Ps this is actually also copyright shatterfreak and snorlison. I would like them to get in touch.

so are there example anti-avatars?

Yes, under "Avatars". Mordiggian, Cthulhu, Hastur, Shub-Niggurath, Yig-Tsathoggua and Nyarlathotep so far. Ithaqua to come. Sorry if the referent wasn't clear.

All very nicely-written and well thought-out, and I'm sure some groups would have a lot of fun with it, but I don't know if this whole CoC/UA crossover is something I'd go in for. Actually, I prefer to avoid crossovers in general, and in the case of UA I like everything fictional to stay fictional, so that PCs can gibber on in-character about being CoC or WoD nuts if they so desire. Adds a level of realism.

I also recall Greg Stolze (I think) saying that part of the intention of UA was to make it very humano-centric, in order to make it very distinct from games like CoC where we're really powerless in the face of unspeakably alien monstrosities. I do like the idea of things from previous universes trying to sneak through the gaps of reality back into this one, but I think they should be a lot less powerful than the Comte, the Invisible Clergy and the Cruel Ones, more dangerous perhaps to individuals than to the whole cosmos.

My thoughts exactly, Simon Foston. This write-up is interesting and sounds like fun, but (even ignoring how much of a turn-off CoC stuff is for me) it really pulls focus off of the postmodern feel of Unknown Armies. I feel like it is something I would adapt to In Nomine. Heck, even making the Anti-Archetypes non-Lovecraftian still makes the game much less postmodern and humanocentric.

Really, the write-up looks like a lot of fun, but in this case, keep the chocolate away from my peanut butter.

with respect, I don't think either of you have read this very carefully. The Great Old Ones require humans to believe in them and channel them, just like any other archetype. Without humans willing to turn to them, they cant do squat, which is a rather different scenario to CoC.

No, as I said, it's all very well thought-out and it's quite clear that nothing much happens unless humans become these "anti-avatars." That's all well and good for GMs and groups who like this style of campaign.
The thing is, the tone kind of implies, at least for me, that it's really kind of easy for the Great Old Ones to get into the dark recesses of peoples' subconscious. And this passage:

"Humanity, then, is continually on the run, hunted beyond infinite realities by the Great Old Ones, who smash through the shells of previous universes, getting ever closer, as the Comte desperately tries to fill the Invisible Clergy with Archetypes strong enough to battle against the Great Old Ones and provide enough power to trigger another protective reset and retreat."

To me it strongly suggests that we're pretty much at these things' mercy, especially when you add that no one's seen the Comte de Saint-Germain for a while. Or do you mean the Scholar avatar?

Anyway, my point is that at the first sign of any sort of dangerous re-emergence of beings from previous universes, e.g. anti-avatars, the combined forces of the Comte, the Clergy and (maybe) the Cruel Ones should be more than sufficient to deal with them.

I meant the scholar avatar. The bit about humanity being on the run is his speculation, which may or may not be correct...

They may well be sufficient in the long run, but the Comte and Clergy usually prefer to work through people on the ground rather than confront things directly. Cue heroic PCs.

Humanity being on the run doesn't put them any less at the center of the action. Proof: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=ys8AkwMRvgo

Also maybe it's not "on the run", but "irritatedly trying to leave the metaphysical equivalent of the ex-boy/girlfriend behind as they get on with their lives"

Or somewhere in-between.

As powerful as the ex-archetypes may be, every incarnation of the universe is going to very quickly have a fair number of archetypes soon after things start (Mother, Warrior, Father, Child, Victim, Alpha-Male, Alpha-Female, Cripple, etc.) that are going to be more powerful because A) they're still a bit more flexible (similar to demon vs human) and B) more powerful because they're directly tied in to the new powersource whereas dead gods are starving. It doesn't mean they can't be deeply unhealthy for the state of the collective unconscious of humanity, but it may not be a matter of life/death always. Hell, some of them are little more than uncomfortable options that newer archetypes might take if things go wrong (ie. Heisenberg Messenger vs. Nyarlothotep). Sometimes they're just bad influences.

Well put.

To summarise, Great Old One : Archetype :: Demon : Human

I mean, any human seeing a GOO (or sensing or "knowing" or etc) and realizing they're hungry for humanity, well that human isn't going to have the references to understand just how big or small the GOOs are in relation to things. And since that human is probably now targeted by that GOO and tigers in the zoo seem smaller than tigers chasing you...

