Summon Ants

This is a first-level MU spell for my Amazon Rivercrawl game.

Caster summons a swarm of ants whose HD is equal to the MU’s level. Nearby ants gather through the forest to come to the Caster’s magical pheromones. The swarm lasts as long as the caster is concentrating, and the caster can direct them to various foes. The swarm has one attack, the largest on this table for its HD.

Once the caster’s concentration is broken (by attacking, being successfully attacked, casting another spell, or pretty much doing anything that isn’t walking slowly), the swarm will lose one HD per round until it has dissipated, and it will fully dissipate if its current foe falls. To attack the swarm, the foe must make a grapple attack vs. the swarm’s HD. If it succeeds, the ant swarm loses 1HD regardless of the caster’s concentration.

While swarmed, a foe is at -2 to hit anything that is not the swarm itself.

When casting, the player roles 1d4 on the following chart to see what kind of ants respond.

1. Fire ant. On successful attack, the foe saves vs. poison. On success, half damage is done. On failure, full damage is taken. If an attack does 6pts or more of damage, then save vs. paralyze or be paralyzed for d6 rounds in pain.
2. Leafcutter ant. On successful attack, no damage is taken. Instead, leafcutters attack the skin and clothes of the foe. -1AC for each successful attack.
3. Weaver ant. On successful attack, no damage is taken. Instead, the foe must save vs. paralyze or be stuck (-4 to attacks, AC, and can't move) for d4 rounds (cumulative) in the ants’ sticky gauze. 
4. Army ant. On successful attack, ants do full damage. 

Xena's Grasping Maw

When read or researched, this spell appears to be the following first-level spell:

A five-gallon hollow floating sphere of energy appears. This sphere can be moved by the will of the Magic User at her running speed, and exists for the MU’s level x 10 minutes. (So a level six MU can conjure the sphere for an hour.)

This sphere has “jaws” as it were: the Magic User can will a variable semi-circle opening to appear or disappear either on the top of bottom of the sphere. This opening can be used to fill the sphere with items or liquid, and can also be used to grasp large items. Their closing will not crush anything, but will hold up to 200lb objects tightly enough to pick them up and move them. When closed completely the sphere is air- and water-proof.

Xena was not the magic user who originally crafted this spell, but rather his cat whose ability to grasp items in her mouth was the inspiration for his research.

When the spell is memorized for the first time, everything seems good until the Magic User decides to cast the spell. They will find that they rather prefer having the spell memorized for later than using it now, and won’t cast it.

To the character, the desire to keep the spell memorized “for later” will be stronger than any want, need, or coercion to cast it.

Story-wise, the spell is a sentient memetic virus of sorts, one that once memorized cannot be unmemorized because its desire to live (aka, stay memorized) is too strong.

Mechanically, the player just lost a first-level spell slot. If they memorize it again, they will lose that one too. Each spell is independently willful.

—

There is a plus side to this, however. Unbeknown to anyone living (except maybe one of the players’ antagonists), the spell’s will is so strong that even a changeling, once it has changed into a magic-user who has this spell memorize, will find itself itself unable to change again. The changeling will effectively become the magic user, and the two of them won’t even be able to tell each other apart.

What any person decides to do in such a situation depends on how fully they’ve given themselves into their magical studies and desire for power. I’ve written up one option, I’m sure you and your players can think of more.

Someone asked me how to create monsters in LotFP, this is what I answered.

First off, if what you have is the “rules and magic” book then it’s not really useful for GM-focused rules. For instance, no where does it tell you how to generate creatures. It’s pretty simple: You assign Hit Dice and AC to the creature more or less based on size and agility, then to-hit bonus, attack strength, and HP are derived from the HD. Here is a handy-dandy table that is in the Referee book (which is no longer available but should be again soon):

Weight	HD	Attack 1	Attack 2	HP	To-hit
<100	1/2	d4	d2	1d4	0
100	1	d6	d3	1d8	+1
250	2	d8	d4	2d8	+2
500	4	d10	d6	4d8	+4
1000	6	d12	d8	6d8	+6
2000	8	d12+d4	d10	8d8	+8
5000	10	d20	d12	10d8	+10
10,000	12	2d10	d12+d4	12d8	+12

Don’t assign an AC over 18, and don’t assign AC based on how tough the creature is: that’s what HP is for in creatures. So a monkey might be a one-hit kill but be really hard to hit because it’s so nimble, while a rhino only has an AC of 12 so you hit it almost every time, but boy that fucker can take the hits no problem.

