AZOTH 2057

[LoA]

AZOTH 2057

A Biopunk Alt. History
Mechanical Engineering is never pursued: This setting assumes a scenario where Great Britain never advanced through steam technology, but rather the ancient and lost predecessor of alchemy is rediscovered that allows for the telepathic/telemorphic manipulation of organisms. Instead of advancing mechanically like in our timeline, the British discovered how to advance biologically and genetically through psionic powers. The mental power that controlled the process of morphing and mentally controlling organisms was called "Azoth" after what alchemists dubbed the purest form of power when all opposing elements converge. The British discovered that "Azoth" was the ancient power that if archeology is correct, came from some alien source, or at least according to what can be transcribed from ancient artifacts and hieroglyphs. The Azoth Serum basically realigns your own genetic code to unlock the mental capacity necessary to manipulate organisms. However not everyone has the potential to manipulate the genetic and organic material of a living thing. Those that did were the most influential scientists and engineers of that generation. Genetically speaking it passed down into future generations and became embedded into the genetic make-up of Britain.

Fast-forward from the 18th -19th centuries into the mid-21st century and now the world looks both radically different, but similar to what we would imagine the year 2057 to look like. Skyscrapers exist, but they are no longer built out of concrete nor built from the efforts of heavy machinery. Rather constructive insects like bees, ants, and termites have been morphed and utilized to build colossal living structures for humans. Trees have also been modified to grow into strong support structures for these super insects to build off of. There are no cars or other road vehicles, but rather there are colossal birds and insects that act as personal transportation, and nautical travel is provided through genetically modified whales.

   This Future Isn't Better/Worse, It's just different
In many ways the future is radically different from contemporary Cyberpunk tropes.

1.   The mega-corporation still exists, but it looks different: The centralization of markets still exists, and naturally some corporations breed better monsters than others, and there have definitely been centralizations of the biotech industries as there are several monopolies that exist within the infrastructure. Still it doesn't look quite like the dystopian vision we have of corporate overlords. For one thing, pretty much everyone has some level of Azoth, otherwise they couldn't function in this world, so it's pretty impossible to "patent" things. Oh you can patent genes, sure, but it's very difficult to prove in a court of law, because more often than not all it takes is to morph a few genes around and boom, new organism. Corporations have had to hire gangs and thugs to keep an eye out for any potential violations of patents. Sometimes they also just have gangs intimidate potential competition, because will "cyberpunk".
2.   Human Rights took nightmarish turns: The fact is that nearly every human being on earth has some connection to Azoth. That didn't come by pretty words and even less pretty actions. Human rights were a joke for centuries. Several races conquered by Europe were used as experimental subjects for Azoth manipulation. Once your genes have been altered to the tune of Azoth, there's no turning back, and you will pass it on more than likely to your offspring. Humans have more or less evolved from what we think of humanity today. Humanity 2.0 is here in a sense, but because of the bloody history of experimentation, racial divides exist today between the average human, and the Divergent races.
3.     The Matrix is replaced by the Mentality: Cybernetics never became a thing in this universe, naturally. Psionics though are a huge deal, and have basically been interlinked into a colossal mind-link. The mind-link is maintained by a giant bio-machines that maintain and transfer collective thoughts to the appropriate subjects. Think of these machines as big fleshy Lovecraft obelisks.
4.     No Pollution, but Ecological stability is questionable: You would think that the ecosystem in this universe would be a hellish thing by now, but surprisingly, the ecosystem is very will maintained, and Azoth is used sparingly in the wild. Early on it became clear to biologists that the ecosystem was a fragile thing, and so efforts were taken early on to make sure that the balance in the ecosystem is maintained. However that doesn't mean that  Naturally fossil fuels never became a thing in this universe either, so pollution on a grand scale never really happened either.

So what do you guys think? I'll be back with more later. This was a writing experiment I did one night, because I wanted to make a futuristic cyberpunk setting, but with a twist.

Aesthetics and Style

The architecture of this world is a strange mixture of semi-alien biomass buildings, and more traditional old fashioned buildings built from stone, brick, and wood if you can afford the luxury. The super structures of this world are built on the backbone of Azoth, but there are more traditional 18th and 19th century architecture that comes from the notion that Architecture could only advance to a point by traditional means without the assistance of mechanical assets. As to what organic architecture looks like, well here are examples of what I'm envisioning.

Please note, none of this is made from steel or other construction material. These are more representative of shapes and forms.

[spoiler=Lots of pictures ahead]













This is on Photobucket

I'll be back with more later. [/spoiler]

As for fashion of this world. When I was thinking of what this world looked like, I imagined a Victorian cyberpunk setting. There was a CLAMP manga called Clover that had a steampunk aesthetic, but it was cyberpunk, and I drew inspiration aesthetically from that.

I apologize for directly posting to Pinterest, but I feel this board capture the feel i'm going for with the fashion in this setting
https://www.pinterest.com/darinshepit/cyberpunkgothvictorian/

[/spoiler]

[sparkletwist]

This is interesting. Here are my thoughts on your four main concepts:

1. The path of divergence you took from the 19th century means that a lot of the nationalist and populist movements of the 20th century might not have happened, or at least not happened in the same way. There could be a direct path from the robber barons of the late 19th century to the cyberpunk megacorporation of the present day.