On the other hand, they might be dangerous predators to the universe. They might be slow-draining parasites, infections, or even some bizarre sort of competitor for resources. Doesn't matter, because they're influence is usually minor, but horrifying. Since they don't have the power of an actual Archetype and have to get in through chinks in the armor, the few spots they DO get in are going to be them, but more condensed (if not necessarily super powerful). Makes them more horrifying.

So, they're rare, super rare, but when they happen, they leave a stronger impact on the psyche (because of alienness, intensity of their hunger/purpose, etc.).

Okay... assuming the Comte does choose to use mortal agents to deal with these things, is there any reason why he wouldn't select the biggest badasses around, people who can talk to an Unspeakable Servant and eat calamari sushi at the same time, tell them everything they need to know and give them every ritual and artifact necessary to wipe these anti-avatars out of existence? I also think the Clergy would be strongly inclined to twist probability so that the odds are seriously stacked in the mortal agents' favour.

Anyway, I have another couple of questions. Seeing as these anti-archetypes aren't in the Clergy at the moment, surely the only way to become one is through a conscious ascension attempt, i.e. behaving like the archetype but not gaining any powers and hoping it's embedded firmly enough in the collective unconscious for the attempt to succeed? If so, I'm not sure if tentacled monstrosities lurking in the depths of the reptilian hindbrain really qualify in the same way as living, breathing people who you could conceivably meet down the pub or see on TV.

If, on the other hand, it's possible to channel these beings' power from whichever dead universe they're lurking in, what happens to them if an anti-avatar does somehow beat the odds and ascend? Surely the original anti-archetype would still be stuck in the same place while the new one wreaks merry havoc in the Invisible Clergy. Or am I missing something?

Thanks for raising the questions and making me clarify my concepts, Simon :)

OK:
a) Why wouldn't the Comte use the biggest badass etceteras? Because the biggest badasses are people like the Freak, who might just turn around and use the avatar-killing rituals on him; or the rituals might leak to the Great Old Ones (GOO) who would use them on the Comte and other clergy members. What you suggest is like handing out nukes to "freedom fighters" who turn into tomorrow's terrorists.

b) Clergy stacking the odds - what, you've never fudged a roll for your players to prevent them being killed by an ubervillain?

c) The anti-avatar channels can currently be used, but take a
-10% shift to represent power attentuation across universes, see above. If/when an anti-avatar does ascend, the penalty is removed.

d) There are two ways to ascend as a GOO:
One, embed them in the collective mind as you say, until you get a critical mass of believers; this is one reason GOO tend to form cults and religions around themselves (PS as for their wierdness relative to the general population and clergy, when's the last time you met a mystic hermaphrodite down the pub?);
two, ascend as an existing archetype and then change it (a la Dermott Arkane changing "messenger" to "heisenburg messenger) to a GOO; basically, once you ascend you open your archetype to possession. This may also tend to "humanise" the GOO; See "Nyarlathotep".

e) I think that such an ascension would let the ascended one "crack open" the stratosphere so that the relevant GOO can enter.

I hope the queries are useful - all the thought and effort that's gone into this is very impressive, and it's all a very good springboard for GMs toying with the idea of forces from old universes that aren't necessarily based on the Cthulhu Mythos. I'll tell you why I personally would be very careful using anything CoC-related in UA - if you've got experienced players in your UA group who've also played lots of CoC, all this is going to seem a little bit familiar. They'll either be rolling their eyes at the thought of endless SAN rolls and character deaths, or they'll have some idea of what they're dealing with and how to deal with it (as players, that is, not necessarily as characters, but it's still less than desirable in a horror RPG). The best people to run all this past, IMO, are ones who know nothing at all about CoC. Anyway, to address your points...

a. Obviously the Comte is going to be careful about who he trusts, but at the same time he's not going to rely on anyone else to handle this kind of problem if he isn't confident that they can deal with it.

b. Yep, of course. But I've let PCs get killed by ubervillains too (admittedly they really screwed up). But if I do have to let the Clergy stack the odds in the PCs' favour all the time (i.e. fudge the dice), it kind of takes the fun and danger out of things.

c. I'd suggest that these anti-avatars tend to trigger a lot of unnatural phenomena around themselves as well, just like adepts tend to do when they cast spells.

d. Wouldn't know about the Mystic Hermaphrodites - given the gender-changing ability, I could have met any number of them without ever knowing. I'm not sure if the cults of believers would be effective, however, unless they were ultra-subtle and able to influence the mass media to a point that their anti-archetype was universally recognised. I don't think archetypes have to be believed in, per se, just recognised and acknowledged.

e. Tough luck on the original anti-archetype if the new one decides not to bother... having attained godhood and all the power to change the destiny of this universe, why give it up?

