Are not heroes. Nor are villains. Neither cames Norm Egyptians.
Speaker 2But we can tell you their stories. We. Are.
Speaker 3Welcome to Haleema. You were listening to Lord Keeper say Lord building podcast where we talk about Avons of history heroes and villains and the forces that we'll get at all. I'm Carter and I'm frank and whether you're interested in stories looking for inspiration in your own worldbuilding or perhaps you want to participate.
Speaker 4We've got something for you. This week we're talking about cyber punk. But first Frank how are you doing.
Speaker 5Oh I'm doing OK. I'm a little perturbed by my current internet situation but the weather is nice nice and sunny.
Speaker 6Temperature is not too high.
Speaker 5Going to go away for the weekend. I'm going to Ann Arbor for a little while. It's going to be nice for Labor Day. That sounds lovely. Yeah I mean I've never been there before so it should be fun. I think I've heard there's a lot of bookstores and coffee shops. I mean yeah and college. Yeah. I mean it's not exactly you know downtown Manhattan but as opposed to not down town you know like suburban Manhattan as opposed to suburban Manhattan.
Speaker 4But it should be fun actually intend to send my application there to the grad school. Oh really. Yeah. It's an excellent ethics program.
Speaker 6Wow. I actually could be See you there because I mean that's funny dude. Wow. Yeah. If I can get in.
Speaker 5It's a really fucking program is it. Yes. Dude what about you. How are you doing.
Speaker 3I'm well I'm well I'm just you know excited for the long weekend. I actually planned a little poker night.
Speaker 4Some of my friends were all going to dress up you know fuckin suits stresses and play some poker.
Speaker 5Oh do that sounds awesome. Do you like regular. Is that kind of a thing. I feel like I've heard you talk about something like that before.
Speaker 4You see whenever we hang out we call it poker night because sometimes we play poker sometimes we don't but I'm like listen this time it's going be at night of poker and there's an optional dress code and that dress code is nice. That sounds and everything looks like everything is like hell yes.
Speaker 5Yeah. You got to have those. I remember one time we had a night where we went to this like totally trashy diner that's been around for 100 years but we brought our own table cloth and all dressed up and like put down candles and stuff. It was pretty absurd. But it was a good time. Sound the sounds you got got to have those nights where you dress up you know.
Speaker 4Yes. You know I I've got all these clothes I'm like will only wear the ones that I can wear in the heat which is you know linen and t shirts.
Speaker 5Yeah. Yeah exactly. You've got to have time and place for us for this fancy stuff.
Speaker 4Exactly because you know I can't actually wear anything else outside. Only on my part. Or you know if it's a short drive and then to another and you're in AC the whole time. Exactly. Has to be an ac the whole time because if you step outside in a suit you just die.
Speaker 5You just and you're drenched in sweat and then you've ruined the suit and your evening.
Speaker 7Exactly. So that's how I am I said that would be fun. But Frank. Before we get into whatever madness this will defy. It tell me something that you think is cool that is somehow.
Speaker 5Hasn't related noteworthy but not necessarily episode worthy. Yes. OK. So I'm going to introduce you to kind of a moment of inspiration I had yesterday morning so I don't know if you've heard of the site TV tropes. I have not. It's a it's a fun site where basically they catalog and keep track of all the repetitive tropes that you see in TV and movies and comic books etc. over and over and over again. So I will then have a random Trump button. And so I will occasionally pull that up press three times and take those ideas and try and figure out how I can incorporate them into how me as one concept.
Speaker 4So it's like a mixer. Yeah I guess it's kind of like how i go read the rings and then have good ideas. It's much much less predictable.
Speaker 5Yes. Yeah. Well OK. So I did it recently and I took what were the three ideas. You're Vampires Suck. God in human form and. Pop revival were the three ideas. And I was honestly how the hell do I combine those. We've already got two of those. Right. Well so what I actually came up with was the thought was How do vampires survive in the modern day was the idea the vampires the past no longer work they're no longer tenable in the current culture. Nobody will tolerate you know an empire or a vampire or anything like that. The shrouded empire which if you're curious you can check out Episode Two about what that is all about. And then God in human form was OK. So here's what we got we got a vampire God created by the beliefs of vampires the queen of all vampires or something like that comes down in vampire form and teaches them how to Disney.
Speaker 4And can I. Can I make a suggestion. Yeah. I mean I mean I think I think maybe maybe there should be a little grand thing in there. I gripping. I mean the name really rings a bell because it's because of the Lord telling talent Oscar thing we made Oh yeah yes.
Speaker 5Yeah. I was thinking of Grimm thing from World of Warcraft for a little bit there but I mean also Hüsker thing right. Yeah. Yes. No I mean there definitely could be something to do with House groom thing in there. I think my thought was so where I was drawing this room was the reason why Disney we allowed Disney to get away with all of its shit. Being a mega corporation is basically because we trust them with our IPs. They promise to do justice they promised to do good by. Fox and Disney or FOX and Star Wars and fucking marvel and all that. You know the so it's like we as a public are like well you can be a giant faceless corporation but it's okay because you're Wouk because you me either.
Speaker 4I think I think it's candidatures just something like we don't have a choice.
Speaker 5I mean yeah that's definitely a part of it but I think you know they are not seeing the same way. You know Disney has a lot more people fighting to support them at Exxon Mobil but also fun fact about Black Panther great movie right.
Speaker 4Yeah I think so. Not everyone shares that opinion specially those in the south that see it as a liberal agenda piece of inserting black people in the movies. Well precisely a lot of people have said that that's like a whole Disney thing. Yeah I know and I got so many people were just like you know it's just why would there have to be black. There are not enough white people in movies like goddamn something stand up things were just terrible.
