, since they're all mistakes nobody wanted to make twice. And they've all got to have a certain health resilience, a genetic toughness, resistance to change. Else they'd just biotech them back to normal again. So, a bunch of super healing monsters in the basement. And the only way people can have power, light, and probably water and air, is to persuade them to go back in the basement.
There would obviously be one woobie Beast character willing to help out the pretties and fall in love with one.
And the mutant seperatist lot who only want to go to their own homeworld.
And the angry ones who want to kill them all for locking them up for thousands of years.
So are they going to be the type of undead monsters who can hang out in a crypt for thousands of years without water etc??
I already have a plot for VR worlds. Rhodri goes into VR because it's nice and safe and he can still be clever. Sean tempts him out because they miss him. Even though Rhodri tries to tempt them all in. VR research is useless because the rules are whatever they get set up to be, and the people that need protecting need their bodies protected. Though obviously there'll be ghost in the machine issues where nobody in VR really ends.
So, they explore the Keep Out zone and find the VR pods, ie great big coffin looking things. Full of monsters. Except some pods are smashed. Some are smashed in from the outside, full of rotted wisps of something twisted. Some are smashed out from within, and quite clearly empty...
So the monsters have been living in VR for a few thousand years, in a world where nobody ever dies, and the rules are what you make of them. They'd have their own personal areas and common areas to interact in. They'd have avatars... hmmm, depends how people set it up, maybe some would have plural and most would have just the one. Some would have avatars that matched their monster and some would look like angels. Obviously to figure out who could be worked with would not be so simple as looking. But the Far Aways have set themselves up for falling into that particular trap. Pretty people must be more like them, right?
So someone finds out the coffins are VR... they're designed as containment for monsters, so they'd have restraints and grab you and kind of eat you into the box. Someone goes in first that way and there's screaming. They find themselves in a common area designed for acclimatising newbies. There's lots of people with an interest in newbies. Adventure! But then the pod spits them out, because it finished its diagnostic and found no genetic anomalies and no reason to keep them. So they get out into the real world like waking from a nightmare... only by then the real would be pretty nightmarish too.
Astrophysics dude would be one of the first in VR so he could be offered a tall person av and reject it for a real him av. Non clunky way of saying he don't want to be elsewise.
So once people know they're VR, they have new options. With the city dark and failing they can all escape into the pods. But the world they find there isn't so much superior, and they're still vulnerable to pod smashers. Probably some would opt for that to conserve resources, civilians or injured people. ooooh, sarcophagus that keeps your mind active and takes its own sweet time on healing. Ah, and that would be why Rhodri goes in the box the first time. And the addictive and soul eroding nature of the sarc would be the feeling of being impervious from harm, and the freedom from consequence of the VR world. Like I suspected being in a time loop eroded Captain John Hart's sense of consequence, like he'd just shove someone off a roof and then think oops. Spend too much time in VR and lose the understanding you can fuck people up. But that's a long term use effect. The problem when first entering is that everyone else has been there a very long time.
There'd have to be a sleep mode. If everyone is thousands of VR years old they're all bugfuck by our standards. Variety is more interesting. Some people chose to sleep until they wake, and they're easier to get along with, mostly. Although knowing for sure all experience is an illusion has led to some religious dudes getting some nifty insights. VR Buddhas.
So they go in the city, trip the quarantine, find the VR boxes, one gets trapped a while, healing function becomes evident while they're in there, VR when they get let out. Half the expedition goes in the boxes, the other half physically protects them. Negotiations continue both inside and out. The mismatch between avs and meats leads to misunderstandings and woe. The Beast who falls for the Beauty is a little bit creepy. Or more than a little. The monster who wants to protect other monsters be a better politician for his people. They have to build a functioning society from the three internally fracture factions before they can get the city to let them out again.
That's at least a season of plot right there. And I haven't started exploring the planet of the pretty biotechnicians, let alone any other planets.
At some point I should probably do some writing.
Of course it also gives me plenty of theme stuff to do, because being locked in with/by one's monsters is all about dealing with their issues.
*stares at own front door*
*sighs*
*is leaving any minute now...*