Snorlison here... I've been watching the work you've been doing with my little start with some great interest, sorry I haven't done any development of the concepts. It's been a somewhat transitory semester.

Just a commentary on my view of how all this works, since my rather humble (in my opinion, at least) contribution of the idea seed has been given a coauthor credit.

Yes, I think that when Lovecraft meets UA, there is going to be some compromise. At a fundamental level, the interpretation of Lovecraft that CoC gives is (as far as I've seen) quite difficult to harmonize with the completely anthropocentric view of UA.

So, I think a decision needs to be made - is UA playing in CoC's world, or is CoC being invited to a rave in UA's corner of the conceptual universe? For me, it has been the latter.

Lovecraft had a problem with things foreign to his New England experiences. The preservation of sanity is ultimately a exercise is ignorance - our reality bubble must be maintained.

One of the horrors of Lovecraft, in my reading of his work and the extended Mythos, is the idea of internal corruption. The idea that, as much as we seek to combat these external forces perceived to be wholly destructive to our sensibilities and beliefs, we have a bit of the taint ourselves.

Which is why our postmodern age is when the stars are starting to come right - we've decided to accept any and all comers for the new and exciting. Get your jollies cutting sigils in your skin? Whatever man, it's all po-mo.

To me, the AntiArchetypes make the destructive behavior of the Adepts seem like quaint supersition. They are representatives of a cosmos much older than ours - essentially human, but of course the idea of what "human" even means is up for grabs now. They are wholly hostile and dismissive of our traditions, our ethics, even the fundamental tenets of reality that we hold so dear.

On a personal note, I often find some of the Tynesian-interpretation Hastur stories and ideas to have a wonderful poetry and wonder. There is a part of me that responds to those idea. Perhaps a part of me remembers the time, not so long ago, where Ythill surrendered to it's true sovereign. I can feel that taint within me, and while part of me knows that the King in Yellow is complete anathema to what I hold dear, I would still find a (hopefully) fleeting desire to visit Carcosa.

We phrase the influence of the GOOs as corruption, but this is not true. They were here before we rose, they will be here after we fall. Our current universe owes more to their influence than we will ever know (who do you think invented time? Gravity? The concept of concept? What do you think there was before the early humans got their hands on our world? Be glad you do not live then.) and it would only be right to bow our heads to our elders.

The call is always there. And that is how I see the GOOs fitting into the world of UA.

On The Power Of Dead Gods, or why the Great Old Ones hide...


Who is more powerful - the Great Old Ones or the Archetypes?

Which is more powerful - the Entropomancer wielding Cage The Dead, or the demon that has hiden unknown in the bodybag's sister for the last five years?

To me, if the AntiArchtypes manifested in the World of Our Desires or in the Living Mirror of Heaven, they'd lose. The Cruel Ones would show up to execute that warrant from five trillion cosmii ago, and that would that.

The power of the GOOs, for now, resides in the fact that there exist humans who can be used to twist the world to the GOOs desires. The GOOs watch, manipulate, and sing out their blasphemies to the desperate and alone and inspired.

This is not to say the GOOs are not powerful. Demons, when everything else is stripped away, see the cosmos very clearly. They gain impressive resevoirs of focus and mental determination. The nonessential has been stripped away.

Much the same has happened to an Archetype - much of what they were has been removed, tossed aside and waiting to be resumed when the unthinkable descencion happens.

And so, the AntiArchetypes are at the crux of these two beings. Much of the Statospheric knowledge, and much of the Human knowledge, of the GOOs has been stripped away. What remains is a profound knowledge of the mechanics of the cosmos that predates all current Archetypes. All that which the Invisible Clergy takes for granted, that which is invisible to even their vaunted position, was invented by the GOOs. They know the secret paths, and their knowledge of the universe is second only to the Comte. And, still, they know more then him, for while he has spent uncountable lifetimes as a human, they've spent uncountable lifetimes hiding and running and fleeing through the Backstage of Reality. It is their home, and they know how it works.