For 99% of NPCs, they should just be 0-level fighters with 10’s across the board in terms of ability scores. Even like common soldiers are 0-level: it’s only exceptional people who have any levels in anything at all.

For particularly memorable NPCs, you might give them a +1 ability bonus somewhere. For super-duper awesome NPCs, you can give them up to +3 bonus points (so like an 18 INT, or 12s in CON, STR, and CHA, up to you). If you want to give more bonus points, you have to give some negatives as well. And feel free to give them abilities that “break” the rules, NPCs don’t have to work exactly that PCs, particularly if they have access to magic.

But what about magical creatures? The general rule of thumb with LotFP is that magical creatures are rare and dangerous. Any magical creature should be an adventure in itself, not just some mook in a dungeon. Like, a good monster isn’t a tactical mini-wargame, it’s a puzzle: and the prize for figuring out the puzzle is not having to play the tactical mini-wargame, because that unit in the tactical mini-wargame is wicked OP and unfair. And that puzzle can take an entire session and involve all sorts of crazy shit if done well.

So while the rulebooks don’t have a lot of guidance here, what does are the LotFP adventures. I’d recommend picking up Better Than Any Man—it’s free, and probably the second-best adventure I’ve ever read (after Vornheim). It’s huge, as this guy attests he got a dozen sessions out of it. I ran a 12+ hour marathon with it, and we only started getting into the shit towards the end. Just reading it will make you a better GM.

Then there are the OSR blogs. I read a bunch of these. My favorites are:

• http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/
• http://falsemachine.blogspot.com/
• http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/
• http://rolesrules.blogspot.com/
• http://thealexandrian.net/
• https://lurkerablog.wordpress.com/
• http://www.rolang.com/
• http://recedingrules.blogspot.com/
• http://jrients.blogspot.com/
• http://grognardia.blogspot.com/

In some vague order based on awesomeness vs. how often the post.

Check out False Machine and Monsters and Manuals, both have recently published adventures that are really great and have some awesome monsters in them.

Also, most the blogs are really good at tagging their posts, so find the like “monsters” or “encounters” or “rules” tag and follow the rabbit hole.

So in conclusion: (1) Dangerous is good. (2) Weird is better. (3) Follow things to their logical conclusions. (4) Don’t pull punches. (5) The rules are easy. (5a) Don’t mistake following the rules for playing the game.

Lord Skullcleave Ravenshadow

Lord Skullcleave Ravenshadow’s skeletal nightmare jaunted saunterly over the mooring meadows. The air vibrated with cleanliness, and with each step that his morose steed misgave, he felt his lungs empty of the sulfur from his home. It was a startling feeling of freshness, a lifting weight he’d not known was there before.

His orcish entourage—Febrar; Maker of Mincemeat, Grinchwin the Basher, and Dolt—fanned out behind him. Ever alert, their ceremonial gauntlet spikes shone like the black diamonds they were, embrued with the souls of the orcs who had served faithfully the Ravenshadows since time immemorial.

Suddenly, Lord Skullcleave’s lingam clutched inside his onyx codpiece. Danger was near. There was a bustle in the hedgerow beside him. A pale white fleshman tumbled from his hiding place. These, who had been but hairless apes when the Ravenshadows had build their glorious crystal castles ‘neath the sulfur puts, had taken over the countryside with their squat stone dwellingplaces in recent millenia.

Lord Skullcleave thought back to his tutelage under master Crackwhip so many centuries ago, and brought to his lips what little monkeytongue he remembered from his lessons.

