Some sci-fi milieus I've been catching vibes for

In brief: I've been pondering some slightly-deeper-than-skin-deep trends in older sci-fi video games. Sci-fi has a really interesting relation to vidya- on xwitter I saw a mention about how Fantasy dominates (vidya)RPGs (and as we know, also TTRPGs), and someone mentioned Sci-fi dominates film compared to its Fantasy cousin.

I'd also posit that outside RPGs, Sci-fi also dominates video games. Anyway of these, I spotted some interesting Vibes TM that could form the basis for future ideas and inspiration- call it the saturated idea-solution from which game-stuff eventually precipitates/crystalises out of.

Dark Industrial 90s scifi
Examples: Command & Conquer Tiberium saga, Alpha Centauri, Marathon, System Shock, Deux Ex 1, some other niche games but Crusader, Mobile Armoured Division Shogo, maybe Red Faction 2001 comes to mind a bit.

Old cyberpunk-genre adjacent, military parts are distinctly post-Cold War, pre-GWOT. The Tiberium saga of C&C is very clear in this, and especially the first 2. The Yugoslav Wars are one of the main touchpoints for its vibe.

There's a close cousin to this Dark Industrial 90s family, and that's the more futuristic projection. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, to me, is the most clear example of this- also very in conversation with genre sci-fi of its time.

A very distinct trope that flashes into mainstream genre fiction prominence in the 90s (and thus leaves its mark on this Milieu I Made Up) is cloning. The 90s laid the groundwork for that trope to be really big in the 2000s, likely spurred by "oh gosh is it just about to happen?" due to genetic breakthroughs in that decade.

[Answer is interestingly, kind of but not really, like many promising fields. Apart from the post-Reagan pre-Dubya coalescing coalition of christian nuts screeching about sanctity of the soul or whatever, there were also a few high-profile ethical cases- not literally related to cloning (except the south korea case where there was black market purchase of human eggs and voluntrary [??] donation from students working on the paper) but largely regards to fraud. In any case, laws came down hard and smote the field to prevent any real progress anyway. That said, viable embryos are indeed hard to induce.]

Clones (and a post-modern eugenics! i.e. eugenics never shown as good, unlike pre New Wave SF were it was "hmm... maybe...?") were big in comics in this era (prominently off the top of my head, Spidey, X-Men, Superman), prominent in some of the biggest blockbusters (Jurassic Park, Alien Resurrection), partly in Star Wars (before the pr*quels were made- the EU was allowed to have some mentions of clone warlords).

There's a cyberpunk-adjacent aspect to this milieu too- big 1990s style yuppie corpos and the like. The criticism is several steps behind the raw 80s cyberpunk literary scene, but still there.

What it does with that cyberpunk-adjacent lineage that is maybe unique to it is jumping into 1990s conspiracy theory paranoia- always a rich scene to mine ideas from. This cyberpunk and conspiracy vibe aspect is somewhat in common with the next on my list, with one big deviation:

DI90 very commonly is set after a mini apocalypse. Maybe it's post Cold War blue balls or that specific "crime is rampant! society is collapsing!" gloom that was around but urban decay in conjunction with miniature apocalypses is pretty common in this Milieu

What about aliens? Aliens in this Milieu are shadowy, strange, probably locked up in Roswell or in the case of SMAC pretty darn not-human.

AI does show up but it really gets into high gear in the next section, perhaps because, thematically linked to the Internet, it all feels more connected to ideas of social control and surveillance in Spyberpunk. Speaking of surveillance- interestingly, this Dark Industrial vibe is quite pre-digital. Like, on the cusp. CCTVs just aren't that omnipresent.

 

Spyberpunk 2000s
Examples: Perfect Dark (a recent? review on it gave me this millieu name), Deus Ex in general (including Human Revolution), Phantom Liberty, Alpha Protocol, Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere, modern Hitman, D20 modern

A lot of this group is as much play-tropes as it is aesthetic and thematic elements. A more refined "Tech-Noir" aesthetic perhaps.

