Musical Inspiration Challenge 2! Part 7. The theme of the ‘dungeon.’

Dr. Slumber's Eternity Home by Arjen Lucassen.

I admit. In the last section, I read ahead a bit. Spotting this is what game me the idea for the old folks home, but the more I lulled it over the more I liked it.

In any case. Arjen Lucassen is the guy behind the band Ayreon, which I rather like, but in this case he put out an album, a one shot concept album about a fellow waking up in the far future and having to deal with the strange changes to society that had happened.

Onto the lyrics.. oh, and the dialogue section at the beginning is from Rutger Hauer in the part of ‘Dr. Voight-Kamph.’

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"Lifespan Wackso-Hackso-Corporation has fresh applications for psychological hickups. People now choose more drastics than ever before. Time has lost too much money. Geography changes on the scale of Richter ... Ageless, pointless, aimless, hopeless? Oh ... must leave space for sponsors. No appointments necessary, the doctor is in."

All bets are off, the game is over
Your hand's been played now
Rien ne va plus
You've had enough
Time to leave your cares behind
Leave it to us
We're ready for you

You've reached the end
The final closure
Nothing to plan or worry about
Round up your friends
Time has come to say goodbye
You're coming in
You're checking out

At Dr Slumber's Eternity Home
No, you don't have to go alone
At Dr Slumber's Eternity Home
There'll be no pain
You won't complain
Never again

Our expert team is here
To serve you
Once you arrive
You're here to stay
Sleep your last sleep.
Time to answer your last call
We're overcrowded anyway

At Dr Slumber's Eternity Home
No, you don't have to go alone
At Dr Slumber's Eternity Home
There'll be no pain
You won't complain
Never again

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It’s a song about assisted suicide being foisted on people on the basis of them being hopeless and considered to be taking up too much space.

Pretty grim crap, set to an upbeat tune.  It also contrasts nicely against our prior themes of pushing against, resisting and overcoming despite our shortcomings. The dungeon stands in opposition to the main theme of the adventure, and that’s a good thing.

As a dungeon, this immediately shouts out the idea of an old folks home, or sanatorium, where the doctors have chosen a drastic and terrible path. However, coupled with our earlier inspirations, something more drastic and more vile starts to come into focus. We’d probably need to make it a bit more of the Magic-As-Technology era of D&D, because sanitariums in the actual middle ages were straw covered prisons or monasteries.

The place exists to destroy hope. To make one feels worthless, so they fall into despair. And our foe comes into sharper focus now that we see the dungeon. A fiend, perhaps an actual one, who with truly diabolical intent is trying to break down heroes, maestros and people who were once great into pits of despair, before finally destroying them.

It fits an urban situation, or a situation just outside of one. And allows us social and combat options for breaking in. After all, the party has to find out about the place and then find a way in.

And hospitals can be creepy.

Hell, we could even add another reason to ‘why should the players care?’ Maybe they got committed to this hellhole?

Musical Inspiration Challenge: Part 13: The Final Complication

 The First Man on Earth by Ayreon.

Well, that’s definitely a complication. Holy shit.

Well, the lyrics..

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In fields of green, vast as the oceans
Is this a dream, is it evermore?
A million years, fast as a notion
I stand alone here on the silent shore

I'm after prey in the fields
Shelter in a cave from the cold and lonely nights
And now it all seems so real
Warming at the fireside beneath the pale moonlight

This is the dawn of time
I am the first to stand
Looking through the eyes of the primal man
This is the dawn of time
Witnessing the birth
I am the first man on earth

The skies of blue reach to the heavens
They go on and on forevermore
No avenues, no city sidewalks
Planet Mars is but ancient lore

This place has all that I need
No computers glowing screens, no industrial machines
Somehow it all seems surreal
Memories of days gone by, a slowly fading scene

No one here to blame me
No one here to hurt
So much space here to occupy my mind
I can breathe the breath of virgin land

The firefly at nighttime
The sounds of nothing known
And I belong here like I never have before
The wandering child returning home

When twilight falls, red is the sunset
Planets appear across the colored sky
No prison walls, no war, no bloodshed
Hard to believe this new world will die

I wish that I could stay for a while
In the dream world that the sequencer creates
And though it all seems so real
Now I fear the time is gone, I feel its heavy weight

Hold on to this moment in time
Savor a life how it used to be
Hold on to the world in its prime
Breathe in the air, feel the energy

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This one requires unpacking. See, this song is part of a larger metal rock-opera composed by Ayreon. You might remember I mentioned more of that in the earlier post about the other Ayreon song that my iPod “randomly” selected out of two thousand other options.  

