THE DAWN REALM: Further thoughts on psychedelia and animism

The recent Cthulhu Dark post served as a reminder of the long, long to do list that Pariah created. It also revived my interest in the structure of player-character-world interface through the prism of psychedelia.  Given the obtuse twists and turns of both a) the aforementioned post and b) the preceding sentence I have set myself the task of keeping the prose clean, clear and concise….

…but first, my friends, a scruffy, ill-thought-out felt-pen sketch of how psychedelics can transform hexes... drawn and written so it is indecipherable.

The Draft Concept

My intention with this post is to begin sketching the in-game effects of ingesting psychedelics and  to establish a precedent or model of procedures that can be applied to old-school games. The intention is not to simulate an authentic psychedelic experience. However, part of this re-design is to draw more strongly on my personal experiences with psychedelics to create a more interesting and immersive play experience.

As I attempt to formulate some bridge between the in-world concepts at work an the ludic devices that best express them, it strikes me that the best way to express the ideas is to describe how I see this working as a play experience. This will flit between character and player perspectives.

The Decision

The player/character has decided to venture into the Dawn Realm: this might out of PC curiosity, or it might be driven by an in-world reason (seeking knowledge, removing a curse, locating an entity, communicating with a spirit etc.).

Dawn is accessed through the character ingesting an entheogen or partaking an in-game ritual. For the purposes of this exploration we will imagine a pariah, Rides-the-Grave has prepared a soup using multiple giant mushrooms and has ingested all of it. He is inside a large tent he usually shares with other pariahs, who are currently away hunting. A small fire burns and he is surrounded by the emagre possessions he has collected during his time in exile.

Rides has  The GM explains Rides' initial discomfort, but there are no other immediate effects: the GM will check in each turn to update the player on the effects of the mushrooms and to ascertain what the player wishes to do. 

Dawn Mushroom by Abigail Lingford; from PARIAH volume 1

The second turn

After ten minutes... nothing has happened/changed. Maybe the pariah's stomach has settled? This acts as an incentive for the pariah to take... more...

On this occasion, the player decides not to prepare any more magic mushroom soup and alleviates character boredom by carrying out a crafting activity: let's say they want to experiment with bamboo arrows, and settle down with some nice flint tools to start making them.

The third turn-emergence

GM describes how much progress Rides has made with their arrow making (let's say they've managed to cut a few lengths of bamboo into multiple proto-arrows) and Rides is now thinking about how best to straighten out the natural kinks... when his attention becomes completely absorbed by the intricacies of the bamboo. The GM describes how instinctively he comes to recognise that this was an appendage of a living thing: it was once part of an organism that experience a storied life replete with challenges, setbacks and triumphs.

This is a prompt to the player (if they haven't experienced this before) that they might be granted the opportunity to interact with other living beings in a manner not open to their character previously. As a further nudge, the player is alerted to a small beetle scurrying across the floor, which stops and seems to stare at Rides. Rides reaches a hand down and the beetle crawls upon it: they regard one another for a moment. Rides' player states that the two of them leave the tent. Rides is holding a small flint cutting tool in his right hand, and an iridescent beetle sits upon his left.

 

Fourth turn

Having abandoned the arrow cutting, the GM describes the outside world. The pariah camp is in a large jungle clearing, with two further tents pitched facing a large fire pit, still smouldering from the night before. This reminds the player that they left the fire burning in Rides' tent, they go back and put it out.

As they do so, the GM explains to the player how slow and heavy Rides is feeling, and the immense effort it seems to take for Rides to put out the fire and then go back outside again: when they do so, the bright light from the sun is momentarily dazzling, and their vision does not really fully adjust.

The GM describes how the forest fringing the camp's periphery is vibrating- or perhaps more precisely, breathing. The tree trunks seem to sell up and then deflate, as vines and foliage twist and writhe. Rides places a hand upon one of the trunks, and the GM alerts the player to the sensations Rides experiences.

Most notably, layers and layers of sound, sensed through the medium of touch: he can hear the tree and the million or other creatures inhabiting it talking to one another. The player has Rides focus on the tree itself, and learns a little about its age (not that old by tree standards) its fears (the forest whispers of the unchecked growth of the city state to the south) and hopes (that its myriad children will emerge from the earth and feast on its corpse at the end of a long and glorious life.

Fifth turn—threshold

The visual effects intensify: trailbacks, fractal geometry, distortion... as Rides begins to feel increasingly heavy. The GM describes the difficulty Rides is experiencing in keeping his eyes open: not for tiredness, but the sheer sensory overload as sounds and colours intertwine with one another. Rides' player is presented with a choice: attempt to stay standing and navigate the world of the Here & Now through this distorted lens... or embrace the inevitable, find somewhere safe and leave the Here & Now behind.