"Fart nary, wee meatcreature. Though brazen am bashful, and wish you no mincery." His words froze the very air they touched, and had the opposite effect as what he’d wanted on the little creature. It began to whimper and release liquids from various orifices. For a moment he felt pathos for the small monkeything quivering below his exsanguinous mount. Then Grinchwin’s overzealous warhammer came down, and its suffering ceased.

Amends would have to be made. He would personally see a retinue under the black flags of peace, carrying the body of the fallen victim on the ends of pikes, as befit one who died a warrior’s death. He would make Grinchwin set torch to the stonedwellings in penitence for his brash bashing, and once the village was razed would erect the finest black towers from molten minemetal for the squalid meatcreatures to occupy as an offering of peace, that they might better their lot in life.

Surely they would be thankful. He wouldn’t want to be a bad neighbor.

The Clone Big Baddy

This is re-purposed from a reddit comment.

I want to make a BBEG based around the powers of the X-Men character Multiple Man, need a little help on the execution… 

I was just thinking it would be interesting if, when finally able to confront the BBEG of the campaign, instead of just the party vs. one big powerful boss, he splits and the clones work together or have some type of synergy between them. 

I guess I was just wondering if anyone knows of a Monster that can already do this, or things I could use to make the clones seem unnaturally able to work together (hive mind style)?

One way I can think to hack this is to use changelings.

Changelings are chaotic creatures that take on the form of other nearby beings. Their goal is usually to cause mischief, insomuch as they have human-understandable goals. The way they work is that when no one is looking, a changeling can change appearances to be similar to anyone within their line of sight. They don’t just change outward appearance—they actually change into the person they’re mimicking, so their thoughts, memories, manerisms, memorized spells, etc., are all 100% the same. The only differences are that 1) detect magic/evil works on them and 2) where their heart should be, they have a solid black gemstone instead.

Changelings are the kind of creature that are as much trap as monster, and whole sessions can be taken up by the political, personal, and physical chaos that ensues when a few changelings are thrown into any regular situation. The intro adventure included with Lamentations of the Flame Princess is pretty much exactly that. The players don’t know who are who, everyone is freaked out by the fact that all of a sudden there’s two of some guy, both of whom are exactly the same and can’t be told apart. Imagine if you had a perfect double of someone just appear some day. Fucked, innit?

---

Enough introduction, here’s the idea for the big baddy:

The way it started, the big baddy was originally but a simple wizard who’d memorized a specific spell that works as a kind of memetic virus, such that anyone who has it memorized is compelled to keep it memorized. Lost the spell slot, kind of a bummer. But he alone has discovered something else about this spell. When a changeling changes into a person who has this spell memorized, they find it impossible to change again. In essence, the desire to keep that spell memorized is stronger than their desire to wreak havoc, so they essentially become that person.

The first time this happened, it was by accident, and he freaked out about having a changeling clone. However, being a (soon to be) big baddy and smarter than your average bear, he and the clone eventually realized that in being the same person, they could trust each other implicitly as long as they always took the attitude that they were indeed the same person. They always knew what the other one was thinking or would think given a situation, because that’s what they’d think.

Once they agreed, they began searching out other changelings at great cost, and forcing a change by putting the changing and the big baddy in the same room until they changed into him, and then bam, he had another him running around. They discovered that any clone could make another clone of the clone and the same would happen. A changeling truly becomes the person they are mimicking.

So through this process, the baddy slowly became an actually big baddy. He and the other changeclones work in perfect harmony towards the same goals, always perfectly trusting each other because they are the same person. If one dies, that’s too bad, but they’re all the same so as long as it’s for the greater good of the cohort, even the one dying is usually happy with it. They’ll even lay down their life for the greater good of the hive if they need to.

---

So, how do you play this? I’d recommend a few things.

1. Have an adventure that is completely focused on changelings at some point. Get your hands on the Lamentations of the Flame Princess one if you can, at least to read about them in-depth. This shouldn’t in any obvious way be about the big baddy, it should seem like a stand-alone adventure, but it will introduce the players to most the key concepts.