Honorable mention to Equilibrium, Aeon Flux, Matrix, those three films aren't vidya so they're not directly relevant here but I think, although they are [early 2000s late cyberpunk-early New Dystopia] in vibe they do catch that Super Cool Spy-like Character aspect in overlap with Spyberpunk.

Alpha Protocol is an interesting outlier, newer than the others without being outright descended from the Milieu (new Hitman trilogy captures key play elements but not all, and Phantom Liberty is maybe a sideways convergent evolution... maybe it's different enough idk). It captures a lot of the same play tropes of action mechanics mixed with extremely flexible and open problem solving, with a similar feeling, but it's not the same cyberpunk-adjacent thing as Perfect Dark or Deus Ex or AC3 are. [The background radiation is instead peak of the backlash wave to GWOT, while the others are very "last wave of the 90s occurring in the early 2000s"]

Metal Gear Solid has a lot of overlaps with DI90 and Spyberpunk2K but there's enough distinction- perhaps it's the japanese perspective of its writers? Hate to do the Thing, Japan tendency here but something about them do not capture the exact same feel and attitude.

AI becomes a big thing here, with slightly more realistic comparisons to its capabilities (compared to old SF fare like No Mouth) and what it actually is, while keeping some of its vague magical omnipotent danger (as opposed to the theoretically understandable brainswirl of how stochastic and algorithmic manipulation of modern internet controls and ruins people).

Interestingly, I think no aliens here, firmly earth-rooted.

Finally, aesthetically very 90s Anime OVAs. Good stuff, not slop stuff. 

 

Purple sci-fi space opera 2000s scifi
Examples: Halo, Advent Rising (only putting it here because it might be the only "halo-killer" to actually ape Halo's aesthetic- a bit too much, maybe), all the early "halo-killers" pre-Haze and pre-peak-GWOT-brown-sludge-FPS, Mass Effect 1 (and largely only 1), Homeworld, Master of Orion/Sword of the Stars

I don't have another word other than Purple Sci-Fi. There's A TON of other sci fi games from the early 2000s but a lot share this. Probably pushing new hardware of the day with the X360 and PS3 and modern PCs?

It is purple, shiny, chrome, it is peak Y2K, it is big chunky diegetic UI with meaty select sounds. It is the imagery described in the "I feel like i am the only one who understands Halo CE's art direction" tweet.

These guys are very much space operas through and through- talking humanoid aliens, FTL and shiny spaceships, BIG ASS space battles, a heavy throwback to space opera paperbacks of the 80s and 90s (somewhat...). The Star Wars pr*quels are cousins of this Milieu in some parts. The aesthetic is very 

GWOT influence seeps into the military aspects of this milieu eventually- but due to their 80s and 90s mil-sf & space opera roots, reactionary brainworms ain't exactly new to them.

They also frequently use elements of the standard sci-fi plot pioneered by 80s and 90s space opera novels, but I don't think that's too important.

Space magic is pretty prominent in this Milieu, and quite different in tone, theme and appearance from like 60s paperback SF Psionics. Less a metaphor for the need for communication in the new industrial age growing from the stifling old days, and more Wow Cool Power (also some amount of ancient/mystical romanticism. Phooey!)

NOTE: 

someone smarter than me needs to talk about the 80s and 90s mil SF boom and how it parallels the Tolkienesque Boom [note I say Tolkieneque Boom - Shannara, Dragonlance, Extruded Fantasy Product Slop, culminating in Wheel of Time, which I will say isn't slop per se but well, it's definitely That Milieu]

It's so influential that that novel milieu is the root of THE modern standard sci-fi escapist formula. Note how different it is from the Foundation-Dune and related Dumarest/Terro-Human (i.e. Traveller) milieu. Oh look, the Tolkienesque Boom also created its standard backdrop distinctly different from both Tolkien, the many directions of the New Wave and the old pulp formulas.

