Category: Genre

Persistence unto (and sometimes through) death

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Jackwraith

Favourite starting zone? : r/wow

It’s been a couple months since the last time I tapped out one of these. In the interim, I’ve been writing in other places, although not as often as I could’ve been there, either. I’ve also been working on the script for chapter two in the story that Jeff and I are telling- Midwife, aborted -as well as the script for a potential third chapter (still under debate) and the prose version of a potential fourth chapter. It’s hard to tell where things might go from here and that’s the same in any number of other domains. As the United States continues its slide toward outright fascism, there can come a time when people question whether it’s worth continuing to fight or even how to continue that fight. There are other places in the world to live; many with far more humane systems of assistance for those who need it. So, then the question arises: Why stay? Why remain and subject yourself to the fight that inevitably results from resisting the depredations of the world’s modern Nazis? And it’s a fair question. Some people just aren’t interested in fighting, especially in the latter stages of life and especially if a pleasant life can be found elsewhere.

 

Then it’s just a matter of principle. Are you going to allow other people to evict you from the place that you’ve, perhaps always, called your home? Are you going to allow changing circumstances to separate you from the life you’ve built and would like to continue to enjoy, right where you are? If the answer to that is “No”, then you’re in line with the motivations of that vast majority of those who reside on Four, known locally as the Dead Zone, because that unwillingness to abandon one’s home extends to many of the residents who are no longer presences in what most would consider “life.” The first story that I wrote for Fifth Panel Comics, alongside Will Kliber doing the artwork, was a nominal horror story called “Excitable Boy.” It was an idea I kind of plucked from the ether one day and jotted down in the hallowed notebook and attached to it a concept I’d dreamed up a couple years earlier called The Morgue Lords. That latter idea was something I wanted to save for a much bigger picture, but I figured it was natural to tie it in to this small series of horror story ideas that I had for an anthology that Jeff was publishing called The Picture Show, so that there could be a common background thread and then, maybe, somewhere down the line, we could point back to where things had “started” if that bigger picture came into focus. Jim Shooter did a lot of that kind of thing when he was running Valiant Comics, with the main characters of their own books appearing in minor roles in other stories before making their own debut. It’s a solid way of approaching the whole “shared universe” concept and I figured I could just follow suit.

When I envisioned Dystopia as a multi-genre setting, I knew I wanted horror (and the Morgue Lords) to be part of it, so that all kind of flowed together and I decided that the fourth level- not quite deep enough to engage the radical changes down below, but deep enough to be an environment in which the average citizen (or corporation) probably wouldn’t be interested in remaining -was the best spot for it. Instead of having a Walking Dead situation, where the last fragments of humanity are holding out against (or fighting between) the shambling hordes of undead, there could still be sections of that level where relatively “normal” city life continued for at least some of the inhabitants and the emergence of things like ghosts, zombies, vampires, werewolves, whathaveyou would still engender the unease, shock, and horror that those stories usually try to convey. The general idea was that this ring of the city would’ve been the outskirts of the original settlement when it really began to grow past the level of a mining camp or whatever, so that’s where many of the original and latterly-expanded cemeteries would’ve been. That, of course, is fertile (almost literal) ground for the kinds of stories in the horror milieu. It’s a conceit, but I tried to make it a logical one. Then, the energies released by the Collapse and the Well interacted with that ground and brought back many of the former residents who still weren’t interested in leaving, for one reason or another. The popular theory was that the Well was also acting as a beacon for other kinds of undead, such that Four became kind of a gathering place for them, as it became too problematic for a lot of them to venture deeper, although many tried.