2. The mimetic virus spell should also come up at some point. Maybe the wizard accidentally memorizes it as part of a trap (and thus loses a spell slot). Maybe it’s just mentioned as lore. Again, it shouldn’t be directly tied to the big baddy in any way—this is giving your players enough info to later figure things out without spoon-feeding it.


3. Have the players meet up and fight a single wizard at some point. Make it a fight that’s hard for them, but that they should with some cunning win. Once they have, they’ll think they’ve won against a pretty big baddie. Then once they see him again later, or hear that his trade is still booming or plans are still percolating or whatever, only then will they know that something else is up. Maybe they’ll think it’s a resurrect spell, who knows. Make sure to let them think what they will.
   
   The easiest way to do this, I think is to someone involve the players in the changeling trade.
   
   How does the baddy find new changelings? Is there a cottage industry built up around this? Can the party use that to sniff him out potentially, or find some of his non-clone lieutenants to learn information about him. Does he even use non-clones in his plans any more?
   
   This is what I personally would use to give the players a chance to figure out what’s going on, but only through really good research on their part. In addition, make sure the baddie changes his plans based on what the players learn. If they gain info from a human lieutenant, maybe that’s when the baddie stops using non-clones. That kind of thing.
   
4. You’ll have to figure out some of the details. Are the changeclones telepathically linked? I’d play it that it seems that way, but in reality they just always know what they would do, so they know what their clone is going to do. But, that doesn’t mean that they know where they are or what they are doing.
   
5. Is the original wizard still around pulling the strings, or did he die at some point and now it’s all changeclones acting as him? Does that even matter? If the original wizard dies, what happens to the changeclones? I’d play it as it doesn’t even matter, and even they don’t know who is who. Maybe even that once they did know, the original would willingly kill himself off for the good of the hive.
   
   Finally, this is what special power he has, but what is his final goal? To rule the kingdoms? To make money? To make everyone a subject to his clone army? In other words, this power is what makes him big, so what makes him a baddy? Or is he simply someone who crossed the players at some point, so they’re going to crush him regardless of whether he’s really that bad or not.


6. The then big fight. This should be pretty epic—tonnes of wizard clones all fighting the party. One interesting thing is that they might be at a weaker level than the party without the party realizing it. So any individual baddie is only level 3 or so, but their acting together is what makes them big. They also don’t have to have resurrect spells, healing spells, etc, that the party might think that he does have from previous fight where they thought they killed him, then he came back later. Will make for a slightly more fair fight too.
   
   Then you throw a bunch of them at the party and see it go. A few notes on tactics: any individual baddy will gladly lay down its own life, but only if it (and thus all of them) thinks it’s for the greater good. This probably means they’ll come in waves, not all at once, in order to minimize damage to the hive. That is, they’d rather 4 die outright than 25 get injured. The goal is always that the hive continue and achieve it’s goals, not that any individual baddy does.
   
   If they’re telepathic, then all the clones should have the same spells memorized. If not, then they can all have different spells. Even if they’re not telepathic, they should work with more coordination than most enemies, because they know how the others will think.


7. What does winning look like? Sewing dissent? Breaking the changeclones free, turning them back into changelings by tricking them into using (thus un-memorizing) the virus spell? Does killing the original big baddy to release the other clones, or does that not do anything anyway? Is he even still alive? Does it even matter? If a few changelings change into someone who also has the spell memorized, will that get the other clones not to trust each other? Is there any other way to do that?
   
   If one of the party, or someone else, did memorize the mimetic virus spell, then can the changelings change into them? Maybe even against their (human) will? Does the big baddy know this is a possibility, or is it an unknown weakness? A potential reward for a wizard who is down one spell slot for session after session, or for players who figure out the background details of how the baddie is managing all this. Just don’t spoon-feed it to them.
   Ideally there is a better way to win than just “the party fights them all and beats them all”. I’ll bet your party will come up with a few you and I never will together once they learn all the facts, so listen to them.


8. And don’t let them forget that the gemstone at the heart of a changeling is worth beaucoup bucks. Wouldn’t want to deprive them of the scene where they’ve covered themselves and the baddy’s lair in inches of blood while hacking through the check of each captured baddy, looking for the gem.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Bureau Dwarves

Originally published in Secret Santicore 2013, vol. 1.

