Language as dramatic basis
May. 22nd, 2003 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cdybedahlThings like Tok Pisin and Natural Semantic Metalanguage (or, indeed, just the concept of metalanguage) has made me want to run a roleplaying campaign based on Kenneth Hite's The Madness Dossier (from GURPS Horror, Third Edition).
The Madness Dossier, for those of you unfamiliar with it, sort of combines a super-strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis with the concepts of supernatural consensus reality and artificially created ur-langugage. In the world of The Madness Dossier, the languages we know not only determine what we can think about, they also to a large extent determine what we can experience and what we can do. For example, an object for which we have no linguistic concept will be for all practical purposes entirely undetectable. We can't think about it, so we can't see it. Combine this with a metaphysics where what a sufficiently large number of intelligent beings believe becomes (local) reality, and we have a world where language is the basic determiner for what is real.
So far it's not much of a horror background. To get that, we add this: The reality we live in is not the real reality. In the original reality, there was a species for which we have no name. They once ruled the universe, for all practical purposes. And they created us, the humans, as a slave race. Their power base was, of course, language. They had a far better understanding and control of that than we do. And when they created us, they created our languages. Revolt against them was impossible, for that concept just did not exist in any human language.
Somewhere around the year 500 something happened. We have no idea what, but the result was that all the Overlords either died or fell asleep, and humanity forgot all about them. Consensus reality shifted, and the world as we know it, complete with ten thousand years of history, came into being overnight. And that would be well and good, if it wasn't for that the Overlords had safeguards. They'd made it so that it would take far more than this to entirely erase them from reality. They stayed asleep -- until now. They've begun to wake up, and they want their old reality back. The few Overlords that have so far become active again have started to wage memetic warfare against an unsuspecting humanity, spreading thoughts and concepts that will in time make reality shift back to the original one where we are their slaves forever. Unless someone stops them.
Fortunately for us, a small group of linguists have discovered a basic commonality in all human languages, and how that commonality can be slightly manipulated. They also noted that their manipulations seeemed to make things actually change. At first, they found it absolutely amazing, a fantastic tool to realise paradise on Earth. Then they ran into an Overlord. Most of the original group no longer exist. Indeed, they now have never existed at all. But a couple of them got away, and they're trying to form a resistance. Which is not easy, given how no plans with any chance of success can ever be formulated in any language with roots in the human ur-language the Overlords gave us. So they're recruiting people with strong skills in seriously variant languages. People born deaf, with sign language as their native language. Hardcore trekkies who think in Klingon. Mathematicians more familiar with logic constructs and symbol manipulation than with human speech. That sort of people.
Out of that, they try to build an army to fight what is essentially gods to save humanity from eternal slavery. And that is a horror background.
The Madness Dossier, for those of you unfamiliar with it, sort of combines a super-strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis with the concepts of supernatural consensus reality and artificially created ur-langugage. In the world of The Madness Dossier, the languages we know not only determine what we can think about, they also to a large extent determine what we can experience and what we can do. For example, an object for which we have no linguistic concept will be for all practical purposes entirely undetectable. We can't think about it, so we can't see it. Combine this with a metaphysics where what a sufficiently large number of intelligent beings believe becomes (local) reality, and we have a world where language is the basic determiner for what is real.
So far it's not much of a horror background. To get that, we add this: The reality we live in is not the real reality. In the original reality, there was a species for which we have no name. They once ruled the universe, for all practical purposes. And they created us, the humans, as a slave race. Their power base was, of course, language. They had a far better understanding and control of that than we do. And when they created us, they created our languages. Revolt against them was impossible, for that concept just did not exist in any human language.
Somewhere around the year 500 something happened. We have no idea what, but the result was that all the Overlords either died or fell asleep, and humanity forgot all about them. Consensus reality shifted, and the world as we know it, complete with ten thousand years of history, came into being overnight. And that would be well and good, if it wasn't for that the Overlords had safeguards. They'd made it so that it would take far more than this to entirely erase them from reality. They stayed asleep -- until now. They've begun to wake up, and they want their old reality back. The few Overlords that have so far become active again have started to wage memetic warfare against an unsuspecting humanity, spreading thoughts and concepts that will in time make reality shift back to the original one where we are their slaves forever. Unless someone stops them.
Fortunately for us, a small group of linguists have discovered a basic commonality in all human languages, and how that commonality can be slightly manipulated. They also noted that their manipulations seeemed to make things actually change. At first, they found it absolutely amazing, a fantastic tool to realise paradise on Earth. Then they ran into an Overlord. Most of the original group no longer exist. Indeed, they now have never existed at all. But a couple of them got away, and they're trying to form a resistance. Which is not easy, given how no plans with any chance of success can ever be formulated in any language with roots in the human ur-language the Overlords gave us. So they're recruiting people with strong skills in seriously variant languages. People born deaf, with sign language as their native language. Hardcore trekkies who think in Klingon. Mathematicians more familiar with logic constructs and symbol manipulation than with human speech. That sort of people.
Out of that, they try to build an army to fight what is essentially gods to save humanity from eternal slavery. And that is a horror background.
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