Lovecrafting Atlantis.

[HoneyBadger]

(A trubutary of Poopsi's excellent "Lovecrafting Pangaea" mod/thread, created with his consent.)

To anyone who's ever read "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"-and there has to be a few, I know we have some Lovecraft fans here, including the Devs-it ought to be pretty obvious that Atlantis is based on the Deep Ones. And yet, there's very little of Lovecraft's influence on the nation itself, other than the "Innsmouth Look". The most noticable element is their access to the 'Dagon' Pretender-but they gain few national spells, if any, other than 'Monster Fish'.

That's a shame, because although R'lyeh is probably the most "Lovecraftian" of all the nations in the game, they're also based in large part on Mind Flayers. Aboleths, although extremely "C'thulian" in flavor, are again, a product of Dungeons and Dragons. Some claim could be made for Agartha, or Pangaea (obvious to anyone who read Poopsi's thread) being "C'thulhu Mythos" related, but any such flavor is clearly heavily mixed with real world myths which have been around for thousands of years.

Atlantis-of all the nations in the game-is the most pure, unadulterated, Mythos-based nation. Yes, there's a mythical Atlantis, and there are other influences, but they serve more to illuminate the "Lovecraft connection", rather than to disguise or dilute it. Dominions style Atlantis has the look, it has the weirdness, the evil nature and otherworldliness, even the sense of the unknown and unknowable.

They've even got Lovecraft's geography down-moving from the depths of the ocean, to jungle blood cults, to Antarctica/Alaska. If New England ever existed on a Dominions map, you can be sure it bordered on Atlantis's home province.

I realize that some of you don't care for the Lovecraftian themes running through the game already, and would just as soon they were taken out, but setting aside any personal feelings about the "purity of the game" that might get in the way, this could be a lot of fun. Lovecraft may not be everyone's cup of tea, and may not have a place among the hallowed halls of mythology-as-fact, and I understand that, but there's a lot that can be taken from his imagination and ideas and harnessed to fuel our *own* imaginations and ideas.

I don't know about you, but I like ghost stories, and horror stories, and weird/frightening things in general, and this is a chance for us to add a little bit more creepiness, a little bit more interdimensional horror, a little bit more darkness and despair and gibbering/giggling formlessless and general madness to a set of nations that-while already very interesting and well done-are intriguing enough to want more, and weirder, options, to better enjoy playing them.

If you have any constructive thoughts or ideas, please feel free to post them here.

EDIT: PLEASE READ! Any ideas contributed here, with the exception of the first two posts, since they were posted before this statement was made, will be free to use/modify/use in part/etc. for any interested parties, unless the contributor explicitely requests that they not be. So please, if you post an idea, let us know that you want to use it yourself, or it will become community property.

If somebody takes an idea from this thread, however, please give credit for it where credit is due. Thank you!

Also, you're welcome to post any ideas you want, but ideally-for the purpose of this thread-they'll be ideas that modders can use without the involvement of the Devs-sorry if I didn't make this clear before. Thanks again!

[Swan]

I'm not a lovercraftian expert, but pc games Kabuto wasnt based on Lovercraft?
maybe you can take ideas from it.
Also pc games berserk online had a card based on c'thulhu, a tentacolar faced thing with wood-like armor

[Poopsi]

They've even got Lovecraft's geography down-moving from the depths of the ocean, to jungle blood cults

(That´s why I love Late Age Mictlan )

In that regard, I had this idea, not so much for Atlantis (althrough it could do) as for LA Mictlan. In Shadow over Innsmouth, the Marsh family (and before them, the island natives) had gotten wealthy because the Deep Ones gave them gold in exchange for sacrifices. I was thinking that Mictlan could have a blood&water spell, which would increase revenues in coastal provinces, but increasing the death scales as well.

I also had an idea for an Awake Tiamat spell for Atlantis. In the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth, Tiamat is the serpent goddess of the sea and primordial chaos.

From wikipedia

In the myth, the god Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Apsu, upset with the chaos they created, was planning to murder the younger gods; and so slew him. This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned monsters to battle the gods in order to avenge Apsu's death. These were her own offspring: giant sea serpents, storm demons, fish-men, scorpion-men and many others. Tiamat possessed the Tablets of Destiny, and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the god she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host. The Gods gathered in terror, but Anu, (replaced later, first by Enlil and, in the late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon, by Marduk, the son of Ea), first extracting a promise that he would be revered as "king of the gods", overcame her, armed with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear.

(bolded for relevance).

