Humanity did not go to the stars. Oh, we sent a few probes that way. Nor did the Singularity occur. Some argue that it was impossible. Others that the Romantic Turning of the 21st Century killed it, and that was our one chance.
We did make it out into the Solar System right before the Romantic Turning away from individualism toward unity, and from floundering at heterodoxies to learning the classics which did not mean we could not have gone to the stars, but it was also an inward turn of greater care for the environment and meditation.
The First Nuclear War finished off the World That Might Have Been.
After that it was the Dark Years, and then the Dream Years when Humanity clung to hopes of utopia and found its secular saviors to be unworthy of the faith placed in them. The Second Nuclear War finished off the last of the Great Saviors and seemingly purged Humanity of its desire for perfection.
A more stoic, more religious mindset took over, and for hundreds of years a certain grimness of mind kept the Chaos as bay. For the Great Saviors had been eager to improve the species. Things had been made in labs. Things in most ways that counted, far less than human, but in raw combat power, in breeding potential, far more. Oh, not all the Things were destructive. Those that weren't quickly died off.
The Third Millenium came in the midst of the Grim Centuries as Humanity warred with its monsters and its own dreams. Every child was taught that life is short, and frequently painful, and that there were monsters right over the horizon.
Toward the end of the Grim Centuries, Humanity pulled ahead, and moved into Space again. The First Solar War broke the links between home and the other planets, and the others died in the cold and the dark. But not before they wreaked a terrible vengeance on the Mother Planet. Kinetic Impact Weapons, asteroids reaching five percent of lightspeed slammed into the planet. Afterwards, an a watcher from space would be hard put as to remember which continent was which as many distinguishing features were simply gone.
Japan had sunk. Ireland was so ridden with volcanoes that no one could live there. The Great Plains were now a giant inland sea. South America was broken in two, and the Nile now flowed the opposite direction into the much larger Mediterranean.
The rise in magma under the oceans heated the waters of the seas to a very pleasant eighty degrees which produced enough cloud cover to cover the planet in white. The clouds then snowed. It took five hundred years before the Second Ice Age broke when the heating elements of magma were capped, and the waters cooled by refrigerating lasers that pumped the excess energy in the oceans into space in giant blasts of light that no doubt puzzled any observers on the far side of the galaxy.
This work was done by the Ice Kings. Grimness had changed to Authoritarianism. The Ice Kings might have been better named the Steel Kings or the Nuke Lords. The Chaos beasts were dealt with by tactical nukes frequently enough. The man who told his lord that he wanted to work free, or be an artist, or go there or there without permission was lucky if he found a chance to achieve dangerous slavery for his king. Often enough, such folk were simply killed.
The Ice Kings had a vision, and it did not matter how many million human souls got fed into the grinder until it was achieved.
This great killing changed the human race. They became more docile by culture, but also by genetics.
In the end the Ice Kings succeeded, and failed. By thirty-eight hundred, the Ice was almost completely gone and the vision of the Ice Kings seemed borne out. Those long, hard centuries, and now the Earth flowered, and wine and song were heard. But the long passage had corrupted the Ice Kings. Now they rejoiced and took their pleasure, and their children grew up weak and hedonistic but still with powers of life and death over millions in each kingdom.
The aristocrats partied, the commoners toiled in a pleasant land, and no kindness was shown anyone not of royal blood. The weak were found more and more. Certain genetic engineering had been done, but it was a patch, and those patches had lasted for hundreds of years, and now many began breaking.
Some said that certain humans had Chaos Blood in them, and it might well be true.
Worse, still, although the extra radiation was enlivening, it also hurt. Genetic mutations were occurring at a vastly higher rate. No beneficial except in certain odd situations mutation was discovered. But by the Fourth Millenium, one-half of the population was afflicted with low blood sugar and serious acne. Many had far more serious conditions.
And the Great Nobles, the descendants of the Ice Kings went three ways. Some decided to create Culture, and these financed works of art that are adored centuries later. This was the High Art Period.
Others at the same time decided to play games. They were bored with wealth, power, and ease, and commoners weren't really human after all. Nothing like a good war to serve as entertainment. The Noble Wars historians in later centuries adjudged were largely caused by bored younger princes looking for a way to impress their latest girlfriend, and have a good time.
The Hierarch of Truth came to the people in one land, and began preaching. His followers eventually took over the nation they lived in, and the surrounding nations. This was a rebirth of Biblical truth, and one of the results of this was an aristocracy that was more open to outsiders. Exceptional commoners could get in on the lower rungs of power. This brought a great deal of energy to the government, and it did not hurt that commoner and noble gene pools were far enough apart that hybrid vigor was a real effect.