Speaker 7Yeah. Oh come to the south.
Speaker 5Anyways the way. Yeah I like the way that I was thinking that that manifesto is basically that. We've talked before about the ever real especially in episode 15. If you're serious about what that is but the Elvan sort of mental culture is sort of heritage of shared stories and things so I was thinking maybe in a less literal way than Disney but elves because of their long bloodlines and they might actually make some of the greatest storytellers or regale wrigglers that you know or even historians that exist absolutely meaning if they somehow figured out a way to monetize that or establish it as some sort of valuable position in the you know in the current age or ages where they are running vampire empires you know perhaps they could you know survive especially if it's not the average. I'm thinking vampires have their own special version of that that's kind of more dark and twisted. Okay I dig it anyways so I feel like there's a few things we can pull some strings on in the future but I've been talking for long enough about my ideas come with anything to the table.
Speaker 4Got it got me cool stuff I actually got a double feature. Oh yeah. Yes ones one small and one big so I will drop both of them. All right a big one comes first. Actually small for the big one looks bigger.
Speaker 5If we were a comedy podcast that would be the name of the episode.
Speaker 4So the Smolan is you know it you know that idea about like monsters right. Getting a monster table. Yeah. Yeah. That's still in the works. However I have come up with a few monsters. I'd like to see that we could talk about later. Oh yeah. Yes I would give you their name. Okay so first I'd like to like really flesh out like what desks are to the Donz residents being so his friend get it. Give it his flesh flesh out like it's a. Okay.
Speaker 8Yeah. That wasn't even like ooh I wasn't even close to good. Wow. Well hanging out with Frank in the future just cut that just cut it off.
Speaker 6No Carter that's that's the kind of stuff I'm going to keep right.
Speaker 8Oh no. What's your. Yeah yeah. So there's more dust's for sure.
Speaker 4Yes. Remnants of the nameless.
Speaker 5Now you've mentioned the whispers of the nameless before. Is this associated with them.
Speaker 9If the whispers ever came into contact with the remnants.
Speaker 4They would definitely worship them and maybe they have been a remnant of the nameless is kind of like a fragment of what the nameless kind of what you might think he is kind of like like a shadowy weirdo. Think of it like that way I came up with it was like OK so what does more got more Morgoth is the big bad for murder x.
Speaker 9And he had lesser angels to serve him that he had also persuaded to leave the gods. So Michael the name was one probably did something similar because we have the choir right. And those are very powerful entities left.
Speaker 4So I'm like Well where did these guys go. And the answer might be is that they might have ended up at Saddar somewhere and they may also be in the absentia um but and not calling these remnants of the names for now because they're so you know they're kind of almost like a part of him in a strange way. Interesting. The remnants of Novak's for sure.
Speaker 5And that way we can for sure is where do we got to get this.
Speaker 6I'm going to contract you'd a set of them on your old tape and you all have the gods but you make those monsters and start rolling them. Imagine that this is basically like kind of like a Balrog. OK.
Speaker 5Yeah. I was wondering because the I was curious to see what your interpretation of that would be because the Nameless One is basically the arch Eldritch the the erm presence of eldritch abominations all aberrations come from the howling void which is where the nameless one resides. So anything that is a manifestation of that. I was kind of I was picturing as like elder gods but you're saying that's more of like a giant arch demon. Yes.
Speaker 4But don't think of it as like the film portrayed it. I'm not going to give you I'm going to give you some idea of what Tolkien actually meant.
Speaker 6Oh I you get a little excerpt prepared.
Speaker 4I don't have an exact word for word X are prepared but I can get one. No no that's OK.
Speaker 5I was just curious as to you and your leanings of Tolkien tend to go in that way.
Speaker 4So I was curious to see if that's as you're saying it's a good idea. It would have been a good idea but I wasn't that prepared. So basically I've listened to this passage because I have no idea because it's of course several like at least a dozen times today because I'm just like this is such a good passage. It was great before Gandalf fought the bear on the bridge because. And it describes him as a shadow kind of man shape. But if you don't see like this huge Minotaur school without horns. No it doesn't sound like that at all. Yeah it is a shadow that you can't see like you cannot see what it is. It's just blackness that's darker than everything else. Why blame flame like revolves around it as it steps over the flaming chasm. Oh that's so much more evocative. Yeah and it has this sort. It's also like flaming lava that Gandalf breaks with a parry and of course like a flaming whip. But. When he's actually facing off against Gandalf the Gandalf's like power as he's like battling with the Wills actually causes it to just become more shadow like the final strips off of it.
Speaker 5See that's what we'll have we've got to we switch streams here in a second but this is one of the things that I really appreciate about that kind of that's when you get truly strange fantasy like that description doesn't fit in with just about any other. There's a strangeness about it and even the way that it's described that is different than just about any other source. It's not Eldridge's you know in Elderts they don't talk about things that way. It's more about you know Lovecraft was all about broken geometry or the dead coming back to life redeem demons spilled whatever. You know his stuff is actually been very heavily codified. But I try to imagine what it was like to first have heard his stuff or first have read his stuff or discover that back before it became what this pop culture thing. And to imagine how different and strange it all felt. You know Carcosa and and you know the idea of Kathie Lee West you know creature. It's just so far beyond the way that we typically interpret fantasy or or horror or for that matter. Yes.
Speaker 8Dude I like that idea. We got to get that roundtable up and go and maybe we'll do that next week or something.
Speaker 4Yes oh promises with these with these you know these are special ones that I've cooked up that are right. The roday was for more mundane stuff. Oh you're saying like a focus episode. Well you know I'm saying what we're getting into. I'm saying like a roll table for stuff that's like that we could produce interesting stuff this kind of stuff is like going to be linked to important things.