This is the level where the Walker patrols are still fairly frequent, so the whole nature of the setting begins to change from one of exertion of human influence to survival against what may be greater powers. But it’s one of the best mixes in that respect because, again, some level of society and community still exists. One can see that in the presence of figures like Macabre, the self-labeled crimelord of Dystopia. He’s still trying to keep the rackets running and extend them down to Five, as well. Similarly, the gangs are a bit less tribal and a bit more about keeping a community together. The Knightshift is perhaps the best example, fusing a group of survivalists with a gathering of people that are halfway between actual sorcerors and LARPers. The motivation for them is less about holding turf and more about establishing a perimeter in which the residents of the level can still carry on their daily lives to some degree. These are the people pushing back against the criminals like Macabre in the same way that the modern American population should be pushing back against the criminals in charge of the government. But groups like the ‘Shift and Control/Alt/Delete, a gathering of self-avowed hackers trying to exploit the ShadowNet, are also set to try to contain the excesses of other phenomena on the level, like the Blessed, a loose group of vampires, and Canis Majoris, a much more tight-knit association of werewolves. (There are no limits on that “horror” theme.)

Vampire: The Masquerade Guide – Creating A New Clan

But that attraction of the Well works both ways, in that individuals focused on the containment (or extermination) of the undead are also present, like The Gargoyle, who is both a vampire hunter (led here by the presence of the Blessed) and the main focus of the second story Will and I presented to Jeff for publication (another “pre-Dystopia” refugee, as it were.) Another is The Hanged Man, whom I mentioned alongside Macabre, the Morgue Lords, and C/A/D when I mentioned the planned third book of the Dystopia collection, Shadows on the ‘Net. So, a lot of these characters have been around for a while, figuratively and literally. All of them are intent on surviving in the changed circumstances that the Collapse created. All of them are willing to fight for what they think is right or simply to protect the home that they’ve known; sometimes for the years that make up their lives and sometimes for many centuries before that. They answered that second question of whether they were going to allow those circumstances or forces released by them to push them from their homes with a resounding “No.” In truth, that’s the one I favor, as well, although I can understand the reasoning behind simply going somewhere else to enjoy one’s life (or unlife) in the way that is most readily available. But it’s the answer of “No” that tends to leave the city as what is still nominally a functioning community on several of the levels, so that’s probably a reflection of its creator in that respect and the foundation for many of the attached stories.

The concept of oligarchy

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Jackwraith

The arcologies of The Ascent. A behind-the-scenes look at the… | by Konstantinos Dimopoulos | Medium

The third level is the one that fits most neatly into the old school cyberpunk vision that drove a lot of the Dystopia setting. It’s very high-tech. It has a lot of cyberized-type characters and it contains that “corporations as ultimate authority” idea that everyone remembers from the work of people like William Gibson. That idea later blossomed in the form of games like Netrunner where it’s the Corps vs the Runners; the staid authority vs the rogues of society. The contrast on level Three was that the corporations themselves are the rogues. Unlike in the outside world and in the way they’re presented in Gibson’s work and derivations thereof, the corporations in Dystopia are loose cannons. They’re resisting attempts by their original structures to reclaim the resources (people, technology, data) that most assumed were lost during the Collapse. Once the outside world and those powerful corporations discover that both people and companies are still living/operating inside the city, they’re quite eager to return and try to exploit what it is that’s available. That’s even further reinforced when they discover that those companies still functioning inside have access to technology that vastly outstrips anything outside the city. Like any profit-seeking entity, those corporations want to acquire and sell and utilize that tech for their own gains. But most of the segments of those companies in the city realize that there are ways to exploit all of the above for their own gain and they’d be at the whim of the hierarchy if they returned to the fold. Thus were the Rogue Corps born.

Even distinct as it is from corporations running the outside world, that whole idea is rooted in the concept of corporate oligarchy or corporatocracy. It was an idea that was firmly embedded in my mind from political activity, where it was easy to recognize that both major parties in the United States moved to the tune of whichever major corporation was donating to their campaign war chests. Frequently, those donations went to both parties, so that no matter who ‘represented” the people in our republic, those corporations would have someone(s) attached to a leash. This is, of course, exactly the kind of circumstances we have today which are permanently enshrined in law since the Supreme Court decided that money = free speech. Citizens United permanently established the reality that we had 20 years earlier when I was first writing all of this, since the rule by money is the same now as it was then. But the Rogue Corps are slightly different.