Lore

A dwarf without work is a sorry dwarf indeed. Miners must break rock, architects must build great halls, and kings must fill them with revelry. A dwarf finds meaning in having a task and performing it well, and it content to work hard and then take his meal and mead along with his brethren in the great hall.

But some deviants do not find satisfaction in the daily grind. For them, work is painful and tiring rather than joyful, and the din of their dim-witted colleagues unbearable. It is these dwarves who, through training or accident, learn that the average dwarf is easily influenced—one must simply give him a task to perform.

Bureau are thus these disenlightened spirits who have seen that there is no meaning in the world. In doing so, they can often see bigger picture goals than other dwarves can, and this combined with their ability to corral many dwarves towards a single project makes them dangerous.

—

Bureau are regular dwarves who do not find meaning in work, but can thus rise above it and assign work to others. They are the taskmasters, project managers, administrators, and bureaucrats of the dwarven world. They are extreme nihilists who attempt to fill the hole left by their lack of purpose through influencing and crafting purpose for others.

Bureau often have neither hair nor beards. Some argue this is because a beard represents the dwarven spirit, which the bureau have lost. Others will counter that many bureau purposely shave, to which the former answer, “exactly!”

When in the presence of a bureau, most common dwarves feel supremely uncomfortable, and even after having been given (and while executing) direct commands, will insist that it is their own idea. As such, bureau’s influence is often under-estimated by all those around them.

Bureau prefer not to deal with most common dwarves, and instead have their tasks relayed by intermediaries. These are common dwarves too stupid to serve well at performing tasks, and who instead must be made to feel important as they run about, bossing other dwarves around.

Bureau are quite rare, and offer much respect to one another. Even while rallying entire dwarven tribes to war against each other in their nihilistic games, two opposed bureau can chat calmly over a cup of tea.



Mechanics

Mechanically, a bureau is a dwarf who, in lieu of all dwarven racial traits except dark vision, has several spell-like abilities (called “social moves”) at their disposal. Bureau gain levels and saving throws as a dwarf, but gain social move slots as a cleric. What this means exactly depends on the system, but generally a bureau should not have dwarven constitution, fighting, or skill modifiers. A bureau requires a positive Charisma modifier (+1 or above), and uses Charisma as its primary stat.

Unless otherwise noted, social moves do not require typical charisma or loyalty checks. Indeed, the whole point of the bureau is to have a class that does not require loyalty in order to get its way. Most social moves can be attempted also through role-play or charisma checks (depending on the system, group, and/or context), in which case they do not take a move but also have a chance of failure.

There is a single exception to the efficacy of social moves: they do not work on PCs, and must be roleplayed. They do work on hirelings, henchmen, and other PC-friendly NPCs, and played right they will work on the players as well.

A bureau must meditate after a good sleep in order to clear her social move slots. The form this mediation takes is up to the player—some exercise, some practice mindfulness, some play solitaire games. Some may even pray to the Gods they don’t believe listen.

There are no 0-level bureau; before they gain levels, they are but dwarves like any others.

Whether a player can play a bureau is up to the DM, although it is this author’s suggestion that the specifics of the player class be hammered out by the DM and her player ahead of time.

The bureau is a combined race+class, as per Basic and its clones. Making it compatible with other races or classes is left as an exercise for the reader.



Social Moves

Below is a sampling of bureau-specific social moves, followed by a list of cleric and magic-user spells that can easily be used as social moves. Original social moves are usually more powerful, but also more specific, than spells of the same level—this is by design.

Social moves are NOT magic. They reflect the charisma, social capital, and systematic authority of the bureau. This holds true also for spells used as social moves. A bureau cannot read magic nor use scrolls.

The creation of other social moves is left as an exercise for the reader. Hopefully between this list and the “works cited” below, I’ve given you enough inspiration.

