Dominion of the Black - Pulling more from H.R. Giger than Lovecraft


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion

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Robert Brookes wrote:

Squamous?

I'm-- not sure that's referring to the dragon or not.

and that scares me

It's the beans.

Scaly beans.

Silver Crusade

@Cheapy, Ah, got the full picture now. Thanks!

James Jacobs wrote:
Dragon's Demand DEFINITELY spills the squamous beans.

Squamous?

Space lizards!

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

So they're squamous epithelial, then. I once sat potent yet impotent, breathing in dreaming dark, shedding layer upon layer that my body may grow to accommodate the beastly apparatus that brew'd within.

Then I had a sammitch, and I felt better.


How do I talk about Genera here, without sounding puffy? This thread is filled with creative gold, yet I'm hesitant about mistreating Lovecraft. Usually, my feeling comes in opposition to dogma or ruts of tradition. Yet, something here gnaws at me like a chest-burster. To use a metaphor, imagine the task of forging a lost work of art by a master--say Brueghel, for example--who's work is world famous, yet the missing piece is known only from description; no living person has seen the work.

The work may not need to be a copy, or exact as Brueghel intended, but there is some danger of it not seeming like Brueghal's work. It may not be precisely necessary to think this way, but my hesitation comes from the human urge which might come into the forger to take the work in a personal direction. Lovecraft and his circle shaped so many things profoundly that I'm reverent of the spirit of intent. For another example read look into the novel Poodle Springs.

I'm not going to pretend to be some master scholar of Lovecraft's intentions or prattle about what is or is not cannon. I'm a believer that all art is built upon other art, and that nothing is truly created without a measure of reverent and loving theft of concept. I'm a believer in putting enough of a spin on a master's work to make it new again--Poppy Bright's "And His Mouth Shall Taste of Wormwood" is a definite example of building the genre, while making it new.

What I know is that you get to the Borg somewhere after Herbert West, and you find your way to The Matrix through a Notebook found in Abandoned House, and Stephen King's whole Dark Tower opus can fit nicely between Leng and Carcosa. Space is black and roiling; the stars are impassive; the gods are mad and blind; we are insignificant beyond reason; to understand is to lose one's mind; what you see is not real; to see truly breaks down reason; your faith and cosmology are a night light and a teddy bear. We're all just whistling in the dark.

I don't wanna lose that.


bigkilla wrote:
Kthulhu wrote:
TerraNova wrote:
Hey, I never said lovecraft wasn't influential. It is just that (unlike Howards), I personally find the works that were inspired by his writing much better than the original material. Not only has a lot of it not aged well at all (a certain cat can't even be named on this board), but later writers have smoothed over the plainly ridiculous, and used the horrifying parts to much better effect.
I'd have to strongly disagree. I've found that most (95%) of the other writers who have tried to incorporate elements of the Mythos have utterly failed, and even the remaining 5% are generally quite inferior to Lovecraft himself.
+1

Agreed. I've read plenty of things that are scary but there's something special about Lovecraft that just creeps me right out. And the best adaptations are the ones that have cleaved close to the bone - Eternal Darkness, for instance.

I think a lot of later adaptations fail because the authors try to give the characters hope, agency, and a fighting chance. Which totally misses the point.

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

now that we've seen a little more of the Dominion, it's pretty clear that the original thesis is true: the Dominion is more ALIEN than MYTHOS. Although there are clearly more than a few overlaps.

In fact, they seem to be in direct confrontation with that most mythos of creatures - the Mi-Go.

That being said, the Dominion is incomprehensible to our minds, so... yeah.

Silver Crusade

Gonna be adding to this some time after work cools down, but I can definitely say I've got a head canon about those black hole sacrifices mentioned on the Dominion article.

Two hints:

1. They don't die.

2. "Where we're going we won't need eyes to see."

>:)


Mikaze wrote:

Gonna be adding to this some time after work cools down, but I can definitely say I've got a head canon about those black hole sacrifices mentioned on the Dominion article.

Two hints:

1. They don't die.

2. "Where we're going we won't need eyes to see."

>:)

The Dominion was already unpleasant enough to begin with, but now you've really gone and made it über-nasty.

:o

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

You know, I know Dominion are supposed to be super creepy aliens(while still not being lovecraft stuff), but after reading iron gods' ap info page on them, I can't help but think of this

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Mikaze wrote:

Gonna be adding to this some time after work cools down, but I can definitely say I've got a head canon about those black hole sacrifices mentioned on the Dominion article.

Two hints:

1. They don't die.

2. "Where we're going we won't need eyes to see."

>:)

yeah, that was a pretty cool little bit. dunno what to do with it, but it was pretty cool.


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The Dominion sacrifice millions into black holes as part of their "Banquet" ritual.

Black holes are portals within the Dark Tapestry to the Negative Energy Plane, also known as the Void.

"What you think of as life is a great deception. The faithful have already been claimed, taken, and saved. You are ours".
-Eternity's Doorstep.

The Negative Energy Plane is also the "metaphysical" core of the Shadow Plane.

If you'd indulge me in repeating myself from nearly two years ago,
"It was purely by chance that Dou-Bral noticed the faint glimmer of a star (perhaps the epic flash of the Earthfall through the window of a Black Hole?) and escaped the endless prison...Yet, to him, it was sign of his victory. The void could not consume him. He had won. He had been rewarded. He had come to understand truth and now he was ready to share it with the world. The void must be challenged. Nihilism must be crushed. Existence must endure. Life is pain."

The Dominion gets the body. The Kyton gets the soul. Both stand against the Void, which swallows all life whole.

It's good to be home...


I'm not sure if there's an official source on black holes as portals to the Dark Tapestry, though I've noticed in the Dragon's Demand, they talk about any relation between the Dark Tapestry and the plane of shadow. The connection was described as "laughable."

Not to say there couldn't be a connection, but thought I'd just mention it.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

It's canon somewhere that stars contain portals to the positive energy plane. It would make sense, given that, that black holes contain portals to the negative energy plane.


Ross Byers wrote:
It's canon somewhere that stars contain portals to the positive energy plane. It would make sense, given that, that black holes contain portals to the negative energy plane.

Yeah, that is actually Cannon; there are nightshades the size of small planets that swim through the void near Black Holes, and the portals in the center are guarded by sceaduinar.

Liberty's Edge

Dot


Void dragons (evil outer dragons) could be some sort of Dominion emissary or scout. It says they were tainted by exposure to terrible alien entities, and that sounds just about right. They could even be some sort of dominion convert because some struggle against the "inevitable tide of annihilation", which could be their own corruption, or maybe some Dominion plot.

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