Speaker 5Yeah yeah. So I agree especially tusks.
Speaker 4Yes absolutely because there's so many of them at all. Yeah. But my big thing which out of a quick question on Implanon is that it is the little clique that was a little there.
Speaker 8Oh damn. OK. Yeah.
Speaker 6What's the big thing.
Speaker 4Let me go back in ancient Greece history was told by oral tradition. We're talking Turkish Skree surpass the Bronze Age. And these barges would go like Hellenistic before Hellenistic pre Hellenistic pre classical. Yeah yeah. It's between the Classico and Troy. So basically these epic stories were told. You know book by book. Never in a full setting because it would take like a day. It would take 24 hours or so. Sure. And they were told by Baard to memorize them but then memorize them line by line. And then memorize it word by word that memorize them just important events and then they kind of free flowed from the other stuff. And they would use certain like men and named mnemonic devices to remember things like you know Zeus would be cloud gathering Zeus and Harry would be you know like cowhide hair or something. Right.
Speaker 5Sure. Things that Q in a specific trait of them that they're trying to bring forward.
Speaker 4Yeah. Like rosy fingered dawn through the pocket is because basically how the Greek worked with like that the type of meter that the that epics use in a case like think think of this idea right just like oral tradition that's a very free form. But the major stuff in and apply that to like wandering elven bards that talk about the real dude we need to do that.
Speaker 5God I don't know how to codify that beyond like maybe even just making stories like making some myths and things that they talk about but I'm so engaged by. What does the actual culture of that like getting into the greedy creating. I might just have to write one out or something. Maybe you should know. Narrated are you narrated or something.
Speaker 4It's been a while since we did a story at the beginning of an episode anyways and this is like super ancient tradition because right yeah this kind of thing gets a little harder to do when everything is written down because now you can't be as free form because you can point to the book and say no that's not how the story goes. Look at the book.
Speaker 5But as we talked about in the last couple of weeks I think that having written form at least for some aspects of Elven society may not have even been that great of a need or a desire because typically technology advances as is necessary for people where at least I would. I think that's a fairly safe principle to balance it on. But for the elves you know they would never need to write down their myths or legends that because our lives are strange exactly because they dream it every night.
Speaker 9And I think that because some people dream similar dreams write about certain the same kinds of people. But some might see more clearly or some might be more muddled and some have different opinions and ideas. They might see things differently so that might be different rights. Right. Exactly. So it's never set in stone.
Speaker 5And this but unfortunately that is not what we're talking about tonight but will definitely come back to that sometime soon because that's really intriguing idea to me man.
Speaker 4Thanks. You know my my missive the ancient Greeks glass.
Speaker 5Oh yeah. You and I both we we both are. We both appreciate the classics the old literature myths lower legends.
Speaker 3Yes. And speaking of literature and myths and legends. Tell me about cyberpunk.
Speaker 5That was that was smooth. That was a whiskey smooth. I don't think that people even lies to hurt us. That was very good you know. Well Simon. OK. So this week. I think I sent you a link to it. I can't remember but the Cyberpunk 2077 demo came out. It was about 44 minutes of pure awesome content.
Speaker 4Do you see this. I did not see oh 44 minutes but I saw it and it's very Sheta Renee. I do love Sheta yes.
Speaker 5Yeah. Ok so I have always been appreciative of. I read. I finally got out and read Neuromancer you know in the last couple of years which is a great great book. I've always appreciated Shadowrun and a feel of it and it's just Cyberpunk is so it's bleeding cool. You know it's just it's all about the cool. Like cool to a point where it's you know some books or you know pieces are straight up that people use cool like a currency. I mean even when I was a kid I loved Bladerunner although Blade Runner is kind of more future noir you still get some of those adjacent feels to it for seeing all of that and getting very inspired by it. I revisited the question that I occasionally touch on when thinking about how old me which is. How do I get this specific genre of sci fi fantasy into into this story. It's one of the reasons why when we talk about how we have so many different areas of time Avrum Tertius is very high fantasy everything's very epic everything is very full of magic and lords and ladies Aevum Corvis is all about commercialism and is more representative of like the modern day capitalism is something that is rapidly overtaking the world with gestures music went oh sorry Aevum Wintus Avrum cortices slavery 1 Yeah Aevum Cornus is not a great time. Aevum cortices about the dominant Lowville and planar conflict things that are escalating and escalating esposa kind of. Mean into the same feel of the 20th century. And you know how World War 1 and World War 2 escalated and things get a little bit of like the folder on Empire and there too right. Yeah. You see. So there's there's there's a few different fuels to that and Aevum Aevum Secunda is its Conan the Barbarian even that exists in it. So my thought has always been how do I include these different things but the thing is you can't really just drop cyberpunk in because you know what do we do with the Internet and have half alongside writers hackers all of a sudden now is very very strong.
Speaker 4Right.
Speaker 5Yeah. So here's what I was thinking. The thing is I don't I don't think that we lose anything though by. I started to think about it a different way. What is it that people like about cyberpunk what's attractive about it and to name things. There's the neon there's the fluorescent colourings of everything there's the dirtiness of a sort of grungy city life. There's the lingo. There's the you know everything is about like coming up with you know really cool sounding names for stuff and there's gang warfare and big corporations matrix hackers. Exactly. Yes and hacking is a really big part of it. You know running Merc jobs where you're working with a team to steal stuff. But more specifically it's data chips or it's something about working with the you know working with the VR rig or a euro. What do they call it something cowboy. I can't remember they call a code cowboy. I mean. I don't remember it's Neuromancer stuff but the point is is all of those those features those aspects of cyberpunk don't actually have a lot to do with our modern world. Yes they can be represented in that and that's a way to manifest those things but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily tied down to that. So my thinking is what is more cyberpunk than hacking that shit like taking it all piecemeal and shoving it onto helming. So here's the idea. Somewhere in the near future somewhere in the next couple of hundred years. Let me let me take one step back. We know that Aevum prime. Is a time where all these incredibly advanced artifacts were used on the reg. They were very frequent. It was a time of great prosperity for all of the world. Right.