—

Quell Crowd – 1st Level

With a powerful voice and well timed gesture, you can get a group of people to stop being agitated and look at / listen to you for several seconds. Useful for settling a crowd, stopping a riot, starting a speech, distracting a group, etc.. This can also be used to stop a single person dead in his tracks, regardless of what he’s doing. While they are only influenced by the move for several seconds, the caster may attempt to keep their attention through other means (which may be conventional or other social moves).

The size of the crowd that this will work on is a function of the bureau’s level using the equation 3^level. So 3 at level 1, 9 at level 2, 726 at level 6, etc. If there are more people in the crowd, then only the closest number will be under the effects of the move—but again, a talented bureau can use this to their benefit regardless.



Give Task – 1st Level

A bureau can give a task to any dwarf in her own clan, bureaucratic unit, or other appropriate social hierarchy which that dwarf will perform, regardless of his opinions on the bureau and the task. The complexity of this task is limited by the bureau’s level. A level 1 bureau can only force a dwarf to work at the taks for 1 day, and at each level that number doubles (2 days at level 2, 4 days at level 3, etc). The dwarf will try his hardest to complete the task while under the effects of the move, but if it is not completed within the allotted time, the dwarf makes a loyalty check, and if it fails he no longer has to attempt it. This loyalty check recurs each time the length of the move has passed (so for a 2nd level bureau, the dwarf makes a loyalty check at the end of every 2 days).

Notice that this works only on dwarves, and only on those who recognize the bureau as an authority of some sort (although it does not require that they respect that authority).



Public Oration – 2nd Level

Get a group of people to listen to you and agree with what you’re saying. The effect will last as long as they’re all together (and longer if they’re predisposed to the message). The size of the group upon which this works is the same as Quell Crowd. Useful for getting information across, influencing societies, marking arguments in front of courts or parliaments etc.. Can also be used to start a riot, although this will be an uncontrolled one whose purpose will be wanton destruction.



Stonewall – 2nd Level

Anyone asking questions or trying to get their way with the bureau is pushed off politely, gently, but firmly. They will think that they have gotten their goals achieved, and it will only be on later close reflection that they will realize that they have not. This can be attempted on other bureau, but will only work on those of a lower level (and they will be aware that it is working, although will be powerless to stop it).



Bind Henchman – 3rd Level

Upon the leveling up of a henchman, the bureau can choose to bind that henchman to his will. The henchman now has the highest loyalty to the bureau as set by the rules of the system, and can cast one 1st-level social move per day (at his own level), as long as it is done in service of his master. Upon each level the henchman takes, he can cast one more spell per a day (but can never cast spells higher than level one).

Casting this spell permanently uses up one third-level spell slot. The only way to free this spell slot is to unbind the henchman. The henchman will be unbound only if he dies by the hand of the bureau who has bound him—his dying in pursuit of his master’s goals (or of old age, etc) will not free up the slot.

Upon the death of their master, a bound henchman will go mad.



Public Influence – 3rd Level

Get a group of people to listen to you, agree with you, and act on your suggestions. Useful for causing a controlled protest, swinging a vote your way, getting unpopular work completed, etc..



Turn to bureau – 4th Level

After much discussion, cajoling, and psychological damage, a dwarf loses half his/her XP but becomes a bureau of the appropriate level (a zero-level dwarf becomes a first level bureau at 0 XP). This will require a number of hours of discussion equal to the dwarf’s level multiplied by 10 (so 20 hours for a second-level dwarf), but these may be spread out over time. As long as the dwarf listens (whether willingly or under duress) for the right amount of time, he will be turned.

As long as the process of turning is underway, one 4th level spell slot is taken up by the process. The bureau can chose to regain this slot by normal meditation, but in that case all progress towards turning is lost and the process must start anew.

If a bound henchman is turned, he becomes a bureau and can make all social moves as a bureau except “bind henchman”. He remains bound in all other ways. Upon the death of their master, a bound bureau is set free (although often chooses to continue their master’s plans).


—

In addition, all the following magic-user and cleric spells can be performed as social moves by a bureau. In some noted cases, the social move has a different level than its equivalent spell. All of the spells saves and restrictions do apply. However, these are not magic when used by bureau, and all saves must be vs. paralyze or charisma checks.

