The E.N.D.
Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 6:53 pmIt's 1981 and the cold war's at its highest.
The year 2000 is as far into the future as most people even dare to imagine, and only the most optimistic seriously believe the World won't be burned to a cinder by nuclear fire before then.
Well, that's not entirely true. A secret intelligence organization known (to the few who know of it) as The Extra-Normal Division (or The E.N.D. for short) is aware of the true danger to mankind: The Tiny Masters.
The Tiny Masters are an alien species that's secretly invaded Earth. They look much like cockroaches and are about as resilient. Their brains are very tiny and individually, they're pretty stupid. But they can form hive-minds by communicating with other tiny masters within range and pool their tiny intellects.
And they'd live happily on Earth and not bother anyone if it weren't for one thing: radios. The Tiny Masters communicate via radio waves and the signals sent out by the humans to broadcast news, sports, entertainment and disco disrupts their communications.
So the humans must go or at least be reduced to a level of technology where they're no longer able to build radios.
And the humans just happen to be busy building the perfect tools for mass extermination. And the Tiny Masters, who're very good at manipulating other sentients, are doing their very best to encourage the humans to wipe themselves out.
If The E.N.D. can't stop them, they'll probably succeed.
Okay, that takes care of the historical period.
One of the words I've picked is Entomology (obviously). I'm still mulling over the others. Invincible seems like a pretty obvious choice too, but I'm unsure of which of Wine, Accuser and Companion to attempt to work into it.
I don't have any ideas either, at this stage, about which rules limitation to go with. I've been thinking about not having chargen and letting all agents of The E.N.D. be famous people who're supposedly dead in 1981 but have actually faked their own deaths when they somehow learned about the Tiny Masters and the Tiny Masters learned of them. Players would simply choose to play Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Charlie Parker, Elvis, Billie Holliday... whomever. But I fear this might just push the whole concept too far into the realm of the absurd.
The year 2000 is as far into the future as most people even dare to imagine, and only the most optimistic seriously believe the World won't be burned to a cinder by nuclear fire before then.
Well, that's not entirely true. A secret intelligence organization known (to the few who know of it) as The Extra-Normal Division (or The E.N.D. for short) is aware of the true danger to mankind: The Tiny Masters.
The Tiny Masters are an alien species that's secretly invaded Earth. They look much like cockroaches and are about as resilient. Their brains are very tiny and individually, they're pretty stupid. But they can form hive-minds by communicating with other tiny masters within range and pool their tiny intellects.
And they'd live happily on Earth and not bother anyone if it weren't for one thing: radios. The Tiny Masters communicate via radio waves and the signals sent out by the humans to broadcast news, sports, entertainment and disco disrupts their communications.
So the humans must go or at least be reduced to a level of technology where they're no longer able to build radios.
And the humans just happen to be busy building the perfect tools for mass extermination. And the Tiny Masters, who're very good at manipulating other sentients, are doing their very best to encourage the humans to wipe themselves out.
If The E.N.D. can't stop them, they'll probably succeed.
Okay, that takes care of the historical period.
One of the words I've picked is Entomology (obviously). I'm still mulling over the others. Invincible seems like a pretty obvious choice too, but I'm unsure of which of Wine, Accuser and Companion to attempt to work into it.
I don't have any ideas either, at this stage, about which rules limitation to go with. I've been thinking about not having chargen and letting all agents of The E.N.D. be famous people who're supposedly dead in 1981 but have actually faked their own deaths when they somehow learned about the Tiny Masters and the Tiny Masters learned of them. Players would simply choose to play Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Charlie Parker, Elvis, Billie Holliday... whomever. But I fear this might just push the whole concept too far into the realm of the absurd.