Speaker 4Yes it was an incredibly techno magic.
Speaker 5Yeah there is. It was just magic was just on a whole other level. What if somebody recovered an artifact somewhere in the next few hundred years maybe it's an Aevum Tsuneo maybe not and this artifact it lies null and and inert for a long time and then all of a sudden either because somebody did something to it or because it just activated of its own accord it changes the fabric of an entire city. Maybe it's not. And this is this is where some of the question marks come up and we can definitely say let's start talking about these pins but finished kind of laying out the mat here first. So here are some of the thoughts. One some this artifact activates and maybe what it does is this is kind of my first rough thought is it somehow connects to every other thing that is enchanted or magical in a 100 mile radius and turns it into the sort of like framework some it changes the way that the magic works in the nearby area permanently. I was thinking of we if we wanted Internet or VR analog something that people can jack into you know something where if you're doing a job you want to be able to kind of wire yourself in. What if we use locus. First of all which for the listener Locus is basically the the it's sort of a Demy plane or a pseudo plane that lies on top of reality that magic flows through. So when magic is flowing along the landscape it's actually flowing through locus. So maybe it changes something. And now all of a sudden all things within the city are wired up and so has this cataclysmic event. As people start to recover and maybe there's some serious havoc that's created it's like explosions go off or whatever. It's not city destroying but it's enough that it takes a urban center a capital city or something like that of several hundred thousand people and permanently changes all of the magic behavior in it forever. And then people start to poke at it and you know as they investigate what it is they realize it's a way of like basically stepping into locusts or you know interacting with it in a way that is very akin to the Internet you can retrieve information off of it you can store information on it you can sort of plug things in. It would be as though somebody was able to bring an object into a downtown area and all of a sudden turn it on. And every single thing that runs on electricity now serves that object. But that object doesn't just exist in one place it becomes decentralized you know and it just changes the way things work forever. So who knows what this artifact is for but already I feel like that gives. There's there's all these different story threads we can pull on of the why and the implications of maybe somebody is trying to control that maybe there's tons of different people that try to control it but whatever it is people figure out how to make tons of money off of it. Right. And you start getting corporations you start getting people who are living in kind of the grind of grungy underbelly. But regardless of what it is they figure out ways of hacking into this shit and starting to make it work for them.
Speaker 4Yeah this could work right. The people that were originally there and figured out start making money off it because they've you know they've got they're in the know and they've got their hands on it and then people flock to this right because of what is going on. What is it. These stories are coming out here. People desperate for you know jobs or whatever. Right. Just you know excitement variety of injuries whatever come here and they become the underbelly they write they build it up from just sheer number of people that aren't that wealthy they just couldn't.
Speaker 5Exactly. And you have like you have some of the older people who are still living in this city. You know who are you know they're like hey I survived the blast or whatever that event is called and they're like I've been around for a long time and I know how this stuff works and like I know things that ain't nobody else going to tell you about. And I think I came up with a name for it too. So we've got Binder's weavers and conductors right we've talked about the moon before it's sort of the three main ways that people approach magic. Guess what if this is called the lace up it's a working title. But I thought that that would be a kind of cool way of you know you talk about the lace. You know you're working with this place it's this idea that it's this intricate repeatable pattern that exists in the environment and if you just have the right tools you can start to poke a little bit and work it around. You can make strange things happened with magic. That doesn't work anywhere else. People start creating interfaces standardization. You know people have little devices where they can you know plug it and so it's still like very magic infused everything about this is magic. But it's a magic that works on a level of consistency like programming or technology. But everything has to be extremely physical because it needs to be able to literally interface with the lace you know and then. So part of it is as we're going to have to come up with a lot of like little lingo terms like what do you call a person who spends a lot of time in locus interacting with you know the the magical barriers that people put up to protect their information. You know they've got to come and come up with a name. I was thinking lasers but I feel like yeah that's okay. I feel like there's a better one for that than that.
Speaker 3I mean you could go more like try to avoid you know avoiding Wevers you go for something like spinsters spinsters that's a great one.
Speaker 5Yeah it's corny enough to work. Yeah well exactly it has to be a kind of a little bad you know like what do you think about street samurai. It's pretty so it's pretty it's pretty corny like that's pretty bad but that's kind of the feel of it too. It's like yeah it's grungy it's Tshidi it's like it's a it's a bad name even the name is a failure. Exactly. So. OK so what are some of the things we can do with this. Now we have this premise but I feel like there's so many different places we could kind of start. And there's a lot that we're going to need to build out with this idea. Yes. I don't know anything stick out to you about like what to make of this. It's pretty raw it's probably more raw than I think just about anything else that we've tried to bring to the show.
Speaker 4It definitely is. So I think maybe a good way to start is be like OK so we've got the kind of basic stuff right there's going to be an underbelly is going to be some big bad corporations. There should be people fighting against them. Right. And that's going to be this lace coming out of you know magic magic number 2 0 2 0 3. Yeah. So what else do get one in there. Right. Think of what we'll watch that 44 minute cyberpunk video back in your mind. And the next few seconds. And what that's what is in there that you went through.
