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| NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University |
I am a big fan of the modern Cthulhu investigative game Delta Green. In fact, that is why I made this blog.
For some years now, I have been researching an idea for a game where Delta Green and other Mythos investigation agencies encounter each other on the Moon and decide to unite against the Unnatural or battle it out for national interests. I call this near future setting Luna Uber Alles.
This ‘hard’ science fiction setting would ask several questions. How would the other Mythos fighting agencies like GRU-SV8, M-EPIC, PISCES and others, compromise their agenda and agents if national interests were on the line in a space-land rush scenario? In the Great Dark of Space when we are competing with orbital mechanics, confronted with the choice of cybernetic augmentation, assisted by some form of artificial intelligence, and dealing with a national mandate to exploit space before our competitors do; would we still be human? What will individuals be willing to sacrifice to stave off humanity’s eventual apocalypse by mind warping forces we will never be able to understand? Will we even want to?
Above all, hangs our grey satellite as a harbinger of our uncertain future. Luna Uber Alles.
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| Image by congerdesign from Pixabay |
News Reports and Papers
I’ve been fired up with these questions for some time. Over a few years I’ve been researching a few selected sources to create a background for this setting. I’ll detail a few of these sources here, mostly news reports and scientific papers, with a summary of my thoughts under them.
1) Demand Drivers of the Lunar and Cislunar Economy by T.J. Colvin et al. April 2020. From the Institute of Defense Analyses (IDA).
In order for the USA and other nations to go to the moon and want to establish bases there, there should be more of an incentive than colonizing the moon purely for defense or scientific reasons. Colvin et al., have created an interesting paper describing possible commercial interests that could drive people to invest in lunar and cislunar projects in the near future.
Specifically, they mention that they have “identified goods and services that might generate sufficient non-government revenue [so that lunar investment could] to be commercially viable.”
Apart from space tourism, which I personally don’t think is economically sustainable to consistently fund long term lunar settlements, the paper describes that households on Earth may want moon rocks or lunar memorials (ie sending ashes of the deceased to the moon) from the lunar economy. I think those economic drivers are a little anemic. However lunar advertising, mining precious metals from the Moon, extracting Helium-3 for sale on the Earth, disposing of hazardous Earth waste on the Moon, manufacturing in the lunar vacuum, and supercomputing and data storage as driven by corporations might be more feasible. I’m taking this data from Table 1, page 8 of the pdf.
Anyway, there are a lot of ideas to mine in this reference that would be useful for the Luna Uber Alles setting.
2) Manufacturing In Space: An Inside Look At A Seemingly Crazy Idea by Ethan Karp. September 2024. From Forbes.com.
So, are space factories true and feasible?
Pharmaceutical companies are interested in the lunar space for manufacturing chemicals in a no-gravity or microgravity environment. Specifically, this relates to slowing the kinetics of crystal formation which is a useful method for identifying the mechanism of pharmaceutical function. Merck is doing this right now evidently.
Heavy industry and polluting industries might also be considering operations in the lunar and cislunar space.
3) In exchange for a lunar rover, Japan will get seats on Moon-landing missions by Stephen Clark. April 2024. From arstechnica.com.
Japan is partnering with the USA to have a Japanese astronaut join a USA team under the NASA-led Artemis program. Also, UAE, Canada and the European Space Agency are involved as well.
In Luna Uber Alles, Mythos exploiting and Mythos suppressing organizations could have a presence on the Moon in future. In the case of Canda, Delta Green lore already describes M-EPIC as a counter-Mythos agency.
What Mythos organization should I look at including in Luna Uber Alles that could have an interest in Japanese lunar operations? In Delta Green (pages 34-37 of the Delta Green Handler’s Guide) the Black Ocean Society is directly described as being in Japan and other countries. That may have potential.
4) Mining helium-3 on the Moon has been talked about forever—now a company will try by Eric Berger. March 2024. From arstechnica.com.
News report describing interest in and feasibility of harvesting helium-3 from the lunar regolith and selling it on Earth. Helium-3 does not occur naturally on Earth and “it exists in only very limited quantities from nuclear weapons tests, nuclear reactors, and radioactive decay”. May be an important component in the quantum computing and medical imaging sectors.
The news article specifically describes the company Interlune.
5) Soldiers, Spies and the Moon: Secret US and Soviet Plans from the 1950s and 1960s edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson. Posted July 2014. From The National Security Archive.
A series of declassified USA documents about potential miliary applications of lunar occupation. Deals with the Cold War, and US and Soviet interests in the Moon. Project Horizon is mentioned, which includes technical details from the US Airforce and Army about building a military Moon base.
There is a section in the article A Study of Lunar Research Flights that talks about the feasibility of detonating a nuclear device on the Moon.
Both of these articles would be useful for developing the setting Luna Uber Alles, particularly on the US side, and Project Horizon has details for military personnel on a theoretical militarized Moon base. One of the questions I must address in future is, “Are all nationally and corporate funded moon bases in Luna Uber Alles built with the military in mind, or instead do they consist of quasi-militarized or dual-use architectures?”
