CthulhuTech Rework

"Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large."
- H. P. Lovecraft

  • The Mi-go have been abducting, experimenting on, and watching humans since before recorded history for their own inscrutable reasons. They have watched from on high for hundreds of thousands of years as we crawled out of the dark, and claimed the world while still being utterly ignorant of the true nature of things.
  • The renowned physicist and engineer Teresa Ashcroft discovers the Dimensional Engine (aka D-Engine) which produces clean energy by siphoning power from … elsewhere. Teresa Ashcroft is committed to Arkham Sanatorium due the mental strain she undergoes developing the D-Engine.
  • The D-Engine is revolutionary not only due to providing cheap, clean energy in a portable format, but also due to the Operator Extension Side Effect which allows the creation of intuitively controlled powered armours, and eventually mecha. The D-Engine allows humans to plumb the depths of the sea and reach out to other planets to establish colonies elsewhere in the solar system.
  • The Mi-go realize a bit too late that the hairy apes on the third planet have tapped into something they should never have meddled with. Motivated by a desire to remain the apex species in the solar system, as well as out of fear that reckless human innovation might awaken Great Cthulhu, they decide to intervene by sending a proxy force to return humans to pre-D-Engine technology levels.
  • (WORDS ABOUT THE NAZZADI)
  • (FIRST ARCANOTECH WAR HAPPENS)
  • (UNEASILY ACCEPTED NAZZADI INTEGRATION)
  • (MI-GO GET BUTTHURT)
  • (SECOND ARCANOTECH WAR HAPPENS)

Stuff I think is worth keeping

  • An uneasily-accepted world government, the New Earth Government, whose primary purpose is ensuring that humanity survives the Aeon War. It does this by allocating as much manpower and materiel as needed to the war effort. Conscription, quotas, whatever needs to be done.
  • A terrifying faction that has embraced the Mythos, the Rapine Storm.

"The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."
- "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926) by H. P. Lovecraft

  • I like the Nazzadi in that there is this threat they are actually dangerous to humanity, either due to breeding with Mankind and introducing something into our genetics (the fear of miscegenation is perfect for a Lovecraft-inspired RPG). Or by mental backdoors that the Mi-go can exploit.
    • I feel like Nazzadi protagonists and villains are pushed too much in CTech's books. Put the majority of the Nazzadi in their nation on Cuba, or fighting on the front lines. People living in arcologies shouldn't be amazingly familiar with them. Nazzadi living in Human neighbourhoods should be something that worries people. These are the same Nazzadi that were happily exterminating humans during the First Archaeotech War. Gray Nazzadi hybrids should be frightening, they are the byproduct of extraterrestrial miscegenation.
  • The Mi-go have orbital superiority but are unable to exploit it properly due to the fear that orbital bombardment will awaken things best left asleep. For the same reason, NEG member-states are unwilling to use their nuclear arsenals.
  • It's briefly mentioned in a book or two about how humans had colonies on the Moon, Mars, and outward (maybe moons of Saturn or Jupiter?). There are definitely good stories to be told about human struggles beyond the Mi-go interdiction, especially on inhospitable worlds.

Basically CoC / Delta Green

  • Basically any story told before can be told in the future, with some adjusting for future technology. Honestly nothing that Delta Green doesn't have to deal with already being set in the 90s and 00s.
  • NEG's GHOST department is basically a legitimate Delta Green.

I swear it's not Evangelion, please don't sue us

I swear it's not Guyver, please don't sue us

Things I'm uneasy about

  • The idea of nano-factories (Star Trek replicators). This is a serious concern when humanity is supposed to be on the brink of losing a war on two or three fronts. It essentially makes materiel concerns non-existent. It also removes anything regarding scarcity among civilian populace.
  • Chrysalis Corporation being really blatantly evil: Making pharmaceuticals that don't work quite right, arming the Rapine Storm. Once or twice is an accident, but it happening repeatedly is a pattern. It stretches disbelief that no-one in the NEG or GHOST would not realize this. They're like the Pentex of CthulhuTech.
  • The Nazzadi's appearance makes no sense. The developer say the Mi-go made them so so they scare humans, but this makes no sense when the Nazzadi fought the First Arcanotech War from starships, mechs, etc.