The Hierarchichate, a noble ruled culture bound by codes of conduct that theoretically applied to all, spread from their part of the world. They absorbed the ideas of the High Culture and became the overlords of the High Cultures. The transmission of ideas went two ways with the High Culture being heavily influenced by the more Biblically based Hierachichate. However, one half of this world culture would always be more formal, more ritualistic, more dramatic, more artsy, and the other half was more energetic, more egalitarian, more vicious, more logical, more compassionate.
Democracy was tried, but it was found that the people perhaps lacked the capacity for Democracy anymore. The rulers of that time, even as they fought and destroyed the perverse culture of the Noble Wars Kingdoms who fought for sport by the nobles even as they lied mightily to their commoners, came to the sad conclusion that Humanity was not what it once was.
The brightest of them, well schooled, could not manage to understand the thoughts of the greatest of the World That Was. A constitutional republic eluded their understanding, as did relativity.
With this knowledge came the Twilight Era.
"As we limp toward the end, let us strive to be decent so that when we face our Maker who has given us mercy we did not deserve, we will make Him glad He made us." Saint Ralis Viat Do'Conszordo 4312-4349 A.D..
Others did not agree. Free enterprise flourished, but not wholly for the basis of it was too subtle for them to understand. And others struggled in various ways, some deeply dark, against the End. Things better left hidden and forgotten were revived, and wars were fought to Sustain the King's Peace.
Humankind degenerated. Mutations, genetic engineering...they took their toll.
By now the typical human is....
1. A member of the Five Kingdoms (the remains of the Southern branch of the Hierarchichate on the Broken Away Land (south south America)).
2. One of the mountain tribes. Barbarians either vicious or merely trying to get by.
3. A member of a secret order dedicated to somehow by some means or the other of evading the End. Most are silly. Some are deeply depraved. Some are deeply depraved and very dangerous.
4. A member of one of the great trading companies that travel from centers of civilization like the Five Kingdoms to others.
5. From some other center of civ, usually thats a Hierchichate branch.
6. Outcast mutant.
7. A Dark Land. As the Hierchichate wanes, in its place rises simple thieves and peddlers of fear to rule small lands.
Mental Disorders
================
# 1-4 of the following.
1. Depressive attacks.
2. Outbursts of Rage
3. Poor Impulse Control
4. A Gift for Making the Wrong Decision
5. Addictive Tendencies
6. Monomania about....
7. Vengeful.
8. Sophist.
9. Lack of empathy.
10. Sadistic.
Multiple takes on one create more effects in the person like a person inclined to be addicted to gambling and alcohol. Or, they turn someone from Lack of Empathy (cold) to LoE (sociopathic).
Physical Degenerations
======================
#1-4
1. Poor Vision.
2. Allergic to Common Substance.
3. Continous Sinus Attacks.
4. Daily Migraines.
5. Lesions on skin.
6. Albino.
7. Blood does not clot.
8. Arthiritic.
9. Asthmatic.
10. Lame.
Diseases
=========
#1-3
1. Smallpox survivor (heavily scarred).
2. Fungus growth.
3. Malaria.
4. Gullibility War Virus (created in previous centuries, this virus destroys the part of the brain that judges accurately making the victim extremely likely to believe any smiling person.).
5. Sunshock or Vampire War Virus. Person is extremely vulnerable to sunlight. Usually vitamin D deficient as well, and suffering from rickets and osteporosis and possibly other conditions.
6. Immune System Collapse. This is not AIDs specifically. The effect is that at times of high stress, the sufferer's immune system shuts down for a week or two. Opportunistic colds and viruses then come along and play havoc.
7. Bloodrage. The person loses their temper, drinks their own blood, tries to force their blood on others, and/or kill them with their bare hands. It was designed as an attempt to create Berserkers out of ordinary soldiers.
8. Sleeping. Caused by animal bites, this disease varies in effect each time it occurs. The person cannot sleep for a week, and then they simply shut down and sleep. Some sleep for a day, others a week, and others die. After waking up, they're good for anywhere from six months to ten years.
5. Person is unaffected by one disease he carries, but is a carrier.
The highest current tech is the electric cars which are powered by the rails in the roads and receive power from the Solar Power Satellites. There are computers- no one can program them because the logic is too hard.