(interjection: I cite tvtropes here not cos it's gospel but because A. it does after all track things so common it becomes tropey B. those are handy links for me to point to instead of describing every detail and C. Anecdotal backing-up that those plots are indeed standard: because I myself know that despite a sideways and winding exposure to SF and Fantasy my earliest worldbuilding stuff ALSO resembled those formulas WITHOUT knowing about them beforehand. That's how much the background radiation permeates.)

Both booms had what were essentially highly motivated, big-for-pulp publishers behind them (Baen for Milsf, TOR & Del Rey for EFP. Btw TOR, Del Rey/Ballantine and ACE) with editors with clear ideas on what they wanted their Content Mills to produce, both were a sort of re-Conservatisation of their genres after the New Wave, riding the second-to-last wave of paperback novel churn (to be destroyed eventually by IP properties sucking up the new crop of would-be modern pulp writers and then later by the fragmenting and reconsolidation of the industry under the algorithmic eye), both had huge overlaps in editors as mentioned in the brackets above, both became so big they became the new "old standard" just in time for the cultural fragmentation of the internet age.

Belated Bornktober 2024: Prompt 1 SKELETON//FIRE

Written for 2024's Morktober and Bonktober

From the crypts of the doomed castle: Skeleton
From the smoking plains of the volcanic fields: Fire

Thus spake the Chroniclers:

Through the choking ashfall in the Scorcholt, one can sometimes see a lava-bright flame, white-bright and flicker-fast, moving between the endless sea of tree-corpses. Those who live in the shadow of the Great Volcano avert their eyes, though the glare not be strong- they say it is the Terebarch, the Hallowed Unburnt, and on the nights where the winds howl softly, one can hear another form of howl join the chorus. The Seyigians think them cursed harbingers, while the Heregeot clans see them as grim but hallowed signs of ancestral protection.

The Terebarch haunt the Scorcholt of the Great Volcano, flaming bones animated by unthinking malice for the living. They have an uncanny sense for cowardice, vice and discord, ambush travellers to drag them into the flaming crags of the mountain- to be puppeted again, some say, as the newest of their unholy number.

The most detailed chronicles of the Terebarch comes from the Kingdom of Seyig- they tell of a Three-Armed Lord of Kasfen, Champion of Shrin Mer Fourth-Born of a distant time, whose fortress was built in four days and two nights upon the Maw of Garahin, upon the southern Sunken Slopes of the Great Volcano. Different tales abound in the Kingdom between the House of Mentionables and Wandering Chroniclers of the Goatfish. Some bear the marks of Late Shriner hagiography, and others bear the mark of Virtue instruction.

Some say the Lord Kasfen was a virtuous, loyal, oath-sworn vassal of Shrin Mer Fourth-Born, who raised the fortress to defend Their Dominion from Zyglurg swarms and war-breathing Melitanae-in-Brass; others, that he was a greedy, grasping bandit lord who built the fortress to extract the foul gases (and attendant nanoids) for Shrin Mer Falseborn in exchange for Solar Auguries.

Some claim his soldiers stood with him as the gases ignited in the final assault, but as the Merin blessings defended faithful vassals from the dying in the line of Duty, thus were they consigned to eternal burning, losing all sense and their senses, condemned thus to haunt the slopes of the Great Volcano. Others, that the warriors' faith fled them, and they had abandoned the siege. It was for their cowardice that the ancestral spirits of the Volcano cursed them to wander the volcanic slopes forevermore, to dredge up the unworthy dead so that they would live in agonising infamy for their faithlessness.

