Ea R'lyeh Aboleths.

[HoneyBadger]

Well naturally death ray squid tanks. That's just logic, son.

And nations don't just have to be about representing historical or mythological cultures, they can also represent memes. Everything from the aforementioned War of the Worlds aliens, and Daleks, to the Borg and the more recent Bioshock "Big Daddies" says that monsters are even more terrifying when they're able to use tools and build machines-just like we are-What's worse, a little green martian, or a little green martian with a ray gun?Especially if they lack the sort of supposed "moral disgust" of coupling their own bodies to those machines.

[Tifone]

Personally, and after that you can definitively stone me alive I just wouldn't like at all this imaginative game of mythology and religions, to become an hybrid with mechs and death rays and laser beams and a Darth Vader summon... surely a mod could be fun, but if you think that this nation needs a little boost in the vanilla too not to be left way behind, maybe we could suggest something more strictly thematic to see if we can positively inspire the devs?

Of course if the devs are ok with the aboleth mech (it reminds me somehow the robot with the talking brain inside that was the bad boy of the ninja turtles ^_^ ) I will surely accept them even in the vanilla, despite now being quite duobtful about this

[HoneyBadger]

What do you think mechs and death rays and Darth Vader and C'thulhu/Lovecraft are, if not mythology? Besides, have you taken a close look at what's already in the game? We have mechanical men, we have hyper intelligent Pretender squid-gods with magical powers (Ancient Kraken), we have a king of the Fomorians that has a death ray for an eye...Everything you mentioned, aside from a Darth Vader clone, is already in there without ever touching on Lovecraft, and for more far-fetched reasons than alien (to humans) technology.

The game doesn't need to be completely humanocentric, and it doesn't need to be totally based on our best guess of whatever we imagine some culture's world-view might have been 1500 years ago. Neither of those things add anything to the game, they're just self-imposed limitations that frown on the idea that people today might have imaginations as important and valid as they did in ages past.

And really, discussing why you don't want Aboleths-a made up race probably invented by Gary Gygax in the 70's-to be somehow tainted by a more purple shade of weirdness than you're comfortable having applied to giant, sentient, mudfish/squids that are born from giant holy corals...I just don't know where to begin.

[HoneyBadger]

Well, I'm thinking that, since the Aboleth mothers produce approximately a bijillion babies, that a summons of that type wouldn't have to keep track of yet another spawn. It would just be assumed that perhaps that particular spawn was deemed "special" in some way, and kept in the laboratory for research, until a use could be found for them.

[HoneyBadger]

Since the mech idea doesn't seem to be going down all that digestably for some, maybe instead spawn could simply be attached to living creatures, magically? They might combine with sea trolls, giant crabs, mantas, etc., dissolving their will with direct psychic enslavement, while the bodies of the aboleth spawn themselves grow into the hosts, creating a new and far more horrifying being.

[Sombre]

I like ea rlyeh too, but I'm not a fan of any of the suggestions in this thread,.. other than the reverse thetis' blessing spell. I'd really like to see aquatic only troops zipping about on land. The spell would have to be castable early enough for it to matter though.

[MaxWilson]

Sombre said:
I like ea rlyeh too, but I'm not a fan of any of the suggestions in this thread,.. other than the reverse thetis' blessing spell. I'd really like to see aquatic only troops zipping about on land. The spell would have to be castable early enough for it to matter though.

Reverse Thetis' Blessing is the only one that appeals to me, too. I mentioned the tripods/WotW only in order to justify it thematically.

-Max