Balbergulbness: The Colossus Culture in Homemade Settings, World Building & Galaxy Construction

Another list mentioned a Star Trek episode in which aliens reconstruct Abraham Lincoln.

A number of ideas and sources seem to be leading me to do something with another Elder species and their hero-concepts, probably closer to the Eclipse Phase reference above, though it's not yet separating out well from a few other projects. Names seem helpful: I'll probably define more later for Colossi.

This post has been edited by uncle_jimbo on Sep 2 2018, 01:01

Explorers whose nations of origin seem to be taking a similar, so far less extreme, path might find these remnants troubling, edit: such as Borealins or Thuldans.

This post has been edited by uncle_jimbo on Feb 9 2017, 09:59

I might find some use for this, particularly as another possible reading is a bit close to another project:

The Pollux Principle

I'll start here, in the middle of it:

On The Avenue of Giants

The portly and extravagantly waistcoated Professor Boris Grapefruit-Kinsella opens his remarks to the assembled guests, "I hope I may be forgiven some cinematic manipulation. The original footage is quite confusing."

He gestures from one side of the holo-stage as a double-height, frozen, translucent Professor looks up in surprise at a looming six-metre figure, grotesquely over-muscled in the chest and arms, glaring with one eye under a thick low brow as it raises a long-handled mechanical cutter to bisect him. In Caravaggio-like intensity, the tableau suggests brutish masses nearby.

"I am indebted a second time to my colleague, Doctor Laurean."

Motion returns to the hologram. A fit-looking young woman intercedes. The cadre graduate steps in close, her drusus of white cerametal jabbing and drawing in practiced forms. A sibilant snick, snick, snick clips limbs and head from the first two aliens, painting circles of gore where they drop, and slish, the third combatant fumbles with both hands at a gush of organs from a diagonal rent in its torso.

A fire axe tumbles end over end to bury its edge in an alien's sole eye-socket, a fine throw with the improvised weapon. Gunfire from the crew, inexpertly aimed, falls heavily enough to stagger and bring down the remaining two attackers.

The view sweeps out, reducing the scene of violence to a tiny blot on the breadth of a grand Avenue all of honey-coloured ceramic, sized for an army's display. Identical statues of a heroically built, godlike one-eyed being make a central line within curved islands, overgrown with a variety of once-cultivated plants. To the sides, round-topped towers are the fingertips of the kilometres-high statues holding the road aloft in their hands, clouds around their knees.

The elevated road stretches into clear-aired distance from a platform raised by a circle of bearing figures, to a statue half again as tall, entering at a tracheotomy point in its throat.

The much-reduced expedition looks ahead wearily, some swollen and contorted in body, others coughing or drooling, one led along with her face above the upper lip buried in ridges of flesh.

"We sought a cure there. We left empty-handed. The disease isn't an infection. It is a choice, to live on and grow, or to become perfect."


Dr. Diana Laurean's skills might suggest a new Cross-Profession Perk:
Cadet
6 SP, Active
Some groups in society train young people in active skills that continue to serve them in later life.
Choose two of Unarmed Attack, Melee Weapons, Acrobatics, Modern Ranged Weapons, Primitive Ranged Weapons, Vehicle Operation, Survival, Tactics. These broad skills and their specialty skills count as Tech Op or Diplomat skills for purchase. The GM may include other skills for particular campaign settings.
The character's Action Check score increases by one point, as for the Action Check Increase achievement benefit.

This post has been edited by uncle_jimbo on May 22 2017, 02:50

Then back to the beginning:

The Players of Algol

The heroes have been called upon as people of reputed wide experience to help out a monitoring station of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics suffering unusual medical symptoms. The station staff, mostly members of the cheerful and urbane de Kölsch Culture, pass their time with a low-G racquetball league, which in a setting of considerable isolation and boredom, has become a noticeable arbiter of romantic success.

A representative patient: With large regions of his brain repurposed by the virus, he speaks only Old Earth German and doesn't recognise any other form of communication. His work as a comptech has been compromised for several months by his developing condition.

The club leaderboard offers insight, pointing to Grid orders of dietary supplements from a supplier in Concord Sagittarius.

The heroes find the mail order office stripped, leaving behind an unfamiliar potted shrub. The wheatgrass tree bears pods of bright purple, starchy substance that analysis will show to contain an unfamiliar oxygen-carrying molecule. There's nothing especially sinister about it. It doesn't carry the retrovirus, but provides excellent nutrition, though humans will need additional amino acids and trace elements. Transforming subjects often lose important digestive and metabolic functions, or even reabsorb entire organs, as they prepare to take nutrients in a more efficient form.

It grows in profusion, along with other plants from a diverse mix of alien life systems, among the rainforests and water-meadows of an abandoned colony world, the Wild Garden. The heroes might well decide to take live specimens with them as they embark on their Voyage of the Damned.

(The virus, by the way, takes a shorter and less traumatic course in mechalus, but shows horrific effects on sesheyans, twisting the subject's spine and triggering growth of additional eyes. Fraal suffer a quick and grotesque demise. Weren and t'sa cannot be affected.)

This post has been edited by uncle_jimbo on Sep 2 2018, 01:05

A possibility for an Act along the way:

The Gardens of Ynn

Guess who a sidhe looks like?

The game statistic Sense of Self might come in handy for my plot, too.

This post has been edited by uncle_jimbo on Mar 31 2018, 05:36

I might want to pull apart the latest Wodlands instalment and use bits in various threads. The Master's Hands fit here.

Just a hint:

The Golden Bridge

Seems relevant for more than one reason:

You Will Find Me Patient and Steadfast