Speaker 5Well there's a couple of things that pop right up. First of all I think we need vehicles of some sort. I think to truly emulate the feel of a city you got to be able to have car chases or high speed you know everything about it is not necessarily high octane in the same way that Mad Max is you know that's a different feel. It's more Ferral. This is more like. I mean there is sort of that Ferrol feel to it but it's more like attitude than it is Ferral. You know it's like I'm socially Ferrol versus I'm physically Ferral. And so I think I think some sort of vehicle we want we want to be able to create some vehicles that either run on the laser interface with it maybe they don't work on the lace at all maybe it's just a result of some other innovation because it I don't think could be bad to have a couple of really good premises that almost feel like they're working independent of each other and they have to be on their own.
Speaker 10I mean the Lais could have given right the ability for people to share information so well and could have really given way to new ways of thought given what it is a study of the artifact could have brought about you know new enchantments or new ways of channeling arcane energy to enable something like magic.
Speaker 5Yeah that's a good point. I mean like even just creating some sort of arcane engine it would definitely be a lot easier to do that if everybody can share schematics with each other. And you know there's sort of that idea. Secondly we definitely I don't even know that. Secondly whatever next thing is something else cybernetics we definitely want some sort of physical limb replacement becomes in vogue it's common for people to create that stuff. Maybe it's because it runs off of the lace or maybe it's because I mean that stuff to some extent kind of already exists. You already have artificers you already have people who are exploring that but the idea of body mods I think is just too tasty to pass up. That's always been a thing that shows up in.
Speaker 9I think it enables people that aren't spellcaster to interact with the lakes. Oh shit yeah.
Speaker 5Exactly. Not everybody's a programmer but we all have iPhone's you know. This idea of like yes if you don't if you don't interact with the lace on some level where you're a magician but you still want to hook into it you gotta have at least something to interface and so then that creates a culture of saying well it's pretty normal for people to maybe replace a finger or replace just even a thumbnail or you know a little chip in their forehead or something like that that allows them to start to work with the you know work with the lace and share information about things and then you get or do I just love this idea of Imagine storing a packet of something in lowercase. You know you have just like a little packet of it's almost like written docs or something like that. But you have them all folded up or crumpled into a ball and throw them into a corner of of locusts in some back alley. And so in order to retrieve that you know you have informants show up at a specific time of the night and it's set to kind of appear only then and they just pull it out of a trash bin in locusts or something like that or even it's just I don't know if it was that was a a ramble but OK so cybernetics for sure.
Speaker 10Which again we can do that hand in hand with Luke Lucas isn't that way spinsters have the thing with cybernetics and the same kind of way that that segment. And I think you can also go on lines of like arcane engine idea.
Speaker 4Yeah. For artificial muscle and that kind of thing be another innovation. Right. OK.
Speaker 5Hey I had an idea go for it. I think there could be a category of lingo that refers to spiders and the idea of spiders crawling along. Yes specially with the idea of laser. So you know it's something you've got you've got oh she's you know she's a black widow or that's you know that's a daddy long. I know that's on actually Spidey but like that's a daddy long legs.
Speaker 11People don't know if it's butter and jelly and made the goddamn spider boom I've done it's can. There you go.
Speaker 5You know you got crawler you got. You know I don't know other words for spiders. You know something that crawls along a web. Oh he's a crawler or something. That's a dumb way of putting that. But yeah. But OK so you got this I want to. Sorry I totally. What were you were you were just talking about something I got completely off track because you said the word spinsterhood was like run with it since we're already off track.
Speaker 4I'm just going to put this here. I don't know that there might be some seals regarding that Drake info.
Speaker 12I don't know. OK just to say that the dragons could come back to this. The Dragons could come back that might be interesting if that. So are you thinking there might be a dragon or two in this city.
Speaker 11I mean Fratkin all I know is that if I can see a dragon with like I don't know some chrome missional is my shit. It's I think a thing in not net runner.
Speaker 5What's it called Shadowrun Shahanshah.
Speaker 4There is a god damn dragons that yeah that that literally our president or whatever the president of the United States of Canada and the US says is American. Canada is a dragon. Or was a dragon for some time.
Speaker 5So okay here's here's another thing we definitely need some big figures. I'm thinking probably there's got to be some gnomes up there that are either crime bosses or heads of corporations that are basically crime bosses.
Speaker 4Oh yes like fuckin animator's I'm gonna fucking again.
Speaker 13Fact in Canada that right now there is a nym from the lower right. There is a Gnehm who is like an incredibly bad ass name who is known as the black widow who is a hacker. Oh shit. And who leads a like Solea feminin gang of hackers.
Speaker 5Oh that's cool. All of them get. You know what. The way they're there their networks or whatever you want to call them. Don't. Have to come up with a word needle and thread. Something something that's easy to say.
Speaker 4That's like one or two syllables and sounds it sounds like he did in Cockney rhyming slang needle and thread like apples and pears.
Speaker 5Now. Yes. Obviously not that but something cool that's like them jacking in. I think that their way of accessing Locus is they all get tattoos of like a spider like across their back or something like that. But the tattoo ink is laced with a specific catalyst that allows them to wire into locus all the time maybe they even have extra legs or something that they have that fold up into that tattoo or something.
Speaker 4Yeah I mean we already barely have great magic ink so it's not too much of a big deal. Yeah.
Speaker 5We should probably narrow in on one or two things though. Now like cause man. You. Let's figure this out. How did the vehicles come about. Let's start with that. Like are we just talking straight up they got four wheels in their car. Are there any flying things that like hover and float.
Speaker 4I think we have some like weird helicopter type things but they're not like actually helicopters used him.
Speaker 12Kind of like a copter from Magic together yet. Can't live without her. Okay.
