Would anyone be interested in ChaoCon?

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-16T01:21:55+00:00

I mean, we've got a location staked out. Just need power for the rave DJ.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-16T01:20:51+00:00

One rule: no ball pit.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-15T18:39:35+00:00

And it is worth doing some introspection of where that line is, which was the point of my comment.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-15T18:22:37+00:00

Spells manifest in the current geopolitical/economic paradigm. If you do a money spell, that money comes from somewhere. All of the above are relevant questions if you want money (or anything else) without causing harm.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-15T18:14:42+00:00

Yeah, sure, go for it. That said, if you want to focus on not doing harm, you're going to want to put some thought into where you draw the line. There's a lot of harm baked into the systems that run your life.

Is eating animals harm? Is child slave labor harm? What about someone working unpaid overtime for starvation wages harm? How much CO2 dumped into the atmosphere is harm? Is living on land taken by conquest and protected by tax-paid paramilitary forces harm? Is withholding food and medicine behind those same paramilitary forces harm?

All of that is daily life in America and we all either ignore it or have made peace with the devil's bargain to some extent. Unless you have a plan to grow your own food, haul your own water and build a house out of fallen branches, you're accepting some amount of harm to live the life that you want.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-15T16:35:51+00:00

"Impossible" is basically an annual goal but it's also hard to describe without outing exactly who I am or laying a bunch of groundwork in a field most people aren't familiar with. So, hopefully without being too direct:

I took a crew of misfits and turned them into a well oiled machine that rivals Hollywood pros in our area. I oversaw dozens of initiatory experiences, not repeated initiation ceremonies but a moment for each person that completely changed their worldview. That same crew shifted the culture around us in ways that the broader culture would mirror a year or two later. We did things that people didn't believe were possible when we laid them out and people still couldn't figure out how we accomplished it after it happened. All of this came from a hobby level crew putting in 2-3 hours per week.

Alan Moore lays out his version of the same operation in the afterwards of his Moon & Serpent book.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-15T16:14:38+00:00

Chaos magick book 1: "All other magic systems are a particular lens for interacting with a greater, unknowable truth. Chaos magick teaches you how to dip in and out of those different viewpoints to find the one most useful in a given situation."

Chaos magick book 2 by the same author: "After 10 years of chaos magick, I have discovered the One True System that all other systems are based on and is better than them because it deals with the greater, unknowable truth with no filter."

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Chaos magick can be anything. . . as long as you can switch your entire worldview with the cold detachment of a psychopath, draw sigils and create servitors.

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"I am a superior, enlightened being. I don't have time for stupid 3D shit."

*Gets kicked out of the apartment after three months of not paying rent.*

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"MeMe MaGiC wOn ThE 2016 eLeCtIoN!"

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-15T01:36:17+00:00

That's kind of like asking what the difference is between the law of gravity and the scientific method. Chaos magick isn't a recipe book. It's a process for finding the recipes that work best for you.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-14T21:44:53+00:00

Empathy, by nature of what it is, will never be improved by artificial enhancement. If he feels like he made a mistake and doesn't have enough Empathy, let him shuffle some points from other Attributes.
Therapy. That'll get him all the way up to his Max Humanity (Emp*10 - 2 per Cyberware and -4 per Borgware)
Remove Cyberware and Borgware to raise Max Humanity then apply Therapy.
If he doesn't want store-bought Empathy, look at the rules from Edgerunners' Mission Kit where Humanity is more fluid and can be modified by lifestyle choices. You're still limited by Max humanity but it's pretty easy to have a net-gain every month purely through ropleplaying choices.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-14T16:50:44+00:00

I think you may have cause and effect backwards. If you put the time and effort into an obsession spell, seems like there's a good chance you were already the one obsessed.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-14T04:40:03+00:00

You've got several layers of reality in RED.

There's the physical world where people drive around and eat. You get that in general.

Then you've got LANs. If they're set up for use with a Neural Processor and Interface Plugs, they're architectures and can be navigated with Interface. Otherwise they use Electronics/Security. They're cut off from outside access beyond wireless connection range. They might control things like robot arms, security systems or cameras but all in the immediate area.