2. I like this angle. I don't like it when a setting is overly "warm and fuzzy" and realistic social problems can add a lot of depth. That said, I don't think it should dwell too much on 19th century racism, because that may alienate some players in the modern day. One angle I do like is if the Azoth manipulation started along outmoded 19th century ideas about race, but the actual rules the substance itself followed were the rules of human genetics-- the ones that nobody knew at the time-- which meant that things ended up pretty diverse and not actually connected to anyone's skin color or national origins or anything that they would've thought of as "race" at the time. And, of course, it was much too late by the time anyone figured this out.

3. I like this, too. Not to push my own setting too much, but Asura does something similar. It supports the cyberpunk concept of "cyberspace" much better than how we now use computers would, and it also lends more credibility to the classic trope of "you die in the matrix, you die for real," because it's an actual psychic link.

4. I think this is kind of a missed opportunity. In the spirit of the future not being better or worse, just different, there should still be environment concerns, just different ones. The ecosystem isn't likely to suffer the same depredations as it would in our timeline, but I think there would be different problems. Fossil fuel pollution wouldn't happen, but all those "industrial animals" would need a lot of food to eat and produce a lot of waste, so I'd think the agricultural industry would contribute more than its share of environmental disaster. Genetically engineered invasive species could wreak havoc on native plants and animals. Perhaps either intentionally or not, a second sapient species has arisen on Earth, one that may even be smarter than humans on some level; this creates interesting tensions, and kind of occupies the same niche in the fiction as AI.

[Ghostman]

Biological weaponry and it's effects on society, environment & history could be another interesting angle to explore in this setting. The horrors of WW1 trench warfare and the aerial bombing campaigns of WW2 would not happen, but instead there might have been cases of genocide and pandemic outbreaks caused by intensional and/or accidental release of engineered diseases. Also deadly famines caused by bioweapons designed to destroy an enemy's agricultural production. Populations irreversibly mutilated by exposure to substances that warped their genes. Entire countries placed under permanent quarantine due to being overrun by mutant zombie gremlins.

The world might look back on such disasters with remorse, swearing to never repeat those mistakes. Or, the megacorps might all be sitting on stockpiles of potentially world-ending bioweapons, using them as ultimate deterrence against existential threats -- "We'll retaliate against your attacks with our conventional weapons, but if you actually manage to destroy us then as a final act of defiance we'll release the doomsday virus, taking you to hell with us." In a sort of parallel to the nuclear arms tensions during the cold war, the ordinary people could live under perpetual fear of a global apocalyptic event due to a conflict that escalated too far, or an accidental containment failure.

[LoA]

This is interesting. Here are my thoughts on your four main concepts:

1. The path of divergence you took from the 19th century means that a lot of the nationalist and populist movements of the 20th century might not have happened, or at least not happened in the same way. There could be a direct path from the robber barons of the late 19th century to the cyberpunk megacorporation of the present day.

2. I like this angle. I don't like it when a setting is overly "warm and fuzzy" and realistic social problems can add a lot of depth. That said, I don't think it should dwell too much on 19th century racism, because that may alienate some players in the modern day. One angle I do like is if the Azoth manipulation started along outmoded 19th century ideas about race, but the actual rules the substance itself followed were the rules of human genetics-- the ones that nobody knew at the time-- which meant that things ended up pretty diverse and not actually connected to anyone's skin color or national origins or anything that they would've thought of as "race" at the time. And, of course, it was much too late by the time anyone figured this out.

3. I like this, too. Not to push my own setting too much, but Asura does something similar. It supports the cyberpunk concept of "cyberspace" much better than how we now use computers would, and it also lends more credibility to the classic trope of "you die in the matrix, you die for real," because it's an actual psychic link.

4. I think this is kind of a missed opportunity. In the spirit of the future not being better or worse, just different, there should still be environment concerns, just different ones. The ecosystem isn't likely to suffer the same depredations as it would in our timeline, but I think there would be different problems. Fossil fuel pollution wouldn't happen, but all those "industrial animals" would need a lot of food to eat and produce a lot of waste, so I'd think the agricultural industry would contribute more than its share of environmental disaster. Genetically engineered invasive species could wreak havoc on native plants and animals. Perhaps either intentionally or not, a second sapient species has arisen on Earth, one that may even be smarter than humans on some level; this creates interesting tensions, and kind of occupies the same niche in the fiction as AI.

Your point on #4 is very valid, and it's something I need to go back and look at. I had this idea where back in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries there was a huge production of colossal war monsters, but this was back when such things were still in there early stages. Some of these monsters got away, and began to breed in the wild (It's not like Leviathan where it's basically LEGO genetics), and so now there's a huge problem of giant monsters coming and attacking cities. But that will be an important point later on.