Rides asks the beetle—still perched on his hand—what to do:

"I think you should just go with it, what's the worst that can happen?"

The player acquiesces, and elects for Rides to slump at the foot of the tree rather than stagger to the tent. Closing his eyes, Rides experiences an interior landscape similar to the one before him externally, yet somehow more coherent. it's as though the peculiar visual distortions have coalesced into something entire, not one at odds with an exterior reality. The jungle has grown immensely high. The foliage shimmers in a  range of iridescent colours,  the call of wild animals emerge as distortions in the magenta sky above the towering treetops. 

Rides is able to bring his attention to bear on myriad elements within this landscape and interact with them, as though he were a disembodied spirit: what's that tree thinking? How does the sky taste? What's happening beneath the ground? He feels the presence of the beetle alongside him, a glowing orb acting as both interlocutor and interpreter as he navigates the animist landscape.

Dawn Realm by Jef Cox

Sixth turn—immersion

So far Rides has experienced this world as a human would: he's seen the individual parts and approached them as separate entities. But consciousness (in this realm, at least) is a two-way street: and the environment is becoming aware of him.

Pariah pre-supposes the existence of "hex-level" spirits known as Genius Loci embodying the environments the pariahs explore. As Rides approaches an hour since ingesting a ridiculous quantity of mushrooms, it is this spirit that is now aware of his presence.

Rides witnesses the gentle collapse of his constructed landscape into a singular point. The GM again presents the player with 3 options: 

1. embrace his own dissolution and become one with the genius loci
2. flee from this collapsing reality and enter another one. 
3. attempt to halt the disintegration of the immediate environment through will power alone and continue to explore the "threshold" level

Options 2 & 3 represent some degree of "resisting" the current or trajectory of the experience, and this is perhaps the route that requires some kind of test or mechanic (like a save, skill check or ability test etc.). "Failure" of such a check could also be bypassed by making a sacrifice of some kind, for instance: 

The player believes Rides would fear apparent annihilation, and would respond by attempting to flee the collapsing reality. The GM decides opposed dice would be the fairest way to settle this, with the player's die representing Rides' will power or experience in psychedelic realms, and the GM's die representing the intensity of the trip. The GM rolls a D12: Rides ingested a ridiculous quantity of mushrooms, there's no denying the trip's potency! Rides' player argues that as they're playing a skill-based game the die he rolls should correspond to his "entheogen" skill (die D8).

The GM agrees but wins the roll: however, they give Rides the opportunity to receive some kind of bane in return for having the roll go his way. The player weighs that option up, instead accepting Rides' obliteration by the Genius Loci.

7th turn—dissolution

Rides disincorporates along with the rest of the landscape, which then reassembles itself in the form of the Genius Loci: an emerald jaguar. Initially Rides feels himself to feel as though he is the jaguar... but then...

This moment presents the GM with an opportunity to drop-in the other players. An issue that arises out of these psychedelic trips is that they can be intensely focused on one character, which can be boring for the other players (if there are any). One method to navigate that is to drop the characters into a shared experience through a collective ritual. The alternative (which I'm positing here) is that as the trip intensifies the character's ego fragments into different aspects of the character, picked up.

In this imaginary scenario, let's consider two further players whose characters are currently elsewhere. So collectively, all three players will represent differing aspects of Rides' character. three splits proposed:

• id, ego, superego
• mind, body, spirit
• Dorian, Henry, Basil (Superhans, Jeremy, Mark)

The party settle for mind, body & spirit, but divided along the six attributes (Player 1 is Rides' con & str, player 2 his dex & int, player 3 his wis &cha). This is mainly because they can't think of how to embody the other two options.

So these three aspects are riding a giant emerald jaguar through an infinite azure sea: within the crystalline fur of the spirit they encounter the beetle spirit (now a floating orb) and other entities: the additional characters allow multiple interactions to occur simultaneously. One player interrogates the genius, another speaks to the beetle and a third scans the horizons to see the respective embodiments of neighbouring territories.

Because Rides has ingested a ridiculous dose of mushrooms, however, this experience already begins to collapse in on itself: the eyes of the jaguar glaze over and begins a rapid ascent into higher planes. The players discuss what they think they should do: one raises the notion that since this is an embodiment of the territory's spirit, they can use this experience to "explore" neighbouring territories remotely. One of the players suggests they take a closer look at the city that the tree spirit mentioned earlier. The player who was investigating the other spirts on the horizon describes having witnessed a great elephant, tethered by man-made ropes and vines. Collectively they decide to leap free of the emerald jaguar and investigate the tethered elephant.

As before, the GM decides this is an opposed roll scenario as a player describes rapidly knotting together emerald jaguar hair and launching it towards the elephant spirit. The roll fails, and again the decision to make a sacrifice in order to avoid that failure is presented, though the decision must rest ultimately with Rides' player. The player concedes and his character will incur some form of bane following the conclusion of this trip: however, right now, the triple aspects of Rides' disembodied spirit have leapt successfully from an emerald jaguar on to the back of a tethered elephant.  