In this case, a fellow is reliving past lives and discovers that he was the first man on earth. Currently though, the poor schlub is slowly asphyxiating in a tube on a decrepit Martian colony, following an apocalyptic war (he’s also the last man alive, you see).

Now I’ve never been a fan of Ayreon’s seeming love affair with Rousseau or the ‘bucolic ideal,’ but I can still like the music in general.

However, this represents a complication. And in that, it serves wonderfully. It complicates the living hell out of the nice, tight narrative I’ve been developing. And this, you see, is why I put this one at the end. It forces me to have to adjust, perhaps disastrously so, to the new required change.

As I stated, this complication’s function though is: “This is the one for oddities and weirdness encountered on the adventure.”

Certain adventure locales have histories and elements to them that exist for revisiting, or to allow the PCs to acknowledge a larger history of the world that surrounds them. For Pathfinder, this is usually the Aztlanti, and the aboleth. Those two forces hang high in the meta history of the core Pathfinder setting.

So what if our pirate ruin contains some ancient archives down in the flooded, treasure filled tunnels, since repurposed by buccaneers and hellknights, that harkens to an ancient set of runes or tales, stone tablets, which if observed and taken to the right person can open up new vistas for exploration, or dread.

Alternatively, the party may have discovered an ancient tunnel below the structure, and contained within a primitive man in odd dress that seems strangely out of place with the technologically advanced container he's in. A man out of time, who wants to restore the world that he's lost.

Its weak, but I like the idea of our complication forming a leaping off point. If I do this again, I might just rename this category the leaping off point.

Next in this series, I’ll try to summarize our adventure outline.

Musical Inspiration Challenge Part 5: The Aim of the Conflict

For the aim of the conflict, my randomizer grabbed ‘Computer Eyes’ by Ayreon.

Ayreon is the name for a collaborative project of metal artists organized by Arjen Lucassen. Arjen’s like the metal version of Alan Parson’s in that he collaborates with really talented people on numerous themed and interesting projects. Ayreon is primarily a collection of interweaved rock-operas. Actual Fantasy, the album this song comes from, stands out because it has no real connection to the rest of the ‘canon’ storyline in Ayreon.

I was concerned about this one because it’s obviously got a sci-fi bent, and therefore starts dragging us in that direction. Sci-fi has always had a good place with fantasy and RPGs. The old school stuff had no problem with dragons and sorcery being put aside mutants, the a-bomb and laser cannons. If you want an idea about what old school D&D was like, look up the old Hannah-Barbara cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian sometime.

However, I was initially concerned that Computer Eyes might drag us too far into the stratosphere.

Still, let’s look at our lyrics.

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Lost in a world created by Man
I can't recall how it all began
Tell me who am I?

Fictional stars in lost Galaxies
Synthetic dreams and false Memories
Is it all a lie?

There is no escape
There is no way out of here
I'm locked in this universe
The real world will disappear
Where fantasy dies
You will see our dreams
Material lies
Materialize
Computer eyes
Computerize

Virtual reality - computer Override
Actual fantasy locked away Inside
Am I no more than a Program
An artificial dream
A river of electrons flowing With the stream
A parallel dimension battle Simulations
Mind over matter brain Stimulation
I don't know if I exist I think Therefore I am
Without emotions I'm but a Hologram
There's no escape I'm locked In this universe
Where fantasy dies material Lies
Computer eyes

There is no escape
There is no way out of here
I'm locked in this universe
The real world will disappear
Where fantasy dies
You will see our dreams
Material lies
Materialize
Computer eyes
Computerize

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Definitely a sci-fi bent, but there’s something more. To me, at least, it seems the song has a sort of existential dread about it. The idea of being trapped inside of a fictional universe, something defined by someone else, an arbitrary and confusing existence.

The idea that your actions, your dreams, your memories are ‘synthetic’ and lies created to enable the dreams of someone else are a fear that shows up in a wide variety of places.

In a way, the song can allow for an almost Platonic style to the nature of our conflict. Basing this on our earlier developments, perhaps our antagonist desires their previous world so forcefully, that they begin to enforce it on those who they can put their power over?

Imagine an entire village being gas-lit into believing that they are different people?

A hellknight, who uses the capabilities available to her as the head of a legion to recreate a society for herself, not just any society but her own. “For every man, his youth was Arcadia,” after all.  And so our antagonist is driven by nostalgia to force the people at sword or knife point into capitulating, forcing them to perhaps change their own identities and names, making them believe they are new people through memory modification magic or the threat of death.

And into this stumbles our heroes. A nice village, everything seems happy, but some stuff doesn’t add up, and people seem to be sad behind their bright smiles.

I kind of like that idea. Although, I might see something else, as this all plays out.