All spells were taken from Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but other sources should work fine.


Charm Person – 1st level magic-user spell

Command – 1st level cleric spell

Confusion – 4th level magic-user spell (3rd level bureau social move)

Detect Lie – 4th level cleric spell (2nd level bureau social move)

ESP – 2nd level magic-user spell (5th level bureau social move)

Forget – 2nd level magic-user spell (5th level bureau social move)

Power Word Stun – 7th level magic-user spell

Remove fear – 1st level cleric spell (social move only removes non-magical fear)

Suggestion – 3rd level magic-user spell (1st level bureau social move)



Further Inspiration

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duergar_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)
Evil, psionic-using dwarves.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derro_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)
Evil dwarves who influenced the bureaucratic machinations of Nazi Germany.


http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/
Particularly Parts I and VI. Bureau are the “sociopath” layer of Dwarven society.


A Song of Ice and Fire (books) / Game of Thrones (TV show)
Varys is a prime example of a bureau dwarf.


House of Cards (netflix series)
Kevin Spacey’s character? Definitely a high level bureau. The British version of the show (also on netflix) gets bonus points for better portraying how a bureau hides his true nature from those around him. Stanhoe in the British version is definitely a bound henchman.

Leaps, bounds, and falls.

Strong AI never shows up. It turns out it’s just too hard to code human-like cognition from scratch. By the same token, it’s nearly impossible to build any sort of mind uploading system due to the complexity of the system of nerves, impulses, chemicals, and abstract networks that form the human mind, nor does information uploading or “jacking in” ever work effectively.

Luckily, none of this matters. The human body can be augmented with machinery, and the human mind can augment machinery. Robotic armor is produced that works in a perfect feedback loop with muscle impulses to magnify human strength and constitution. High-bandwidth connections and user interface technology allow people to pilot unmanned robots (drones, spiders, trucks, subs, and more) in dangerous territories. People wear holographic glasses that provide an always-persistent heads-up display or any other visual overlay. Electrodes buried under the skin report data on orientation, time, or even alerts—these eventually become imperceptible as sensations as the mind correlates the data, leading to perfect senses of direction, duration, and even subvocal communication.

Masses of rat stem cells stimulated to become neurons are connected to small electrodes and let to form their own networks around them. They interpret the data fed to them, respond, and are conditioned. Mindgoo takes over the most menial and repetitive of tasks using its robot fingers.

Much of the menial yet skilled work is done from home, remotely, through large-screen visual displays and suits that sense movement and can give feedback. Workers communicate over audio link from miles away as they drive dump trucks, fly planes, and perform surgeries.

Augmentation becomes a way of life. Virtual and real are no longer seen as a dichotomy. Everything has a computer on board, everything is connected wirelessly. Mindgoo not only controls physical processes, but also abstract ones over the web. It mines financial data for patterns and organizes warehouse deliveries to be more efficient. People no longer tie their identities most closely to their bodies, but rather to the web of information that constantly surounds them. They can throw their awareness across the world or into abstract spaces.

Some countries clamp down on this, and new technofascist states pop up, using this connection to exert top-down control of their populace. Other areas completely decentralize, forming ad-hoc networks of information and resources. The technofascist states ruthlessly expand in order to secure resources, but the computing load placed on the network of mindgoo and augmented overlords who control the whole mess becomes too much as the network grows too complicated. It is not external democracy but internal technological limits that sends asunder the newest wave of totalitarianism as its networks fragment and violently collapse inwards against their most powerful nodes.

As the human mind becomes more abstract and less aware of the physical world, its physical footprint doesn’t shrink. People are still just as large and made of meat. So are the cows that feed them. Computers are still constructed of silicon and gold. And oil and coal plants still power them while spewing carbon into the sky. Storms become worse and worse on the coasts. The weather inland varies between scorching hot in the summer to freezing cold in the winter. Food production stagnates as the weather makes farming less efficient by percentage points a year while the ocean slowly is drained of readily edible fish.

