Septblog 2023

Conspiracy Theory.

Illuminati update No 23. We note substantial incursions into the terrestrial noosphere at this time. These seem to originate from adolescent space lizards using the popular but frowned upon ‘Mayhem and Havoc’ Role Playing Game System here on Earth.

The three rules seem simple enough.

1) Pick a fairly primitive planet with only level three sentience, the sort of place where the inhabitants still believe in things like gods, money, nations, or the big bang hypothesis.

2) Select one or more inhabitants as avatars and see who can wreak the most mayhem and havoc.

3) Don’t tell your parents.

We currently seem to have six major players or teams of players in action experimenting with the following game challenges here on Earth: -

A) Reduce the most powerful nation to a laughingstock or to a civil war by using a single avatar that can only bluster bombastically and tell ridiculous lies.

B) Elevate the second most powerful nation to the top position regardless of internal and collateral damage, use a committee of avatars if required.

C) Use the third most militarily powerful nation to initiate major wars, and if possible worldwide war, using only a single misanthropic psychopath as avatar.

D) Using multiple avatars ensure that the planet’s potentially greatest alliance of nations descends into a corrupt ineffectual bureaucratic squabbling shambles.

E) Set the planet on fire, burn all the combustible deposits, wreck the climate, decimate agriculture and the population, use any number of avatars.

F) Pick a handful of major or minor religions or philosophies and see how much division, strife, and murder you can create with them, use multiple avatars.

All conspiracy theories, no matter how apparently absurd, reveal something about our responses to the order-chaos-disorder, and weirdness going on in our worlds. They usually do this by metaphor or analogy that displaces blame elsewhere because people do not wish to acknowledge or confront the more probable causes.

Hardline Christians started a Satanic Ritual Abuse scare some decades ago. Negligible real evidence of abuse ever appeared, but a tsunami of real evidence of abuse eventually emerged  concerning, - you guessed it -  Hardline Christians - both within the catholic church and within many protestant sects.

The professional and managerial classes in the USA have severely degraded the prospects of the children of the blue collar class, so we have a conspiracy about powerful satanic child abusers controlled by lizards.

When we perceive the rich and powerful screwing the poor more than usual, Antisemitism often rears its head, despite that Jews make up only a small proportion of the rich and powerful anywhere, and control only one government in a tiny nation.

When a culture war breaks out between factions of the professional and managerial classes, and they start demonising each other and trying to displace each other, we should consider the extent to which those classes have become severely overcrowded.

The popularity of lizard symbolism for demonic or hellishly immoral agents or agencies tells us something about ourselves and the primitive reptilian circuits that lurk in all our hindbrains.

A Fascinating Thesis. I have just received a PhD thesis from Vasilis Meletiadis  of Bristol University, ‘The History of Chaos Magic 1976 – 2000’. He has conducted lengthy interviews with many of us that he writes about, and exhaustive research into the cultural milieu in which Chaos Magic arose. As a rather non-musical, and non-party person myself, I had not realised the huge extent of the overlap between Chaos Magic and the more extreme end of alternative popular music and clubbing culture, nor quite how dark the UK manifestation of Chaos appeared compared to its American cousin Discordianism. Nor quite the extent to which its spread depended on amateur ‘zines’, and the extent to which the advent of the internet changed its method of spread and its structure and practices.

Overall, the thesis seems fair, balanced, and exceptionally well researched and written. Historically it will probably take first place as the definitive history. As soon as it becomes published and in the public domain, I will provide a link to it.

I hope to see a similarly definitive academic history of chaos magic 2000 – 2024 emerge sometime from someone.    

Parapsychology. Dr Dean Radin has a very high profile in the world of parapsychology, having presided over the Parapsychology Association for a number of years, written a number of notable books on parapsychology, presented many lectures on it, and worked with many experiments into it.

We finally got to talk at length and discussed such topics as the desirability (or not) of proving the existence of parapsychology to the satisfaction of scientists, the equations of magic, public belief in magic, Sheldrake’s experiments, the potential weaponization of psi, quantum physics and psi and the possible implications of the Tsirelson Bound, the measurement/observer problem, and the trade-offs involved between the magic friendliness and science friendliness of psi experiments – this last topic remaining a subject of ongoing discussions.

Citation 14/08/2023. Now in about its fifteenth year of operation, Arcanorium College proudly confers the degree of Batchelor of Magic upon a second alumnus!

https://www.specularium.org/arcanoriumcollege/item/273-arcanorium-college-department-of-magic

The course makes awesome demands upon the perseverance and dedication of applicants. Many come forward but few make the grade.

Global Warming. Whilst continental Europe has combusted, we have had a meteorologically lousy August here in the UK, - unseasonably dull, chilly, and often wet, plus one of my autumnal mandrakes (Boris) has woken up at least 8 weeks early and started to push forth leaf shoots, whilst Igor and Circe continue to slumber awhile.

My Sci-fi hobby.

The news that many hundreds of UK schools and public buildings will soon collapse if we don’t spend fifty or more billion pounds on them prompted research into precisely what material the hulls of the Lithonian and Skaron fleets consist of. Its apparently AAC, aerated autoclaved concrete - lightweight, cheap, not very strong, widely used for substandard dodgy building, and occasionally by sculptors. The massive demolition projects that will have to follow will likely ensure that plenty of the stuff ends up floating in Welsh watercourses and ultimately on the beach fronting the spaceship yards.