The GOOs aren't merely surviving Archetype from the previous cosmos. There are always those pathetic bunch who think fighting it out is better than being ushered behind the Veil.

They don't last long. Either the Cruel Ones find them, or the alternative is consumption. Being found by a being in the darkness, and having all that makes them digested into the powerbase of a GOO or tossed away like an inedible bone.

The GOOs are the survivors, the roaches of the cosmos. They play a very long game, plotting and waiting and hungering. Most of them is shut down/dead, a sort of "silent running" as they wait in the void of Backstage.

Why Doesn't The Comte Just Sort This Out? Two Alternative Interpretations

--Really? You expect the Comte to sort it out? To kick the GOOs out? What do you think the Comte is? He's older than all of them! Do you think he gives a flying fart in a hurricane what current humanity thinks? He's seen trends go and he's seen trends come.

The Comte doesn't get rid of them because the Comte is one of them.


--Each time the universe is born anew, so is St. Germaine. He is timeless, and he has some scattered memories of previous worlds - but, as much as an immortal like him can be, he is a child of the present.

For better or worse, he is a man. Sure, he can fix the rips and tears on the fabric of the cosmos, but he's just the resident handyman.

Those things outside? They were around when it was being built. They've seen the success and failures of an infinity of prototypes.

The Comte doesn't get rid of them because he can't.

Why Doesn't The Puppet Reject The Hand? or why the New Archetypes allow the AntiArchetypes into heaven...

As someone walks down the path of corruption, perhaps they allow more essence of the GOO into themselves. They exchange what makes them, them, in exchange for a measure of power.

They convince humanity of their way, they feel the eyes of the world on them, and the go to heaven.

Perhaps, in this moment, the GOO snaps the bond between them. Having taken so much of something so old and ancient into himself, the schmoe acts as the ultimate clueless Proxy. The GOO consumes his peon and ascends into heaven.

Or perhaps, when the puppet ascends, and the universe strips away his humanity, the germinating seed of antiquarian ideas burst forth. As above, so below, and the new Archetype is a perfect reflection of it's AntiArchetype parent. In some strange universal law of sympathy, the corpse god finds new life in the Statosphere.

Or perhaps the AntiArchetype still languishes in it's grave, only it doesn't care, because it's protege has started to redesign the universe. Every day the Great New One is in the Clergy, and man revels and kills, more of the Great Old One leaks into our world. Maybe when the world has changed enough, the two kiss, make-up, and have horrible mind-sucking make-up sex/resorbsion.

I guess the only way to know is to let one of the damn things ascend.

I think the idea that they have to be subtle because if they're not, the Cruel Ones will deal with them is a good one. And that some of them weren't old Archetypes, but instead were strange adepts from times before that refused to be part of the reset and tried to escaped, that most of them were eaten by the old half-dead Archetypes of previous times, that some survived and grew in power into something strange and entirely other.

Separately, for some of the alienness, imagine if there are other worlds going through the endless iteration, that ours is only one lineage of existences. Some of these anti-Archetypes might be refugees from these other places. Or weird ghosts of the old abandoned iterations these other places left behind.

Also: see discussion of Metaphysical Singularity in the Yig-Tsathoggua entry. We may be their meal now, but when we hit our adulthood, the tables might be turned.

As far as an anti-Avatar ascending as a unique new Archetype (rather than kicking out an old one for a new interpretation), by the time the idea is well-entrenched, it will often be humanized. One idea is that it would open up the world to infection by the template GOO. Another is that now WE have the tools IT had and IT is out of luck, how can it compete with the call of an ACTUAL Archetype that offers the same things it does, but offers more and better? If it overreaches itself, its own hunger for more food can shut its mouth. Chump!

And hell, maybe they stop being openly evil once they've been integrated. I mean, when that's possible. Yig-Tsathoggua isn't necessarily evil, in and of itself, and neither (necessarily) is the friend of the King in Yellow. While they prey and leech now, if they ascended, they might make the world a little... weirder, but since they're plugged into the power and the shape, they'd be forced to be humanized (or they'd be replaced by someone who fits better) and wouldn't NEED to be metaphysically predatory. Why eat your own leg?

Still, others ARE inherently twisted: Nyarlothotep, Goat of a Thousand Young, etc. Bad influences we shouldn't hang out with.

And then you wonder, they did it once, but could they survive a second reset?