Outside Seyig, the Chroniclers of the Heregeot Tribes and Scribes of Kyudix refute the Kasfen origin of the Unburnt- for a vassal of the Circles of Shrin Mer would never be titled Hallowed by the dwellers of the mountain. A common belief is that they are ancestral vengeance spirits arising from the cracked, boiling skin of Mother Magma. A small minority insist that the Unburnt are far more recent than these claims- the result of foul rituals of an exiled Zhadur Alchemiral from the War of the Broken Blades who sought refuge in the Scorcholt. While there is some record of such an Alchemiral, there is little reliable evidence to support this claim.

 

Whatever their genesis, all know they are dangerous. Taking the form of flaming bone-frames, in a variety of endodermic arrangements in the body-types of almost every sapient form on the Great Island. Slipping between the charred tree-corpses of the Scorcholt, their bones click and clank, letting out guttural howls from the inner voids of their empty chests, wreathed in the white-hot flame of volcanic off-gas.

Whatever arms and armour they may once have had are melted, their arms and chests frequently covered in a single fused plate of ferric parzar'ma material. The oldest amongst them wear their 'melts' around their feet, their metal plates dripping down over the years to pool at their feet, leading to speculation that even their metal is cursed- though this does not dissuade scavengers and scraphounds bartering with it and smithing it into armour or trophies.

These elder 'tin-howls' (as called by Elders of the Stanush Redoubt) have completely bleached, brittle bones, so long and hot have they burnt that even the water spirits dwelling in the bones have fled, fusing the crystal hearts of the endodermis, creating brittler, higher-pitched clicking and clacking noises. More concerning to dwellers about the Great Volcano is that these tin-howls appear substantially more malevolent and crafty than their 'bone-charred' counterparts, working in groups, keeping silent. Only sudden rises in temperature can warn one of their approach.

Idle chatter, especially towards outsiders, brings up a most elusive claim- the King of Smoke, a claim that there is a single leader of the Unburnt. He is the subject of many legends- great disasters and miracles are attributed to this figure, which has never been definitively spotted. Rare are the sages that directly claim the King of Smoke is the legendary Lord of Kasfen- leading some sages to the idea that the latter might be a later legend reworked into existing sightings of the Unburnt.

Those who have fallen into their clutches- and not merely scavenged the aftermath of such an encounter- know that all this is idle prattle.

For all that one needs to know is that their teeth-chattering clicks and clacks are all too real
the heat they bring unbearable
and the echoing howls are all too familiar...

Thus writ of matters of combattle and war:

HP                        8
Defence                DR 10    /    12    /    14
Armour                -d4        /    -d2    /    +1
Morale                  10
Attack                   As weapon
NA:

HP    8   Morale    10    Defence    DR 10/12/14    Armour    -D4/-D2/+1    Weapon    D6
Special:      

• Haunters of the Ash: The Terebarch are uncannily silent when on the prowl, only their glow and heat marking their presence- increase chance of surprise by 1-in-6 if precautions are not taken
• To seek the Unworthy: They have an uncanny sense for cowardice, vice and discord- reaction roll -1 for each of the aforementioned behaviours in any party coming across Terebarch.
• Embrace of Garahin: When in melee range, all have 2-in-6 chance of catching fire for d4 ongoing damage.
  
• Aging Malice: Tin-howl Terebarch are more nimble and cunning, despite their lack of armour and brittler bones. Terebarch have higher DR with a matching lower Armour score as shown above.
• Pain Eternal: Dousing the flame can only be done by ice or water powers- the earth and air here only inflame it. Inflaming Terebarch flames will drive them berserk, dealing +2 damage. Dousing the flame calms them for 1 round as they turn catatonic, unable to comprehend the lack of pain.

Tererbarch prowl the Scorcholt, their flaming bones animated by unthinking malice for the living. They have a sense for vice and cowardice, and ambush travellers to bring them into the flaming crags of the mountain- to be puppeted again, some say, as the newest of their unholy number.

 

 

 

Credits: pyroblight by Nost343 as the template for collage, Mork Borg cover art, skeletal Matoran, MNOG Charred Forest, most LEGO parts in the collage sourced from Bricklink's images