Herewith the new Lithonian Anti-Matter Dreadnought and its counterpart in the rival Skaron fleet. Both societies have created a single ultimate ‘deterrent’ in the form of a bomb with about a metric ton of antimatter in it – enough to trash a planet or an entire sector of space: -

As this seems to evolve towards an interplanetary game scenario with reaction thrust propelled ships rather than an interstellar one with warp drives, work has begun on a board/backdrop for interplanetary manoeuvring: -

On the larger map, silver washers show the last eight  moves of the two planets in their orbits and the movement of a red ship from the red planet to intercept the green planet. One of the smaller maps shows the gravity well around the green planet and a ship launched from it to intercept the red ship in low orbit.

Obliterating the rival civilisation counts as only a minor victory, forcing its surrender counts as a major victory. Several varieties of a draw remain possible, some worse than others….the game basically models a nuclear standoff.

FSW4-AD 2222. Humans have spread to surrounding star systems. Following squabbles insurrections and skirmishes, humanity has split into 5 ideological factions. The treaty of 2220 established the militarisation of occupied systems only and the de-militarisation of unoccupied systems and space areas. Peace ensued for two years until factions started building transportable fortresses and a technologically advanced alien race began moving into unoccupied systems and space areas and sought to forge alliances with various of the human factions. Conflicts over systems and control space areas then ensued.

SHIP                      DICE                                    COST               

Fortress                  20                                          6                      

Hive                        20                                         4

Battleship                12                                         6

Serpent                  12                                         4

Battlecruiser           10                                         5                                          

Cruiser/Carriers       8                                         4                             

Destroyer                 6                                         3                                                                

Frigate                     4                                          2

Fighter                     4                                         1(Imperials only)

SURFACE UNITS            

Garganaught           8                                        3

Scorpion                8                                        2               

Devastator               6                                       2

Reaper                    4                                       1

1) Turn sequence. Income, Production, Movements & Combats.

2) Income of (5), 4, 3, 2, depending on system size. Income from any home system not occupied by enemy units, income from any other system occupied by own surface units.

3) Production only on systems where a fortress has been planted. Income units can only move across uncontested (connected) pathways of any length. Ships appear in neighbouring uncontested space. Surface unit appear on systems.

4) Movements & Combats.

A) Ships may move from one area of space to an adjacent one. (Imperial Fighters can only move from one area of space to another in Carriers.) If it contains enemy ships, Combat will occur. The attacking side can elect to retreat to the space it came from, and the defending side can elect to retreat to any friendly occupied or unoccupied space at the beginning of any combat round after the first.

B) Ships may fire on surface units in systems adjacent to the space they occupy. Combat occurs at the discretion of the attacking ships.

C)  Ships may convey surface units between any two systems that border the space they occupy. Surface units may only be moved across one space area to another system in a turn. If surface units land on a system occupied by enemy surface units or fortresses Combat occurs.

D) A fortress may land on a system not occupied by enemy forces, and assimilate its carrier.

5) Combat. Risk Protocols. Up to 3Attack dice against 2Defence dice. by combat rounds, highest dice against highest dice, defenders win draws. Casualties at the discretion of each combatant.

6) The number of pieces of each type supplied reflects the limits of units of that type that a civilisation can support.

7) Initial Production Levels. Imperials 24, Aquarians 22, Chaoists 21, Darwinians 22, Soviets 22. No production on first move.

8) Fortresses. All civilisations start with one immobile Fortress on their largest world, and one fortress in a carrier in a space adjacent to the homeworld. Civilisations may purchase additional Fortresses and Carriers to transport them to other systems. A Fortress only becomes operational when landed on a system empty of opposing assets and its Carrier has become assimilated and removed from the display. Fortresses can only defend and only when not in a Carrier. If attacked in a carrier only the carrier defends.

9) Starting Conditions - Humans. 1 Fortress on homeworld, one next to it in space, all Cruisers, Destroyers, and Frigates deployed at will on any space territories adjacent to at least two home systems.

Reapers equal in number to the production values of all home systems on those systems.   

10) Victory Objectives, conquest of as many systems as possible.

ALIENS. Special rules.

2) Income. From any system occupied by a Hive or Scorpion.

3) Production. At any system occupied by a Hive. (If connected)

Mutations: (performed during production phase) Scorpion to Hive cost 2. Scorpion to Serpent cost 1. Serpent to Hive not possible. Free mutations, Hive to Scorpion, Serpent to Scorpion, Hive to Serpent.

9) Starting Conditions. 1 Hive, 8 Serpents, 8 Scorpions, placed on any un-militarised treaty spaces or systems.

ALLIANCES. 2 Player. Aliens pick any two allies but not Imperials, by picking an ideology to back. The Imperials then ally with the other two factions. Aliens then set up and move first. Play order then established by lot and proceeds clockwise or anticlockwise by lot. Allied ships but not surface forces may occupy the same areas.

The following chart shows the ideological relationships of the five factions. The Aliens can pretend to any ideology to select a pair of allies. The Imperials will adjust their ideology to suit the allies they become left with.

                       (Individualist)

                                  l

         Goths               l              Capitalists

                                  l

(Mystical) ---------Imperials ------------(Rationalist)

                                  l                     

         Aquarians       l                 Soviets

                                  l

                         (Collectivist)

Additional optional tournament rules.

Tactical Attack dice bonus. D4+1, D6+2, D8+3, D10+3, D12+4.

Tactical Defence dice bonus. D4+1, D6+2, D8+3, D10+3, D12+4, D20+5.

Psychic Attack Bonus. Throw all attack dice twice, use highest score.

Psychic Defence Bonus. Throw all attack dice twice, use highest score.

Production bonuses. Add 1 or 2 to the income value of any system.

Leader and Character pieces can be added to the game to add these powers to any forces on a system or space area.