Space exploration continues mostly through robots, both classical and goo’d. Some genetically modified humans fly pilot swarms of ships, each sitting weightless in a central hub as they direct their eye’d tendrils to mine asteroids and dump resources to Earth orbit. The networks of drones, computers, and goo are each headed by one solitary human, her awareness spread throughout the system.

Energy, minerals, and metals are abundant, but food is a dwindling resource as the ecosystems on the Earth are overtaxed, malnourished, and wasted. Humanity has lost all pretense of thinking the physical world is somehow more real than any of the others it has created for itself. The Earth slowly chokes itself until a tipping point is reached where first food becomes expensive, then largely unavailable, then the electricity becomes scarce. Humanity is unaccustomed to living without its overlays and instant communication, and many people violently unplugged from the maelstrom go mad, unable to handle the banality of being but a single, fleshy human being. A runaway positive feedback loop then consumes the whole system as the humans it so depends on no longer have the resources and skills they need to be physically self-sufficient.

It is the poorest countries which see the least change. In the deep Amazon, the last uncontacted tribe continues its business as it has for the past tens of millennia. Steppe hordes rain south on a China whose populace has grown weak and unfocused after the collapse of technofascism. African villages subsisting on farming find their cheap text devices no longer feed them information, and so they throw them away and do not think back. Meanwhile, the so-called self-sufficient distributed networks that were once the United States violently collapse as during one rolling brown-out just enough vital network nodes are brought offline than power stations loose their connections to their workers, Mindgoo looses its human interpreters, and soon 90% of the networks are without power and never coming back online, sending a shockwave through the developed world as it realizes that their delicate import-export economies are going to collapse themselves within a year.

In the distributed Americas, uncoordinated mass suicides take place as connected abstract beings realize that they will forever be trapped in one single body and find it an existence worse than death. In France a coordinated mass suicide takes place as the country pulls its own network’s plug. Many people spend their last days enjoying their monuments, cathedrals, and countrysides before settling in for bed without the will to rise in the morning.

Five years later and the world has reverted to barbarism. Many are dead, there is no government beyond that of the strong and resourceful, and all but the most analog of technologies are beyond the understanding of most to fix or even use. Tribesmen view their days pre-collapse as a sort of dream state, a collection of disjointed images, sounds, and sensations from senses they no longer posses. Meaning can be gleaned from some memories, but not from others. Existence is no longer a shimmering haze of glitz and information, but just what surrounds them: a bleak landscape of tribal warfare over scant food, rarely potable water, and deteriorating technology. Another ten years and the weakest tribes are scattered and assimilated. The time before is referred to in sacred tones, its images and lessons framed by a religious worship of the omniscient beings that all men once were. The few networked, technological compounds designed to survive just such a mess do, but without the worldweb they are a faint echo of humanity’s former glory, living monuments to a time gone by.

The asteroid miners survive on. Long used to radio relay communication and the black of space, they use their stored libraries and self-repairing fabricant shops to build more drones, ships, and germinated people. As the centuries drag on, they engineer their physical, formerly human component to be smaller and smaller, a jar of bone and fat to preserve a human brain. They build fusion engines and rockets. They grow and plug in multiple human components to each other, children to mothers, so that even as one dies another can take over. These immortal ship-beings work on a long time scale, and eventually in their move towards the ort cloud engineer out all their strictly human components, opting instead for the cool efficiency of goo. They engineer out their own consciousness to play the long game, building ecological systems out of themselves from the minerals they find at the edge of the solar system.

On the Earth, the planet becomes more hostile to human inhabitants each decade as the feedback loops of weather system, permanently changed by humanity’s presence, fall into new equilibria. Over much of the globe tribes become smaller and disappear. The last technological enclaves fail after a collapse that has lasted longer than even the most pessimistic had bet on. The polynesian islands become the last retreat of a humanity which survives by brute force alone, moving from island to island while taking from the sea all they can. Their culture remembers little of humanity’s past, and the fallen wonders they sometimes come upon are explained as being artifacts from when the gods roamed the Earth.