I was thinking of an Awake Tiamat spell, somewhat akin to the Illwinter spell. It would cause tidal waves in all coastal provinces at random, and spawn attacks by storm demons and scorpion men. The wording would be something around these lines

Awake Tiamat

This spell tries to rouse Tiamat, the ancient Serpent of Chaos and the Sea, from her eternal slumber. Even before the world came to be, Tiamat existed, and at first all creation was an eternal raging sea. However, the first Pantokrator defeated and binded her, creating the vault of Heaven and Earth. Legend says that the first Atlantians spawned from the blood shed by Tiamat during the struggle. By casting this spell the Pretender tries to arouse the ancient goddess from her slumber. Her actual awakening takes a long time, but even her stirrings will lead to massive tidal waves wrecking coastal provinces, and storm demons will writhe around the skies as harbingers of destruction.

[HoneyBadger]

"In that regard, I had this idea, not so much for Atlantis (althrough it could do) as for LA Mictlan. In Shadow over Innsmouth, the Marsh family (and before them, the island natives) had gotten wealthy because the Deep Ones gave them gold in exchange for sacrifices. I was thinking that Mictlan could have a blood&water spell, which would increase revenues in coastal provinces, but increasing the death scales as well.

I also had an idea for an Awake Tiamat spell for Atlantis. In the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth, Tiamat is the serpent goddess of the sea and primordial chaos.

From wikipedia

"In the myth, the god Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Apsu, upset with the chaos they created, was planning to murder the younger gods; and so slew him. This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned monsters to battle the gods in order to avenge Apsu's death. These were her own offspring: giant sea serpents, storm demons, fish-men, scorpion-men and many others. Tiamat possessed the Tablets of Destiny, and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the god she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host. The Gods gathered in terror, but Anu, (replaced later, first by Enlil and, in the late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon, by Marduk, the son of Ea), first extracting a promise that he would be revered as "king of the gods", overcame her, armed with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear."

(bolded for relevance).

I was thinking of an Awake Tiamat spell, somewhat akin to the Illwinter spell. It would cause tidal waves in all coastal provinces at random, and spawn attacks by storm demons and scorpion men. The wording would be something around these lines

Awake Tiamat

This spell tries to rouse Tiamat, the ancient Serpent of Chaos and the Sea, from her eternal slumber. Even before the world came to be, Tiamat existed, and at first all creation was an eternal raging sea. However, the first Pantokrator defeated and binded her, creating the vault of Heaven and Earth. Legend says that the first Atlantians spawned from the blood shed by Tiamat during the struggle. By casting this spell the Pretender tries to arouse the ancient goddess from her slumber. Her actual awakening takes a long time, but even her stirrings will lead to massive tidal waves wrecking coastal provinces, and storm demons will writhe around the skies as harbingers of destruction."


These are both good ideas, Poopsi, but they're not moddable, unfortunately. Hopefully the Devs will take a look at them-I'd love to see Tiamat in the game-but I'm more concerned with things that can be added in by any interested parties. Not me, by the way, because I have enough on my plate, but for anybody with a little time on their hands, and an interest in the 'Cthulhu' Mythos, who's also interested in adding to the community mods. If a person who's new to modding wanted to do it as an educational tool, for example, that would be ideal.

[Poopsi]

I havent looked into it (there was a spell effect list somewhere, but I cant find it), but I thought that it might be possible, as they would sort of emulate the effects of riches from beneath and Illwinter.

However, my own attempts at spell modding have ended up working badly. My Pangaea "Carrion Festival" spell still doesn´t work (It spawns a lot of carrion which doesnt move due to lack of undead leadership. And manneads fail to show up )

An alternative to the Riches from the Sea spell would be making it a summoning spell, and have it add an unmovable unit which increases productivity, but also death (and maybe unrest?) That´s a fairly straightfoward mod and doable without too much trouble.

In general, I think that the right path in doability is stick to special terrain units and regular summons. (unless someone knows how to make remotesummon spawn different units? or even add multiple effects to one spell?)

[HoneyBadger]

Does the spell work if you have an undead leader already in the province?

I think right now we're limited to 1 type of unit at a time. The best work-around that I've found, in terms of what we can actually do with the mod commands as they presently exist-is to have one creature which spawns another type of creature, which in turn spawns a third type, and so on ad infinium. The problem with this ofcourse is exponentiality.

[Poopsi]

with undead commanders it should work, but the idea was to make it on the lines of Pale Riders.

Making it a unit that, like the balrog, starts with some units in the battlefield, could work (assuming this is doable). Say, make it spawn four mannead-like units, with undead command, which start with some mandragora-like creatures as spawn...

[Poopsi]

actually, scratch that: make it a few mandragora leaders with death 2, able to spam raise dead, and surrounded by a swarm of manneads at the beggining of the fight.

[Poopsi]

PD: according to
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...=Stygian+paths

no apparent reason why my spell fails? there should have been an undead commander by default.