8th turn

Note: the "pull" of the trip is a consequence of the volume of entheogens ingested: it would be at the genius loci "level" that the bulk of the trip would play out if Rides had consumed a little less. The experience will continue to tug at the character(s) until they reach that "destination", but as they resist that pull the "location" of that ultimate destination shifts.

The elephant is weary and beaten, and tied up in ropes made of magical flame. While on aspect attempts to break them with brute force, and another attempts to untie them, a third engages the ancient spirit in conversation. It describes how the priesthood of the Sun & Heavens have steadily placed greater and greater demands upon  the environment until it was utterly subsumed by the authority of the city. The spirit explains as the needs of the city grow, its reach extends deeper into the surrounding territories, and soon those spirits will find themselves likewise bound by the magical rites of the priesthood.

The aspects of Rides attempting to liberate the elephant notice a glowing flock of firebirds appearing on the horizon, who at incredible speed swoop towards them, divebombing and hindering their efforts to liberate the spirit. A narrative-based combat ensues, with the players becoming increasingly aware that their characters are outnumbered. But once again, the irresistible pull  of whatever-it-is starts to destroy the scene around them, and the players are faced with the choice of fight, flight or flow. 

The party decide they will fight but are unable to "out-roll" the force, and this time Rides' player decides to not take on an additional bane. However, as reality crumbles around them, he promises the elephant that he will do what he can to liberate his territory from the city. The elephant marks him in some way, before Rides feels himself plunge into a river of deep-red blood.

9th turn

The GM notes that the tri-aspects of Rides have disintegrated, and asks how the party want to reconfigure themselves. One player asks if the beetle/orb spirit is still floating around and, if so, can they roleplay that character? The GM agrees and the remaining players decide to divide the character of Rides along the traditional gender binary, and Rides manifests in female and male forms.

The GM describes an environment of deep, blood-red flesh: a meastscape of  slowly beating heart-tissue and plasma. Multiple exits branch away from this chamber, each seemingly leading into blackness, though from the faint sound of a woman singing can be heard. While they inspect the rest of the chamber, the beetle-orb hovers over a protrusion from the soft tissue comprising a kind of "floor". The GM explains that this is some kind of biomechanical device. The orb player asks how they might be able to extract it, and this is facilitated by the GM describing the tissue sloughing off and revealing something akin to an ivory puzzle bull, the layers rotating around one another, criss-crossed with arteries and veins, levitating.

Early 20th century ivory puzzle ball, China. Like this but moving (and with veins?)

The GM invites the orb player to describe it's purpose with the prompt: "inter-planar terraforming", and to encourage the description to be as complex as possible. The other players roleplay Rides' lack of comprehension of the explanation.

The party ask for more information regarding the other exits from the chamber: approaching each one in turn:

1. Soft, musty, mildly rotten- like a forest after rainfall. Sounds of cicada thrumming.
2. Dark, scary, smell of vomit. No sound.
3. Music, like strings of a harp being plucked at irregular intervals. No perceivable melody. 
4. An orange glow, warmth: bird song
5. A shaking, chittering sound, iridescent colouring to a smooth cave wall. No scent.
6. Melodious singing, automatically comforting, a lullaby. Warm, inviting- faint scent of slightly sour milk

They choose "4", carrying the puzzle ball with them. It hovers just below the beetle-orb.

10th turn

They emerge from a cave to stand on a clifftop, high above a seemingly infinite forest. An enormous red sun sits half-sunk at the horizon, blazing aggressively. The forest is coming alive, but the dawn chorus is sharp, abrasive: hostile.

They are given the impression that they shouldn't be here. This impression is confirmed by the awareness of the sun's heat upon them: they are sensitive to its fluctuations, it is communicating through a thermal morse code. Likewise biting and stinging insects drifting up from the canopy below are asking:

W H A T  I S  I T  T H A T  Y O U  W A N T ? 

This is now an encounter with THE QUEEN OF DAWN, perhaps not quite as described in that link, but something similar.

In any case, they are on the clock now, and this encounter will fade...

11th turn

The Queen of Dawn asks a series of potentially reality altering questions, but this dialogue terminates and the players are asked if they want to attempt to cling to this encounter or let themselves free-fall back down to the lower tiers of reality. They choose the latter, and at no cost to themselves watch the sun freezes into a ball of ice before melting into a heavy rain, that washes the landscape away into a great green river. The river takes the form of a sleek polished emerald jaguar, as female-Rides joins with male-Rides. Briefly his whole self, Rides-the Grave becomes Rides-the-Jaguar, as the party steer the Genius on a whistle-stop tour of the hex, gaining some insights into unexplored areas.