To be honest with you, my take is that an archetype just doesn't survive in any sort of individual form once it's become part of the godhead, and that its soul, will, self-awareness, power, symbolic significance, etc, is consumed and merged into the fabric of this universe. If there's anything left of them at all, it's nothing more than the statospheric equivalent of a discarded snakeskin. Now I suppose some weirdo could become aware of these cosmic remains, see them for what they are and attempt a conscious ascension as a revival of the archetype, but unless the ante-archetype has already become quite well embedded in the universal unconscious, I don't think it's going to work.

First, to Simon's last comment: we know that ascended Godwalkers still maintain at least an echo of selfhood after the Clergy because, if ousted by a new ascension, they return to humanity through a Room of Renunciation.

Second, to address the question of how the Anti-Archetypes ascend: they have to get into this world through avatars, but those avatars aren't the ones being worshipped. I'd say that when one gets to 99%, rather than having the glimpse of the Clergy that Godwalkers receive, the poor sap gives the Anti-Archetype a ticket to OUR world. That's how it crosses the line and ascends itself. The pawns channelling it don't ascend at all. That patches up the plot hole to my satisfaction.

Well yes, but being kicked out of the Invisible Clergy and becoming part of the Godhead at the end of the universe are hardly the same thing.

See my comments under "Cthulhu" about rewriting a hard drive.

From my reading of this I would suggest that an 'Avatar' reaching 99% does yank the GOO into our current Clergy, but remains there. Now, of course, it resists all attempts for the Godwalker to take it's place, but the Godwalker may not care so much - many of the negative connetations of channeling power to and from a hungry creature beyond the limits of our existence are now quashed. No more 10% penalty, no more Soul reduction. Maybe even the dragging of the GOO into the real world means no more Unnatural checks - I don't know.

A possible other negative trait - 'Avatars' (perhaps better reclassified as 'Followers' as they're deliberately trying to tap into something alien rather than invoke a natural Arhetype) would begin to resemble corresponding 'races' - those that worship Cthulhu developing an Innsmouth look, for example, or Morrigan worshippers becoming more canine. Forgive me if that's already been addressed under specific Avatars elsewhere.

I'd love to see what would happen if a GOO, having ascended to the Clergy, was then booted off its throne. Would it then become a human Avatar, or would it become some weird pitiful alien creature skulking at the edge of society?

The latter, more or less.

There's a whole story about it.

That freaky island-city-tomb place, R'lyeh? Had to de-mothball it for the special occasion. It's the only Room with big enough doors.

nice one stange.

I really like the idea of an avatar of a past race having to incarnate as a human, particularly as a human that's the opposite of what it has been forever. I mean, archetypes are archetypes, sure, but the general idea here is that these old archetypes more than WERE what they represented (King, Devourer, etc.), they somehow surpassed even that to the point where they were the archetypes' version of a demon, completely wrapped up in their identity as the archetype with EVERYTHING else, every other interpretation cut out (i.e. a GOO Mother archetype would only empower avatars that were strictly one interpretation, for example only Devouring Mother types, not Protective Mother types, while the current Human Mother archetype empowers both types).

So suddenly, you're A) a different race, with all the issues that entails such as less/more/different arms/senses/emotions/etc., B) the exact opposite of everything you were when you were REALLY REALLY what you were, and C) small and limited, and D) suddenly open to change and growth again.

What's really funny is that a lot of the GOO archetypes, if they were deposed, would be pretty decent guys. Probably like to garden. Some would be a bit over-emotional, but in loving ways. And? Since they're mostly out-dated, they might be pretty easy to oust and even the darker modern interpretations of that kind of thing would be better than the original.

Cool. I've ploughed through most of the individual avatars now, so I've got a better handle on how things all 'work'. Glad to see the Innsmouth look (etc.) crept in there. Loved the Shub Niggurath one, but felt a little bit let down by Nyarlathotep, who seemed, like you say, to be much like the Messenger and Trickster.

Mostly, though, I could see myself using these, if I wanted to throw my players a curve-ball. I might change the idea a little - with the GOOs being demons of the previous universe's ascended Archetypes, I'd be inclined to make them individual, if alien. Whilst people tap into them as Avatars, because effectively they were once genuine Archetypes you might ascend to, they're now just relics of that past universe. Whilst people might worship Earth's gods, wearing the masks of various Archetypes in this world (and in consiously following those gods subconsiously following the path), by following those ancient GOOs you're instead channelling them as a method of bringing thew GOOs into this world. Because the Archetype the dead god represents is no longer valid, the power goes straight to the entity, and there's no actual way to 'usurp' their position, instead becoming absorbed into the entity.

