Thoughts of Grimdark...
In the original discussions of WarSpike the idea of a 40K mod came up. It was one of the ideas Malika came up with, and the reason there is a WarSpike forum over on Anargo. Great system ideas are easy to come up with, and they seem airtight when musing about them, but no idea survives contact with paper. This what happened with WarSpike, and in writing it up it snowballed into a thousand variables that all needed to be sorted out. All while keeping on track. Suffice to say, it took longer than I thought to get the framework done, and the 40K mod on Anargo has revived little attention these past few months.
Now wounds are going in, and the arms and armour are going to get a brush up may thoughts of a 40K mod are starting come to the fore. With the new Space Hulk the idea of a WarSpike 'Space Hulk' mod, and 40K mod seems very appealing. In further daydreams of the mod, and pondering copyright issues, my mind turned to a satirical take on Grimdark.
Grimdark
The idea is to make a Sciror setting that is 'grimdark' and a parody of 40K. This means ramping up the grimdark to new levels. I am reminded of discussions on the old Black Library forums were my discussion of 'Philverse' often brought exclamations of horror and disturbance. It seems the greater 'reality' of Philverse has a greater power to induce 'grimdark'. This is to be more grimdark by using Philverse (which Sciror basically is) to ramp up the logic and explanation of '40K' and hence contrast with the madness (because fact is stranger than fiction - unless you have my brain!). The madness comes from the thoughts and concepts of Philverse taken to their logical conclusion.
Armed with this new idea I popped off to grab 'grimdark.com' but obviously someone has already grabbed that, and so I had to come up with another...
Stare into the Abyss
Yep, that is what I came up with: 'stareintotheabyss.com'. Not perfect, and it's a bit of am mouthful (SitA), but it taps into a popular meme about madness and nihilism and seems like a good place to start. Next up was to come up with the setting, or which bit to rip off, but then it occurred to me why not go full Philverse? I thought it should to analogous to the fall of mankind in 40k, and the beginning of the age of strife, as there is very little detail for GW and I filled in all the blanks. This is easy to do with Sciror as all the explanations of the setting are in place. All it required is dropping the threshold for psionic manefestion and the result is basically a scenario where the vanilla Sciror setting goes tit's up. This would be along the lines of the 'psyker epidemic' of 40K, except here it is brought about by latent psionic powers combining due to population density. Along with this we can chuck in the withdraw of the Artilects from the Mars Accord and the loss of all advanced technology, and to top it off the loss of billions of colonies and the death of untold trillion, upon trillions, of humans.
Colour Text: This is the end of a civilization...
The war is over. We lost. Mankind is extinct. Only the bio-construct remain, mere echoes of humanity, built for war. This is their story, their fight for survival, and their search of the Venus Bluegenes, Battle Nuns, Sisters of Sin, Amazons of Isha, Sirens of the Core, to continue their species. Their inability to form lasting relationships... (OK, that end bit went too far! :P)
40K?
Anyway, the idea being that all the characters and troops types in grimdark, I mean; 'Stare Into The Abyss', would be place-holders/ stand ins for other Sci-Fi games, like 40K or AT-43.
So a 'armoured flesh golem' = 40K space marine, whereas 'Humo-Exo-Suit' = AT-43 UNA TacArms (or Tau Battle Suit).
It means new designs for all the characters but the archetypes would be preserved. They would be similar to other games (as all these games are very similar). I may change the weapons for the 'default' but a weapon upgrade would bring them into line. So the Armoured Flesh Golem (AFG?) would use SSG (Steaming Stun Gun) but could upgrade to 'auto gyro-jet launcher' which would basically be my version of the bolter (with modal bolts).
I have some ideas for the space marines - AFG - that are more like plate armour in look but use the newt suit joints. They originate from corporate 'paradise' worlds, are made by humans not machines, are compliant with the dictates of the Mars Accord, and used to kidnap/ fight between corporation houses, and also used to raid off-world Ecorium (flesh harvest for organs, DNA etc?) Therefore their design in 'logical' to the setting.
Your thoughts? Troll Forged Miniatures forum thread here;
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Hearing feedback is very important to me in developing my ideas. Much of my designs are inspired, and crafted, by chatting to fans on forums before snowballing into a full concepts posted on this website. I would like to thank all those who have contributed critiques and participated in discussions over the years. If you would like join in, you are most welcome!
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