The emerald jaguar shatters into 1000 shards, each one reflecting a different facet of Rides and his band mates: the GM again gives the option to re-assemble them into a tripartite entity and explore another adjacent hex, or simply go with the flow and return to sanity. They opt for the latter.

12th-18th turn

Rides-the-Grave returns to the semi-present threshold for several turns, but his player elects to sit that episode out, barring any physical encounters in the Here & Now. 

• A birth mark has appeared on his arm, resembling an elephant (boon from the genius loci)
• He is covered in mosquito bites
• The beetle is still stuck to his hand, but a geometric shape akin to a flattened version of the weird puzzle-sphere has appeared on its carapace

The players discuss how to make sense of the information, and agree to "hand-wave" the imparting of Rides' experience to the other pariahs rather than RP the whole experience again. As it's a drop-in/west marches game they share some of the more useful findings into a collective knowledge document used by players in the campaign.

The GM adds that while Rides is imparting his experience to his fellow pariahs, the beetle spreads its wings and flies over  to a seemingly random pariah, perching on their hand. The pariah is a character belonging to the player who briefly assumed the beetle's identity during the trip.

 

19th-30th turn

The GM keeps half an eye on the remaining time of Rides' trip, as he still benefits from the effects of a mild dose of shrooms during this time period (favoured reaction rolls with non-human animals and plant-based creatures)

But why

The trip is a procedurally generated experience, differing somewhat from other procedures in the OSR. The character is being launched into space that cannot be accessed by conventional means, but there's a timetable to their experience. 

Gravity's rainbow

So it has a fixed beginning and an end: countdown, blast-off! Ascent. Apex. Descent. Landing.

Does that make it a railroad? Maybe. but you can move up and down the train, hang out the window, interact with different passengers. You could try jumping off, too, but it's not recommended.

...and unlike a railroad, that trajectory can be steered.

The challenge in gamifying these experiences is to simulate, to some degree, that abnegation of control, but tempered by a different kind of agency. One of the most boring things about D&D is travelling to the Elemental Plane of Fire, doing all the necessary magical prep to survive the journey and finding... it's just like a hexcrawl... but on fire.

I'm not saying that's not necessarily fun, but other planes, other realms, need to feel truly alien. And that requires a bit more than "exotic" environments and intelligences. They way the experience unfolds needs to be a part of that.

Levels

The experience traverses multiple levels, which operate outside of the player's suite of choices: they will get thrown up and sucked down... though they can delay these things happening.

Lower level (threshold) maps onto the space immediate to the character. At medium levels the character is able to explore an abstraction of a space much larger than themselves (this might be an attraction of psychedelics to players, as they will be able to engage in a distorted form of "remote viewing"). At higher levels the experience is divorced entirely from the Here & Now.

Intelligences

Key to all of this is the notion of interacting with intelligences. The Genius Loci procedure  blurs the boundary between landscape and intelligence, embodying the hex in a nature spirit capable of forging relationships with characters. Venturing into the Dawn Realm is a safer way to explore and develop these relationships.

Of course, there are other beings to be encountered within this realm—including other psychonauts and, ultimately, the Queen of Dawn herself.

Objects

An animist element I've not fully explored but am starting to think about introducing is other-worldly objects as entities that can be interacted with, corresponding to the testimony of DMT users and the devices of the machine elves. It's fun to think how these things might manifest on the way back.

Blurred lines and the butterfly effect

At the end of the trip the PC finds themselves in the same place they started: two hours have passed but what else has changed? 

At times, in attempting to resist the flow of the experience, they will have made some kind of sacrifice. This manifests as a bane or curse.

Likewise, apparently minor interactions might leave a physical mark upon their return: burns, scars, blemishes and tattoos that weren't there before.

Interacting with a high level intelligence such as The Queen of Dawn might shift elements of reality around, akin to this Ray Bradbury-inspired post The Butterfly Effect. In fact, in stating a goddess the character was asked as series of questions: the Queen of Dawn would always contradict their answer, and they had to save vs spells in order for their truth to remain! The significance of the questions corresponded to how pissed off she felt with the PC. I liked that. 

Another fun thought is that of sorcerers and witches encountered on other planes manifesting in the Here & Now, with memories of encountering the pariah in their dreams or rituals.

Next steps

• Squeeze this onto two sides of A4
• export to PDF
• upload to the internet and sell approximately five copies a year on itch.io 
• Retire.
• Die.    

Links

Cthulhu Dark post

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-beyond-cthulhu-dark.html

How to Stat a Goddess
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/06/how-to-stat-goddess.html

Genius Loci
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2022/06/genius-loci-and-foothills-of-teeth.html

The Butterfly effect

https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-butterfly-effect.html

Atelier Hwei on Itch:
https://atelier-hwei.itch.io/