Nyarlathotep is a good example of this. Having broken through to this reality, the thousand masks he is known to have are just the bodies of his Avatars. The Avatars are aware that they are part of a greater whole, and at high levels are able to transform into more monstrous creatures, but what they are actually doing is allowing the god to manifest through them. It might be understood that with the ascension of various decedant arts that the King in Yellow operates in a similar method, though with a smaller following of Avatars to manifest through.

These GOOs might find a way to establish themselves as part of the Invisible Clergy, but more likely they'd just mislead people into following them, amassing power in order to manifest in this universe and eventually survive it's destruction, in order to create yet another universe in their image.

I think that's how I'd play it, but then I like my Cthulhu Mythos, and would lean towards them being unknown, alien and impossible to grasp on an intellectual level and battle on a physical one.

Neville, I do want to mention one thing: most of the Rooms only change their inhabitants in one way. So, instead of the Black Goat of a Thousand Young, she's suddenly the Black Goat with One Really Sheltered and Sexually Abused Child. I guess that the changed aspect is up to the storyteller's interpretation of what the Great Old One's central characteristic is, though. (Now Hastur is BLUE!)

Anarkana, I agree that as anti-archetypes, they should work differently, although I took it in a different direction. Instead of letting avatars channel just by consistant behavior, I required them to perform rituals to invoke the Old Ones and wedge open the universe momentarily. Each time they performed a given ritual, they got access to one use of their channels. In my last campaign, Nyarlathotep had cut a deal with a desperate Arkane and was funnelling these rituals into the world. (Nyarlathotep as the prophet who plants the seeds of his own deadly prophecy - something like Macbeth's witches - was also my retcon for why Lovecraft's stories were true.) So, there's a different take on the same problem, in case anyone's interested.

What about the always-on channels, like Cthulhu's 'no aging under the sea' thing?

See, they change the core definition, but sometimes that's fairly complex. There's the example of the booted-out King, it's not just that he becomes Some Guy Who Wants to Be Ruled by a Whole Lot of People, he becomes the antithesis of what he was, an anarchist who violently opposes the Ruling Class. Some archetypes have multiple traits that define them, too, like the Mother is more than just The Protector or the Procreator or the Possessor of Tiny Half-Versions of Herself. Cthulu might be "The Devouring Madness" OR "The Unknown That Consumes", something like that, so when he gets flipped through the House of Renunciation, it's more than one trait that gets brought out.

So the Black Goat would become the Pro-Choice Avenger! Cthulu might become the Mental Health and Moderate-Consumption Crusader!

As far as changing species, since they lose their body when they ascend and are being reincarnated through a mechanism designed to fit the current universe, there's no reason (unless it's just more fun for the GM) that they wouldn't incarnate as humans. Possibly slightly odd-looking ones.

Conversely, it might be that the GOO that were VASTLY inhuman DO incarnate as something non-human. That means either A) RISE OF ANTI-CTHULU THAT LOOKS JUST LIKE CTHULU or B) STRANGELY SOOTHING GIANT SQUID THAT IS NOT VORACIOUS BECAUSE THAT'S THE CLOSEST THING TO A "CTHULU" THE MODERN WORLD HAS. Black Goat might find herself as an ACTUAL goat, given the perceptual nature of archetypes sometimes the name becomes the thing, maybe?

All that said, it's really amusing to think of a deposed Cthulu in a Cthulu shape. A giant monstrous therapist that preaches moderation in eating.

Now I'm picturing some Santa-shaped counselor, specializing in bulimia, with a prehensile beard. Works in Vegas, arguably the least oceanic place on earth, and yet also a place where subconscious desires run close to the surface.

Mordiggan becomes a party animal: living for the moment, unconcerned with history or consequences, friendly and sloppy like a domesticated dog, barely fluent in a single modern language, let alone any ancient one. And yet the hallucinogenic mushrooms she peddles have fed upon decay, and now provide strange insights.

Shub-Niggurath becomes the hooker with a heart of gold, the one who never actually has sex with anyone because she's too busy helping them work through deeper issues. Essentially, an unlicensed psychotherapist. For some reason, she still gets paid, and spends her spare time helping out at the soup kitchen.

"Shub-Niggurath becomes the hooker with a heart of gold"

This is the best phrase I have ever read. Thank you.