Speaker 4And then we've got like probably like really weird dream wheeled cars and kind of probably like train cars which are like you know kind of like things like centipede but we all I kind of wonder if maybe maybe what it is is that the the one underlying things that maybe none of them actually drive on the ground.
Speaker 5Some of them maybe a lot of them hover but I think that there's something about here's my thinking a fantasy seems to lose a fair amount of its identifiers sort of the visual marks that you make it to be like oh this is still fantasy the moment that you put wheels on something. The obvious example Yeah there's obviously exceptions like catapults parts siege weaponry and stuff. But any time that that Weils starts to look like it's not being made out of wood but rather metal or something else it starts to kind of question how much it's actually fantasy. So what if we one the underlying visual cues about all these vehicles is that very few of them actually have any wheels on them. If you have like a car like object or something that is a car you also known as a vehicle. Not a call maybe one of the core identifiers is that it's it's more like a sled. You know it's like a floating slide maybe only floats a few inches off the ground but it kind of makes a buzzing sound or something as it moves in it has like cool lights or something that you know you got under lights that are a result of the fuel like the power coming off of them because they're floating.
Speaker 4And I'm just now I've got this image of my head this like fuckin shitty looking peasant farmer with like a metal arm. And like a shitty wooden cart with fucking my purple Leonce that is floating.
Speaker 5Yeah. So obviously there's a level at which it's I think these vehicles are only affordable for people who are moderately successful not farmers Jeremy with his work and potato Krapf sure but like. Exactly but like you're still going to need to. If you're a merc you're probably still going to need a getaway vehicle so we will need to call it like at at a point where it's probably most of your investment goes into that. You probably put more money into that thing than you do into your Havill your little.
Speaker 4What about him. Because then you get your heads too. What about like arcane arcane engine metal whores. Literally horses. Yeah they literally like metal automaton horses that are like veins of arcane energy that light glow.
Speaker 5Gotta be honest man I'm not feeling this.
Speaker 8How can I not know. You just got to convince me. Well no I mean I'm just trying to. I don't particularly like it either but if you want me to keep it in fantasy it can't have fucking wheels so give it away. Okay well you know maybe I spoke too early maybe I can have wheels. All right if you want a fucking magic pig then sit on a a day.
Speaker 5Yes. Now that's what I like. You're right we should have a city full of of of metal pigs Nager. But okay. Now what do we call these vehicles are they called sleds. I think there's a cooler name than a sled. There are you know again we need to differentiate that from actual cyberpunk. They're probably named after the inventor. Yeah. Yes. Yeah probably so. I don't know what that would be then if that were the word car comes from somebody whose name are from this automobile. You know that's a different thing. I don't know where it comes from. Who knows maybe it comes from my carriage or car Carriage Car. You know comes from.
Speaker 4I was thinking I was thinking along the lines of Ford right.
Speaker 12Yeah. Ford was a guy's name. The thing is let's just be honest. Cards on the table. It was a knowm that came up with this right. Probably no. Yeah had to be the knowm is going to have like you know 100 character names so it's going to be shortened.
Speaker 5Oh yeah for sure. They typically go by like Dack or CIMB or something like that. So maybe you just have a name like maybe they're just called DACs. You know you just have to accept. You know I was being chased by a ADAC here. OK. All right. So we got vehicles. Do we want to. We don't think we need to get super in the in the paint about you know how this thing actually works. But how does it work is it just literally an engine. What's releasing it.
Speaker 4Do they throw a gemstone in there gemstones do power stuff so it makes sense. Yeah I mean they don't throw a sock right.
Speaker 5Right. Right. They socketed in gold. Maybe it's like maybe it's like fuel you know you've got like a gemstone that then you go to a station to refuel and you trade out you swap out your gemstone with another one. That's like full.
Speaker 4Yeah and the more you know hifalutin folks with a lot of money probably have a resident wizard and Chantha gems.
Speaker 5Yeah exactly. What would you even call them because it wouldn't be a wizard then they'd probably be. I don't know. That's I think that's part of it. Unfortunately this is one that I don't think makes for good audio but figuring out all those lingo names that I don't think that those are things like Helma come up with off the top of my head very well.
Speaker 4Yeah. So to put. You know no. But there's something else that we're overlooking that fucking kids I think laid on me which is also not super huge in fantasy guns.
Speaker 5Yeah I would say that's kind of an important part of cyberpunk. I would agree with.
Speaker 4Cyberpunks also basically just gun porn.
Speaker 5Now I would say and it's not just guns. VOIGHT Yes gun porn because that's all about like modifications. Like what do you do into it you've got you name your gun. It's a you know it's your trusty side arm that's been with you since forever.
Speaker 4Right. And it's fucking they right. They cost not just they it but they make it look right. It's a part of their look with guns.
Speaker 5Looks are maybe dude maybe we even just throw this down. I think that the body mods get to a point where even like painting certain sigils and things on your body your entire body becomes a giant Smigel. You know you use a certain special type of crystalline dust which I mean we've talked about in the past in our in our episode about books which was let's see him looking that up that was episode six man. That's a that's a one for the records. That was such a good episode. But like you know they even like lace that crystalline dust into them and so they have like an entire tat that goes across their whole body that allows them to do something special. And so OK so so maybe you know maybe you even have things in your hands that allow like your gun to work with just your hand but I think that they aren't just straight up guns like there's definitely stuff that runs on magic runs on Manneh and those are like your blaster pistols. You have like laser pistols plasma rifles that sort of thing the equivalent of that. But it's basically like spellcasting through a repeatable firearm. But I think you also have just straight out munitions. I think that I'm I'm OK with bringing that in because you can still get Renaissance fantasy for sure you know.
Speaker 4Yeah. I mean are we just talking about like AK 47 or are we yet like. Well and that's the thing.