Lore-accurate model of the Renraku Arcology v.2 : r/Shadowrun

Certainly, they represent a kind of oligarchy on Three because of the absolute control they have over much of the level. Most of them have created what became known in the cyberpunk fiction world as arcologies, which are basically environments that are designed to be worlds unto themselves. Each domain of the major corporations on Three (Metascience, geNETic Industries, The Mandarin Foundation, Global Communications, etc.) is a system that conforms to the activity and technology of the company that has developed it. Each of them are little societies unto themselves that shift and change based on the interests of those who control them; both physically and philosophically. Most of them are accessing the ShadowNet in order to develop much of their technology and that’s why Three is one of the foundational levels of the Net (along with Five and Seven), since they’re not only accessing what filters up from the Walkers and the gangs, but also what they discover on the ever-shifting tableau that is the Net. That near-absolute control means that the presence of the gangs here is, like on Two, more parasitic than actually competitive. The GoreKings operate by stealing resources from Global. Jerry’s Kids function by stealing whatever they can from everyone who’s showing “shine” (tech.)

That’s not as difficult as it might sound because there are other entities on this level that are even more exotic than the Rogue Corps. Most notable among them are the Iron Wizards and the Deathless. The latter and their leader, Koschei, are one of the largest base elements of the background of the setting; alongside their greatest rivals, the Morgue Lords. Unlike the Wizards, the Deathless don’t really exist as a separate group. They’re present in all of the Rogue Corps and some of the gangs, as well; constantly watching, constantly waiting. Their presence is akin to that of many modern corporations, such that the concept of oligarchy doesn’t even need to be overt, so much as simply omnipresent. If it ever feels like modern life can’t function without something provided by a corporate overlord, you’ve found a form of oligarchy. Looking at the little computers in our hands is an example of just that, especially by those given over to the Apple fixation. They exist to shape our world and make us subservient to their profitable interests, in the same way that the Rogue Corps physically shape the air and land around them in their arcologies. Of course, sometimes those interests get beyond the control of even those who create them, such as the Tartarians; one of whom is the primary focus of what might be the third story that Jeff and I publish. Haven’t decided yet. Similarly, the Iron Wizards were a main element of the first real Dystopia story that Fifth Panel ever did, so everything comes back around, eventually.

Кощей бессмертный в киберпанке, …» — картинка создана в Шедевруме

Anyway, that’s it for now on my casual and infrequent and somewhat vague tour of the city. I’d rather talk about most of these elements in actual stories, rather than spieling them out here like an RPG guidebook. But I thought it was fairly pertinent to our currently degrading government situation to bring up what my concept for corporate control of our lives looks like in the near-disaster future.

Edge of the known world

Posted on July 19, 2024 by Jackwraith

Dystopia was originally envisioned as a multi-genre project. Early in the lifetime of Fifth Panel, we didn’t have a ton of variety in our genres (e.g. it was still mainly superheroes), but there were at least some variations in approach, in that some characters were more sci-fi-oriented and others more horror-oriented and so forth. My original projects that I’d had in hand when Jeff and I met (Doomsayer and Therapy) were both more horror-oriented than your average superhero fare. While I’m not a huge horror fan (I tend to avoid horror films because most of them aren’t great sources of actual story, which is typically my pinnacle perspective on most forms of entertainment; in other words, tell me a good story, first and foremost), I’m a pretty sizable fan of things like H. P. Lovecraft and the weirder edges of horror like the film, Audition. So, I knew that was going to embody a fair amount of the work that I put into things, but not everyone in the studio was on that same page and I wanted to cover as much ground as possible and enable as many people to play in the playground as I could. The Rim ended up, appropriately, being the most distant of the environments from that superhero/adventure path; closest to “modern America” and yet one of the more chaotic levels of the city because of that exposure to the “outside world.” It’s honestly where I wanted to tell a modern Western story, if I could make it work.