- F.A.R.

PS - As for Renunciation, what I really meant is that they might still be nasty when they return. Cthulhu might go from the eternal threat, always just on the edge of destroying all we know, to the ACTIVE threat - from water to fire.

And that's exactly what the story The Call of Cthulhu describes.

FAR, sure, I could see that.

Cthulu as "The Promise of Madness and Destruction that Never Comes"

Still, depending on what gets reversed it might just end up becoming "The Promise of Sanity and Good Times that Never Come". Of course, it could also go and be "The Promise of Sanity and Good Times that Come Almost Immediately"

On this topic, I always got the feeling that a fallen archetype was pretty close to being a high-powered archetype of its opposite. The Lover becomes the Hater. Once renounced, the world is not going to be the same with that person.

What would be really interesting is what someone is like after ascending and falling two or three times, each time after the first ascending to an archetype that is 4 or 5 degrees off of being 180 degrees from the original one. It'd be rare but could have some strange effects. And might explain why the GOO have become so obsessed with being archetypes and tend to be such complex ones as each little bit of unflipped past definition builds up and more and more of their life has been spent being an archetype, without it mattering exactly what archetype they were.

I know I'm crazy late to this discussion, but to throw my two cents in -

I like the premise behind it a bunch, and it's neat to see that someone else was tinkering with "What happens to archetypes that didn't come back?" (I ended up going with my own "pantheon," rather than borrow Lovecraft's.)

The problem, as I see it, is that the goal of the Anti-Archetypes is inherently paradoxical. They represent aspects of an existence that is totally alien to ours, and they want to get the old world back by entering into the new one. For me it goes a little beyond the "how to handle ascension" discussion here (which was very cool, by the way): How do we even describe or imagine such an entity in our universe?

It'd be like a two-dimensional being trying to describe a sphere, or a born-blind man trying to describe the color "blue" in subjective terms.

In-game, you can drive a character insane via madness checks all over the place, and give vague, menacing, hand-waving descriptions from the GM to go with it - but that doesn't get the experience to the PC, and for me that's a problem. It's cheating. The PC still understands the Anti-Archetype and what structures it, and if the PC can, so can a character in-game - and if a character in-game can understand it, then it's not utterly alien to our universe.

Maybe archetypes-and-avatars is the wrong framework for this situation.

Maybe, because these beings are so alien to our current universe, they outright cannot get back in - not by the current rules. So they have to change them. They have to replace existing archetypes not with themselves, but with versions of those archetypes that bring the current universe closer to resembling the previous one. (Going even further: maybe their goal is even more long-term, one cosmic reset at a time.)

In this case, these beings couldn't confer power to their followers the same way avatars do, and have to work through even more convoluted and sneaky ways. Promoting a school of magick whose core values are similar to theirs. Supporting an adept's ascension bid, to replace a non-adept (i.e. sane) archetype.

The problem here is how one gets to BE a follower, and what that means. If you're willing to only have followers be GMCs, then it's easy: You know that hypothetical maniac who knows two schools of magick, and is too insane for any PC to play, because he's gone beyond all human sense or reason? What about a madi (as in Post Modern Magick) - maybe their "random" spell-reflection is based on their allegiance to insane alien gods? Or how about that Abominable Unspeakable Servant whose master died without appointing an heir? And just where did the tenebrae, astral parasites, and thaumovores COME from?

Maybe having PCs play true followers is beyond the scope of this setting. Maybe PCs can play poor, depraved souls who are willing to fling themselves headlong into the madness, more so even than adepts. Maybe becoming so crazy that a PC can't play the character anymore is the Lovecraftian equivalent of becoming so powerful that a PC can't play the character anymore (e.g. ascending).

Lastly - maybe these maniacal ex-archetypes don't even want to get back in. Maybe they're so obsessed, so far from human, so abstract and hungry, that what they want doesn't make sense anymore, at all. It doesn't have an alien logic; it has no logic at all. They don't even have the psychological vocabulary left to structure their desires in causal terms (i.e. wanting, then getting).

In practical terms, this means that them trying to get what they want, which is now impossible, amounts to total havoc in our world. In other worlds, maybe in their mad hunger, they just want to tear this universe to pieces, and tear those pieces to pieces, and tear those pieces to pieces...

Remember, no matter how alien they are to us now, their universe also had 333 archetypes...and the Comte, who is human.