#game section

[frankalexh]

Chaos Magic: A Primer

This is high-concept magical stuff, so I’ll try keep it brief.

Chaos magic is a method of interacting with the unknown (whatever that means to you) that differs from the traditional magical schools of hermeticism, the left hand path (like Lavey’s Church of Satan) and the right hand path (like the Order of the Golden Dawn), which are all more scholarly pursuits  full of dogma and rules.

Chaos magic is what it sounds like; you open yourself up to the things you don’t understand without attempting to codify them. It differs from prayer in its somewhat material nature. Like with all magic the end-goal is a change in the physical or emotional world of the person practising it, but chaos magic is thought to be an unstable method of doing this. 

Its like jumping into whitewater rapids to reach the end of the river; you might just get there. but you could just as easily be dashed on the rocks.

I don’t believe in it, but I love to read about it.

https://www.hermeticfellowship.org/HFHermeticism.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Bible

https://www.golden-dawn.com/eu/displaycontent.aspx?pageid=170-biography-israel-regardie

llewellyn.com/journal/article/1799

https://blackwitchcoven.com/chaos-magick/

https://shrineai.chwezi.tech/books/book1.pdf

https://principiadiscordia.com/

http://www.chaotopia.com/

[frankalexh]

Nazi esotericism

To understand the direction of research of the Nazis, there’s a couple of important touchstones. Bear in mind I don’t believe in any of this shit, but the Nazis sure did.

The first is Madame Helena Blavatsky. A Ukrainian mystic, her ‘theosophy’ (note: ravings of a lunatic) is one of the origins of the word Aryan, used to describe the most perfect one of the 6 original ‘root’ races of man (aka gross early-phrenology race-science).

The second is a dumb sci-fi book called Vril: the Power of a Coming Race. It describes a subterranean master-race ascending and claiming the throne of man. It’s fairly easy to see what inspiration the Nazis drew from this...

The intersection of these beliefs is that of Vril energy. a mysterious life energy capable of enormous destructive and regenerative power. This was rumoured to be the focus of Nazi occult research; the harvesting of this energy for the future of the Reich. One of the ways this energy is harvested is in the form of emotional outpouring, and one of the strongest of these is group hatred.

It’s just dumb enough to make sense.

(I’d like to point out how silly this is again, and that some of these links are outright laughable conspiracy stuff. Fun story though)

http://blavatskyarchives.com/longseal.htm

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Helena-Blavatsky

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1951

https://web.archive.org/web/20041011215513/http://laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/WW2/

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jy-1YuG3RCIC&pg=PT439&lpg=PT439&dq=harvesting+vril+energy&source=bl&ots=Yza3vYVmgo&sig=ACfU3U3H6_3e2Ts_JlhbkLSmfDXjRlPk6g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjgp42BkYvpAhWITsAKHaMeDVgQ6AEwCXoECF4QAQ#v=onepage&q=harvesting%20vril%20energy&f=false

[frankalexh]

Sequence 3 Reference images

Not many images survive of the Nazi’s occult leanings, but Himmler’s research into esoteric and mystical ways to ensure the survival of the Reich is well-documented (if debated).

For this sequence imagine if the new Wolfenstein series, Hellraiser and the climax of Hereditary somehow had a baby.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/infamous-castle-of-wewelsburg

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/central-european-history/article/nazi-magicians-controversy-enlightenment-border-science-and-occultism-in-the-third-reich/B3BE167EE68DF206E856B97514A9242A

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230109056_9

[frankalexh]

Sequence 2 Reference documentary

A documentary I remember watching as a kid that shook me to my core. This is what I imagine the Nazis in sequence 2 to be living like; squalid, fighting an underground war.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0235327/

[frankalexh]

Sequence 2 Reference images

This set of reference images will be for the second sequence of the game, in which our hero is drawn into the world of Nazi machinations in the 70′s punk scene

https://www.timeout.com/newyork/travel/nyc-subway-photos-see-off-limits-and-abandoned-stops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXPECTQTW_I

https://www.boredpanda.com/hell-on-wheels-new-york-underground-photography-80s/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/cityirt.html

[frankalexh]

Punk image references

Some image libraries to be used as a visual touchstone when visualising the first sequence of the game

https://time.com/4447310/a-nostalgic-look-back-at-new-yorks-1970s-punk-rock-scene/

https://allthatsinteresting.com/new-york-punk-scene-photographs

https://www.instagram.com/julia_gorton_nowave/?utm_source=ig_embed

[frankalexh]

Clockwork Game Design

Some fascinating aspects of game design in here, especially relevant to me are the subsections on emergent complexity in chapter 1.

https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/clockwork-game-design/9781138798731/?ar

[frankalexh]

Game design essentials

Super helpful resource, mainly for defining terms that I am instinctively familiar with from a lifetime of playing games, but never knew the terms for.

Using it as a glossary of terms I am now incorporating ‘Hub-and-Spoke’ game design into each sequence of Chaos, along with understanding that the game will be an action-adventure with RPG mechanics.

This is an odd combo, but is essential for maximising the randomness I want the game to have, with such a combination of mechanics combined with the influence of pretty hardcore emergent complexity it should simulate (or actually be, rather) random enough to provide the feeling of being in the throes of Chaos magic.

https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/game-design-essentials/9781118159279/