Mental Disorders
================
# 1-4 of the following.
1. Depressive attacks.
2. Outbursts of Rage
3. Poor Impulse Control
4. A Gift for Making the Wrong Decision
5. Addictive Tendencies
6. Monomania about....
7. Vengeful.
8. Sophist.
9. Lack of empathy.
10. Sadistic.Multiple takes on one create more effects in the person like a person inclined to be addicted to gambling and alcohol. Or, they turn someone from Lack of Empathy (cold) to LoE (sociopathic).
O.K., math time.
If I'm reading this right, every living human has d4 of these, and if the same one is rolled twice they have it at greater intensity.
I started with a world population of four million, and divided them into four groups of one million each. One million gets one roll, one million two rolls, et cetera. I focused on a single malady; I had in mind the lack of empathy, but it applies to each.
Of your four million people:
- 3095100, or 77.3775%, do not have lack of empathy. Of course, everyone has something, but for each item on the list a little better than three quarters of the population do not have it--which means a little less than one quarter of the population does have it to some degree.
- 814600, or 20.365% of the population will have it. That includes those who have it with something else, including those who are sociopathic about something else.
- 85600, or 2.14%, have it twice, which makes them sociopathic about this. If I've done my math aright, it means that 10.78076584% of the population are sociopathic in at least one (and a very few of them two) of your targeted areas.
- Out of four million people, 4600 or 0.115% (a bit better than one in a thousand) hit lack of empathy thrice. That must make them very dangerous--and of course a like number hit each of the others thrice, and since you can't hit two things thrice on not more than four rolls, we're looking at 1.15% of the world population who has three-hit sociopathic on one of these items.
- Finally, 100 of your four million hit lack of empathy four rolls in four, 0.0025%, and since again you can't have any duplicates on this that means 0.025%, one in every forty thousand, has this completely obsessive level of insanity in one of your ten areas.
I don't know how you feel about those numbers, but I think you at least should be aware of them--and should make your referees aware of them, particularly of the fact that better than ten percent of the population is sociopathic in some way. That's going to be a tough world to run, I think (although I admit it's fascinating).
--M. J. Young
That means, by your definition, a fifth of the population is sociopathically lacking empathy. That also means that a fifth of your population is sociopathically each of those (not counting those who are triple and quadruple, coming up)--and since we know that 25% (the quarter that get only one roll) are not sociopathically anything, that's a lot of people who are sociopaths on two items.
That means, by your definition, a fifth of the population is sociopathically lacking empathy. [. . .] that's a lot of people who are sociopaths on two items.
Misplaced decimal on that estimate - a fiftieth of the population (2.14%) rolled Lack of Empathy twice.
You are reading this right. Humanity is falling apart all over the place. This is somewhat like some of those SF movies where nearly everyone (except the pretty blonde girl) is a lurching or slimy mutant.
Its like a world of Gollums (from LOTR). And in fact, in Tolkien's view this would be, ah, perhaps the Eleventh and Final Age with each age being less glorious than the last, or at least the inhabitants of the Age being less glorious. And these indigs of the Final Age look back to the World That Might Have Been, our time, as the Golden Age.
I probably ought to double or triple the length of my lists of maladies, but keep the same or slightly higher the random number EACH person has. Perhaps 30 mental maladies and a D6. But, OTOH, that might get too complicated to run.
It is certainly true that having 4600 Jokers (from Batman) or Hannibal Lecters floating about would be a serious challenge for any civilization. Look how much difficulty America had with 20,000 or so terrorists, and we have a much better resource base than the inhabitants of the Final Age, and as much as I dislike terrorists, I'd have to say Hannibal or the Joker is worse.
Second Post....
Joe Parker is a Minsling, of the most northerly of the Five Kingdoms. He is a salvager of electric car parts and a worker in a stoneware factory. He's 32 years old, married with one living child, and he lives in an apartment because taking care of a house is too hard.
He has a Gift for Making Stupid Decisions which is why he mostly follows his wife's lead, and he has a tendency to get in shouting matches with people who irritate him which is usually about once a day. He turns an alarming shade of red when this happens, and his doc tells him if he doesn't chill out, he's going to pop something before he's forty.
He wears glasses for nearsigtedness (extreme), and he's an albino.
He also has a fungal growth of Yellow Rot growing on his right arm and right side of his chest.
Joe is a Truthfollower, but he has occasional wishes to join his cousin in the Secret Order of the Rabid Eagle because his cousin hints at dark secrets and great powers.
We won't tell your wife that you wrote that....He has a Gift for Making Stupid Decisions which is why he mostly follows his wife's lead,...
--M. J. Young