Speaker 5I think it might be I'm thinking flintlock I'm thinking gunpowder you know era of black powder Blunderbuss and the magic carries it to that level like maybe you enchant the barrel so that the bullet curbs ever so slightly as it's being fired out with a ball because they might be ball bearings you might not get like the spin on the bullet but you have the magic trews it somehow.
Speaker 4I mean and remember we can always just invent a magic mineral that was discovered that when added to black powder makes it fly in a vector a little bit more effective. Yeah or I mean just right.
Speaker 1Makes it somehow like basically adding the crystal stuff to black out to make it unchangeable true. Yeah. So. OK. But like so maybe you have like Assaye.
Speaker 5I think I think I do want to say that we can use up to semiautomatic though I think there's a way to make that still fantasy. I mean obviously there is because like Shadowrun is fantasy you know it's science science fantasy.
Speaker 13Well the thing is right sci fi is a surgeon or a it's it's. So all of the sci fi fantasy but not all fantasies.
Speaker 5Is that how it works. Yes. OK. Yes definitely fuckin guns like Man I can't believe I totally missed that but. So how do we get to semi-automatic I'm not sure.
Speaker 4I mean think and think about how guns worked. Right. You've got the nuggets.
Speaker 1The what I know best is a revolt or a seizure. You've got a rotating chamber. Yup. Each bullet has its propellant in it right.
Speaker 12The right of the gun does are in it it just hits the hammer on it it just hits that causes and fires and then it rotates you know.
Speaker 5And then it and then it just rotates so all of that stuff is actually pretty easy I can easily think of. I just love the idea of somebody pulling out like having a whole setup where they've got cartridges that are up their sleeve and they have some sort of contraption where like as it reloads it's you know they they they empty the chamber and then they like flick their wrist or do this like cool like you know motion with their hand and they like a new cartridge goes up into it or they're enchanted so they just bring it close to their trenchcoat and you know almost as if but magnetically the enchantment allows the two to walk on. They just bring their hand back up and they're like ready to fire again.
Speaker 4Makes sense. Yeah. And so maybe maybe we have like giant revolvers the size of rifles straight like yes.
Speaker 5Yes especially because this is right around. I mean I think this is probably one of the first times we're true standardization is present so you have you know I mean when you think about the cotton gin and the reason why that was so valuable to white people was talk about that it was just the cotton gin it was the idea of standardization. Eli Whitney was that the guy you like winning. I think wedding. I think it would sense more. Well whatever it was it wasn't just that he created the cotton gin. It was the fact that he created he created the concept of standardization so that all of an army regardless of where you went you could go to a blacksmith and they had the same specs for bullets that another person did. So that you're like musket balls or whatever you're using were the same across every gun so that every gun could be made efficiently in the same way because before then it was just this person made them this size and this way and this other person made him this size in this way. And they're slightly different from each other and you couldn't just carry one munition over to another.
Speaker 4And so I think here's an idea. Yeah go for it.
Speaker 1It's possible that maybe it's a special type of alloy of metal or like spiderweb of stone like reacts to vibrations in a certain way that when you strike it right with a lot of force it is propelled like critical.
Speaker 5Yeah well I mean I think that there is. So the thing is I think I still want good old gunpowder. I think I'm better. I think that it will exist in there but I don't think that that necessarily cuts those other things out. I think that it's almost like maybe gunpowder only represents the first 15 or 20 years of activity in this city because it rapidly gets outpaced by other people innovating.
Speaker 4Yeah I think basically if we want to go full cyberpunk what you've got here. Right. With very little fantasy as well as we can actually throw in right rail guns with this idea. Oh absolutely. Something like some sort of special metal or alloy or rock that would react in this way right. Not require an explosion.
Speaker 5Right. Yeah. The ability to I mean think again like you got those crystals you know the same thing that all do people creep. Well this is where I was going with that. So there is standardization but this is the dawn of standardization. And so it's also the sunset or the transitory period in which bespoke creations are starting to die out. So you have people who are you know you got you got you got some people who are like the frontiers where it's at. You know you got to be on the bleeding edge in this in this city or you die man. And standardization that is the leading edge. They're making advancements like you can't make anywhere else. But then there's other people who are like Man I've been using this gun made by this one legendary Smith for the last ten years. Any nothing that nobody can make ever going to out strip with this thing can do. And so you get like culture of the two playing against each other. And I just thought of this idea of Imagine so Jerry reading together like a rail gun or something that works on like pulse blasts essentially you know Arcane Missiles but you know they work in a straight line or whatever and create basically a laser. But it's it's something that you have Jerry rigged to run in the seam crystals the same cells. You know maybe we just calm cells like fuel cells the same cells that people stick in there in their DACs or whatever we were they state that their Dack Yeah. And so like somebody is literally like using an entire car battery every time they fire their gun. And so it costs a ton of money. But they can do damage like nobody else.
Speaker 4Yeah it's like if it's like an arcane bazooka.
Speaker 5Yeah exactly. Yeah we're real gun like you were saying.
Speaker 13I mean are real guns can be hand-held can be basically pistols that you know have not recoil and stuff.
Speaker 5Oh you mean the rail gun in the conventional sense you don't mean like the video game way of like a laser. You mean literally like using electromagnetism to fire a bullet.
Speaker 13No I mean real gun as in something a weapon that can be small can be large. It is doesn't have an explosion and can right it could be magnetism electromagnetism but it could also be something some other fantasy book. Sure. But I'm not I'm not saying like the robots we're currently working on we as the United States military don't know.
Speaker 11You know I came over like five miles of that right.
Speaker 5Yeah. No not. Not the same thing. Yeah man I think we might just need to do a microscope about this and we might have to.