Books
I have several additional news references for Luna Uber Alles, but that’s enough for now.
In terms of books that may have information I want for the setting, I’m looking at On the Future: Prospects for Humanity by Martin Rees. Specifically, Chapters 2.1-2.2, biotech and cybernetics, and Chapter 3, which deals with the solar system/space exploration, may be of use.
For historical reference I picked up Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon by the Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. I wanted a rough timeline of lunar exploration and mission objectives.
Games
Now the question is, has anyone published a ttrpg similar to the setting I’m working on? There are a few Cthulhu in Space games, but one of the more recent ones that is closest to my ideas for Luna Uber Alles is Eldritch Horizon.
Eldritch Horizon is a game set in the “early star-faring future of the human race” where humans are exploiting the outer horizon of Earth’s Solar System to support civilization back on Earth. Add to this the alien and ancient things that already occupied the Solar System from the Cthulhu Mythos, and you have Eldritch Horizon.
The setting is somewhere between the scope of Eclipse Phase (without the transhuman tech and themes of that setting) and Orbital Cold War (which I discuss below).
I skimmed Eldritch Horizon and found some elements that could be interesting in a Luna Uber Alles setting. Specifically, I like how Eldritch Horizon deals with Artificial Intelligence, and how AI would react to exposure to the madness of the Cthulhu Mythos.
There are Sanity rules for Artificial Intelligences. AIs are treated as being based on AIs of the modern day, just refined and moderately competent. At least for mundane jobs. AIs are also prone to hallucinations when they encounter data or situations that are outside their training data baseline. Also, the United Nations has mandated a kill-switch for higher level AI functions (like mining or attacking or so forth) while maintaining life-support and power generations. This kill-switch is called the Skynet Protocol.
So how and when do AIs take Sanity Damage? AIs are rather mentally fragile. If they encounter an observation or data outside of their training data, they accumulate Sanity Damage that cannot be removed. Eldritch Horizon calls AI Sanity Damage “Paradox.” Whenever an AI would take a Sanity Check from the Unnatural/Cthulhu Mythos, they take maximum Sanity Damage equal to “the maximum human loss from a successful SAN test” or 1 Sanity Damage, whichever is higher. AI’s do not take San Damage from Helplessness or Violence sources, unless the GM decides the AI has an empathy prototype and wants to make that call.
AI Sanity Damage (Paradox) matters because that value subtracts from the AI’s ability to make skill checks. So, if you have 20 Paradox and your AI’s Mining skill is 65%, it’s effective Mining skill becomes 45%. Essentially, exposure to the Unnatural/Mythos will degrade an AI’s ability to carry out actions until it is destroyed. However, if an AI attempts to use a skill where the modified success score is zero or below, roll d100. On a failure it just shuts down. On a roll of doubles, it develops an aggressive psychotic response.
I like the AI rules from Eldritch Horizon because they are appropriate for Artificial Intelligences (AI) that are marginally better than we have today. I think these rules work well for the Luna Uber Alles setting.
I am not going to include Artificial General Intelligences (AGI) in Luna Uber Alles because frankly I don’t think AGI will be developed in the timeline I foresee Luna Uber Alles taking place in. So, AGI is out in my setting, and I don’t have to worry about rules for it.
Eldritch Horizon is currently available as a 73-page free quickstart pdf. They advertise that the full game will come out in 2026 sometime.
Orbital Cold War is an alternate timeline near-future setting where the Space Race between the USA and the Soviet Union never stopped and continued through the early 1990s. Player characters are astronauts, scientists or possibly soldiers, with the objective to maintain or have adventures in space stations in orbit or on the Moon.
The geopolitical tensions in this setting between the USA-European alliance and the Soviet Union is exactly the type of drama I want to replicate in Luna Uber Alles. However, in my setting I want more factions vying for space and the Moon. I am envisioning the following nations/agencies as having stakes in the lunar surface: USA, Canada, UAE, Russia, UK, European Space Agency, Japan, China, and the corporation Intuitive Machines (USA).
Some of these nations/agencies have organizations aware of the Mythos according to the Delta Green lore; namely: USA (Delta Green), Canada (M-EPIC), Russia (GRU-SV8), and UK (PISCES). In addition, Japan is mentioned as having the Black Ocean Society embedded in their territory, and that organization may have Lunar ambitions.
So, what does Orbital Cold War provide as a backbone for my
setting? It has a great deal of excellent information about spaceflight with historical
examples of space vehicles, information for human survival in space stations
and on space walks, and detailed diagrams on Moon bases and space stations. I’ll be using all of that information to
inform the development of Luna Uber Alles.
Conclusion
Looking back on the past few pages, I think I have a decent rough sketch of some of my ideas for the Luna Uber Alles setting. The idea of mankind colonizing the Moon, and the Mythos’ response to our first halting steps to get off our singular planet, is very exciting to me. I have at least 15 news sources or scientific papers that are relevant for research for the setting, and I have broadly detailed five here. I’ve found two books and two ttrpgs that would be relevant for Luna Uber Alles; and I think that is a solid enough foundation to build upon to move forwards with this Delta Green-spinoff without succumbing to research inflation.
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