#2 is pretty dead on. I apologize for using the term "Race" in this passage ". Several races conquered by Europe were used as experimental subjects for Azoth manipulation..." I know that "race" scientifically speaking doesn't exist, and that were all basically the same organisms. Azoth was used based on unscientific principles, but ironically, in the end it did create "races". Humans exist in all kinds of radical environments, such as under the ocean, in harsh deserts, etc, etc, and they can live comfortably there due to the human alterations that separate them from normal humans (Which really don't exist anymore in a sense).

As for #3 (Spoilers for a certain podcast in the Podcasts thread)
[spoiler]I was inspired by Limetown, and the social ramifications that came about trying to build a mindlink system[/spoiler]

I'll have to do some more research on Robber Barons from the 19th century to see what that would look like, but that is an idea.

Biological weaponry and it's effects on society, environment & history could be another interesting angle to explore in this setting. The horrors of WW1 trench warfare and the aerial bombing campaigns of WW2 would not happen, but instead there might have been cases of genocide and pandemic outbreaks caused by intensional and/or accidental release of engineered diseases. Also deadly famines caused by bioweapons designed to destroy an enemy's agricultural production. Populations irreversibly mutilated by exposure to substances that warped their genes. Entire countries placed under permanent quarantine due to being overrun by mutant zombie gremlins.

The world might look back on such disasters with remorse, swearing to never repeat those mistakes. Or, the megacorps might all be sitting on stockpiles of potentially world-ending bioweapons, using them as ultimate deterrence against existential threats -- "We'll retaliate against your attacks with our conventional weapons, but if you actually manage to destroy us then as a final act of defiance we'll release the doomsday virus, taking you to hell with us." In a sort of parallel to the nuclear arms tensions during the cold war, the ordinary people could live under perpetual fear of a global apocalyptic event due to a conflict that escalated too far, or an accidental containment failure.

That's a really good idea. There are several cases of artificial famine leading to the deaths of millions. I have to be honest, I don't care for the "Super-virus will kill us all" trope. I can see where the militarized logic comes from, but practicality wise, I could see it becoming very messy and just more worth while producing better monsters. I think that there would be an escalation of people creating viruses, the opponents taking those viruses, manipulating them with Azoth to be even worse, and throwing it right back in there faces. I can imagine that there have been careful measures taken to make sure that artificial diseases never get created or released into the general populace. There could be entire sectors of government agencies devoted to protecting the populace from Azoth disasters. Although a Biological Cold War is a pretty cool idea as well, I envisioned more Kaiju Bioweapons than viral weapons.

[sparkletwist]

I was thinking some more about what sort of place technology (or the sort of bioengineered organisms that fill its role) would have in this world, and it occurred to me that there would have to be a pretty extensive effort to be able to engineer various organic "components" to serve as the primary means of providing modern life, which would be rather similar to technology. Having distinct creatures providing every modern service, sort of like the Flintstones, would actually not work very well due to the large number of practical and ethical problems that would entail-- What do you feed them? What do you do with their waste? If they 'break' does that mean they're suffering? There's also the idea that most biological entities are designed to run constantly and if they're shut down, that's called "being dead" and they can't really be restored from that-- which is different than how a lot of technological devices work. Some of that would no doubt result in a cultural shift, but I still think that people would want "biological machines" that could remain dormant for long periods, didn't poop, and they didn't have to worry about the ethical ramifications of discarding an obsolete or broken one.

[LoA]

I apologize, Sparkletwist for not responding sooner. I was working on a write up to add to the first post, and what you said is a very valuable contribution.

I was thinking some more about what sort of place technology (or the sort of bioengineered organisms that fill its role) would have in this world, and it occurred to me that there would have to be a pretty extensive effort to be able to engineer various organic "components" to serve as the primary means of providing modern life, which would be rather similar to technology. Having distinct creatures providing every modern service, sort of like the Flintstones, would actually not work very well due to the large number of practical and ethical problems that would entail-- What do you feed them? What do you do with their waste? If they 'break' does that mean they're suffering? There's also the idea that most biological entities are designed to run constantly and if they're shut down, that's called "being dead" and they can't really be restored from that-- which is different than how a lot of technological devices work. Some of that would no doubt result in a cultural shift, but I still think that people would want "biological machines" that could remain dormant for long periods, didn't poop, and they didn't have to worry about the ethical ramifications of discarding an obsolete or broken one.

I'm going to do a breakdown of the various types and classes of Azoth technology, and how they work pretty soon. But I'll address a couple of your issues.

Not all of the organisms that this world utilizes are Fauna, and in fact a vast majority of it has actually come from Flora. Basically most of the "electronic" technology as organisms is more inline with heavily mutated plants and fungus. The flesh Obelisks I mentioned earlier are big masses of organic tissue with the outer layers being defensive tissue, but the inside is nerve tissue that connects with the minds of anyone connected to Azoth. But it's not any more or less "sentient" than any plant  or mushroom.

An interesting idea I had was a personal device like plant that's basically an Ipod (pun intended I regret nothing) that has tentacle like roots that can replant itself in soil whenever it's taken out of the pot. Basically it has to earbud like well buds growing on stringy vines that can be plugged into the ears, and then the plant connects to the Azoth, and pulls music (copyright is something I'm thinking through) and plays it in your ears. So yeah most electronic creatures run on photosynthesis is what I'm trying to say.