The Magnificent 20: The greatest Westerns of all time | The Independent

The Western in modern media is filled with a variety of influences and perspectives; from the Wild West to a look back at the frontier society which somehow made things purer than they are today. Speaking of HPL, you can see that element in the stories of his friend, Robert E. Howard who presented his most famous hero (or, often, antihero in modern terminology) Conan the Barbarian as the embodiment of society in its less civilized and, thus, purer form. If only everyone would return to Conan’s direct, brutal, murderous, misogynistic, and simple ways, everything would be better(!) And that perspective is shared to some degree by one of the more prominent entities on the Rim, which is FedGov’s mercenary army: Force Command. The United States in the era of Dystopia is no longer so united and the nominal federal government is trying to enforce its rule at gunpoint, which has much less to do with enforcing or protecting the principles of any piece of sheepskin and more to do with the raw question of who gets to control the territory between the world’s two largest oceans. Unlike the former US Army, FC isn’t bound by any oath of duty. It’s just about enforcing FedGov’s will in the name of presumed pragmatism and everyone has accepted that. Its primary mission, just like the US Army of that same Wild West, late 19th-century period, is the “protection” of the local citizenry and the enforcement of federal (and often mercantile) interests. In that respect, the city of Dystopia is “the other” that was the native population in America of the 1800s that FC is here to contain and control.

But the Rim is basically a doorway and all doorways go both ways (or, at least, most of them do.) FC is there to protect the surrounding population from what might emerge from the Pit, but it’s also there to keep people from going into it. That’s one of the more contextual things about levels like Corporate City (level Three), which is still kind of operating like a “normal” American city would and is interested in trading with the outside world. But that’s a threat to FedGov’s power and is also seen as suspicious by many Americans, now trained to think of anyone inside as “the other” in the same way many modern Americans think of immigrants, i.e. they not like us. What I wanted the Rim to be was not only an almost-literal jumping off point into the weirdness that is the rest of the city, but also an example of the mix of cultures and influences that is any “borderland” of most nations throughout history and which most fictional settings don’t really examine at all or keep in weirdly accessible geographic locations, like Greyhawk’s Wild Coast. There’s a lot of traffic there, even if FC does try to control it and, for that matter, anyone trying to venture out of the city in the first place has to get past the Control Ring (level Two) and the Tribunal or venture up the Spill, with all of the hazards (moving and non-) that that entails, as we’ll see in our first story, Into Darkness.

But, again, a lot of people are interested in getting into the city, which means that there are a fair number of mercenary types aside from FC, like bodyguards, bounty hunters, and tour guides. One of my favorite characters is one that I’ve actually never scripted: Skip Tracer. He’s a bounty hunter who has slicked back, perfect blond hair, usually wears shades (even at night), and dresses in polo shirts, sweaters tied over his shoulders, with perfect loafers on his feet, and often an old school wooden tennis racket in his hand. Nothing really bothers Skip and his name and attire both reflect that. I have a story idea in mind for him that contrasts him with many of the other inhabitants of the Rim, like Jekyll and Hyde (two mercenaries, one of which is a Morlock, the other an exiled Texas Ranger) and groups like the Eden Community, the Deliverance Club led by the esteemed Jimmy “the Grin” Dallas, and the Burger Clown Commandos. If that sounds like kind of a panoply of directions and interests, that’s exactly the intent because that’s The Rim. Anyone could come drifting into town and the whole story might change, but there are an awful lot of good ones already there. I have a group of characters sitting around that are a pointed reference to the idea of a “Western”, called The Wild Bunch, but I’m not quite sure that that one has been in the oven long enough, even if it has been 30 years. It’s also been a lot of years since I seriously looked at them and asked myself the most important question: OK, but what’s the story?

The Eden Community (the Garden), on the other hand, is one of the most important locations in the city and plays an important role in the Odyssey story that I referenced in my last post. Epicurus and the Adept and Alastor and Original Synn are a quartet of philosophy and perspective that also have huge impact on the ShadowNet and how it operates. It’s not obvious, but it’s present and the smart traveler consults them before making any big decisions that involve the Now (and sometimes the Real, too.) Anyway, that’s the briefest of looks at the first level of the city. I might look at level Two next or I might jump around a bit. It’s a huge world and I don’t want everyone to wait until we can get out as many stories as we’d like to tell the whole picture, so I thought doing these as kind of a survey course might be helpful and mildly entertaining.