Speaker 4I mean it's you know it's been over getting up there. Yeah but I mean we don't have much time left. Is there anything else you can talk about.
Speaker 5I don't know. I feel like how do we end this episode. I feel like we don't really have an end cap on this. We've just presented a lot of ideas which is what we typically do but we typically start with a much stronger base than this I think because this is just us opening the door on into a whole new way we could run an eight episode series on this you know.
Speaker 4Yeah I think that's what we do. I think behind closed doors work in a little bit more and come back when we think we can you know say some more stuff but also like you know we have more stuff to work with. We've got things in place. We've got more some as I mean we've got a few characters total and maybe we do that. It's like a celebratory thing like cyberpunk really says something or if it's you know really it's just a game.
Speaker 5Yeah I mean I think it's funny that this just came up because of that that gameplay but it really inspired me. I'd been hearing about it since E3. I kept on hearing podcast people talking about how amazing it was and like oh my God I said just like they've captured a city like nobody's done in a videogame before to actually feels like a real city. There's so many people in the streets now all of their own lives and you know but more than just the tech advancements like there are like they just did cyberpunk so good. Yeah and I mean let's give props to CD project. Oh yes Lillicrap by the way. Yeah. Made by CD Brushgrove the guys who did the Witcher. They are magic. They are just incredible.
Speaker 4And some of the lumen we are talking of in video games today. Just to be fully clear we are talking about Cyberpunk 2077 by Celebrezze for it I'll drop a link in the description if you're truly curious. Yeah. And it's like you know about it probably. It looks really cool.
Speaker 5This is what inspired his podcast episode this entire podcast is inspired by C.D project directed specifically Cyberpunk 2077 metho.
Speaker 4I mean we could definitely see the Witcher for some inspiration.
Speaker 5I really need to play those games I have. I own the first one. I'm one of those assholes who's insisting that he has to play through all three of the games. Don't get it don't. I've been told that the first two are just the first one especially as terrible the second one is ok but the third one is like a masterpiece in gaming and it will be fun to play that in 4 years when I get through the other two.
Speaker 4I'd be I'd go for it. So far as to say saying what a good game. No first one I tried to play. Couldn't do it but I did give it a go and I couldn't do it. Third one is an incredible incredible carry.
Speaker 5Well I'll just have to try that out. Well folks hopefully were too disappointed I think today was really a buffet. We got a lot of ideas. I think the main thing that I am interested in is the fact that it is possible and I can't believe I had never really considered it before and I can't think of a great example of somebody trying to capture this. Obviously there are examples of people fusing fantasy and cyberpunk. You know Shadowrun is an entire empire an entire you know genre almost of of you know fantasy that does exactly this but still with the premise that it takes place in a world where the Internet exists and we're talking about a situation where that's not the case. You know we're talking we're still talking you know outside of the city. People are still running around on horses and you know pushing carts and stuff. Maybe there's a couple of cities like this maybe there's like two or three artifacts that when they were all recovered you know caused this to happen in a few cities and those cities kind of like compete against each other. I was playing with that idea too but that would be cool. Well before we finish up for today it was there what what of the cornucopia of ideas do you really want to pursue the most.
Speaker 4CARTER I think we need to look more into this gun situation because I feel like if it was you know if it's just this kind of like flint like stuff it's just kind of this like Evolver idea there needs to be more. Because Cyberpunk is all about crazy guns and big guns and cool looking.
Speaker 5So definitely it's very important I think for me the main thing is is getting a better concept of the timeline and some of the foundations of this stuff like what was the event. What implications did it have for this city. You know. Yeah they get triggered the lace and caused that to happen maybe fleshing out a little bit more of what that was there for instance what are some of these companies what is you know getting getting the really really macro the biggest level stuff kind of more nailed down. I think will be really helpful. I agree. All right. Well thanks everybody for listening. We hope you enjoyed this exploration into the Lanzas Saddar and cyberpunk in the realms beyond perhaps found some good material to add to your own stories. You can reach us at the Lurky peruse on Twitter. E-mail us at Loar keepers podcast at G.M. dot com.
Speaker 4You can follow us on iTunes Stitcher Google Play or wherever you listen to podcasts like Spotify if you like us please give us a five star rating it helps us a lot. It shows us that you care about us and we all care about you already. We like knowing that you love us. We do. It gives us a big big heart. Big love yes even better. Spread the word. Tell your mom tell you that tell me the project read.
Speaker 5Send them tell C.D for oddish read it tell Gerold about us too if you can get it.
Speaker 4Get a hold of them go to Previa you Jefford vending Gerber is force Roach. Yes. Whichever one that is fits all of the sources bro. Oh really. Yes men are really names. All of these horses are God.
Speaker 5What an asshole. I love it. Yeah. Thanks to Josh Zilker for his composition of land of heroes lore keepers theme. Oh and a little quick update. So with all of these ideas that we spread out we're going to so. So this week we started by dropping a post on to read it basically said what did you think of the ideas that we brought up in the episode. In the future we plan on doing this every week so if there is if you're curious or you have something you want to say or want to share about the episode you can go to Reddit dot com slash our slash worldbuilding which will also be a link in the podcast description and check out the check out the thread. Maybe I'll just link right to that there too. First of all props to the world building community they're fucking awesome. I love redit dot com slash worldbuilding. We hope to do quite a bit through that as a potential place for these discussions. We want to hear your ideas we want to hear what you specifically want to see out of the next episode and where you want us to investigate. For whenever the next time we reconvene and talk about this unnamed cyberpunks city and also a name for that. Anyways thanks to you all for listening and until next time.
Speaker 9Don't forget there are always more of today by everybody by.