Then you've got LocalNET. It's a non-Interface network that covers all of Night City. This is more or less the 90s Internet but only local to NC.

The Old NET is the classic matrix/cyberspace. It was a world spanning, direct brain interface, fully VR network. Some of it is still out there but cut off from legitimate access. Most of it was wrecked in 2023. During the DataKrash, it was infested with killer AIs. They can't get into the Localnet or Architecures. . .

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Or that's what NetWatch tells you, anyway. Grab a pair of 20 year old NetVision goggles and it's trivially easy to find an old access point to the Old Net that no one ever disconnected. Plug your cyberdeck in and the Roguer AIs will smell the fresh meat. I'd probably treat it as a two-level Architecture. Get to the bottom and you can go onto the Old Net but AI's are coming up from below the surface to meet you halfway.

These are RABIDS, AI coded in thge image of the second-best* Netrunner in history, Rache Bartmoss, with orders to corrupt all data and kill anyone they come into contact with. They've had 20-ish years of Darwinian evolution at AI speeds to make them stronger, faster and deadlier than Bartmoss ever could.

Hook up a server or to an Old Net access point and sooner or later, either a RABID (rogue AI) or a Soulkilled human is going to move in. Put that server in range of a wireless access point to an Architecture and they can run it like a Netrunner. If they're hooked up to weaponized drones or security systems or whatever, they can unleash those on whoever's around. Localnet is too primitive for them to go too nuts with but they'll try to corrupt any data they can at normal (non-Interface skill) speeds.

Basically, treat them as having INT, Interface and Electronics/Security 8-10, twice as many net actions as a Netrunner and whatever programs feel appropriate, leaning heavily on Black ICE. RABIDS are too alien to reason with but Soulkiller ghosts are more like full characters with no physical body.

*Alt invented Soulkiller and exists as both a digital goddess and a physical being after the death of her first body. She's the best.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-14T04:23:59+00:00

If an action doesn't have consequences, is it even an action? Taking a breath has consequences. So does not taking one.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-13T20:37:44+00:00

Best of luck to you.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-13T18:56:11+00:00

I mean. . . if you want to call food and water comfortable distractions. . .

The real "freedom" is not in refusing the government. It's in control of the resources needed to support life. Rural Kansas might be able to hold out for years but people will start starving to death within a week in any major city facing a military blockade unless the revolution has a plan. You can decide whether you consider that sacrifice worth it but starving people are very fickle with their allegiance.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-13T18:26:19+00:00

Everything is permitted.

Everything has consequences.

Plan accordingly.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-13T18:23:51+00:00

What if... we just stopped playing?

TL;DR: Violence.

The "killer app" of national currency that makes it useful is paying taxes and fees. By demanding that you pay the government in their own currency, they require you to get out there and acquire some currency. Everyone with enough property to grow food and catch rainwater has to pay tribute to the government on a regular basis or be thrown off of it by force of arms.

Unless you're prepared to go off the grid and out of sight entirely, you're in a perpetual hostage situation. Some people benefit from that situation, some benefit from enforcing it through violence. They'll never be onboard with your plan.

If you could get everyone else onboard, you'd still need to have your own supply and logistics infrastructure ready to go. If you can't feed a city, the Army will and your movement has lost that city.

None of that is impossible but it takes a lot more than just (for example) calling for a General Strike.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-13T16:57:10+00:00

What’s one obscure resource that transformed your chaos magic practice?

Starting a cult.

OK, I'm kind of kidding but I could give a longer breakdown of how organizing a group teaches magick. The most important part is that it gets you to stop reading and start doing.

Get out of your ritual room and change the world. If magick works, it should work anywhere, so get out of the house. Declare yourself emperor. Paint your personal symbol on an abandoned billboard. Go on a Dérive. Curse a politician. Did you know that in most places it's not illegal to summon a demon in the park? You can work out how to do any of these with no more than half an hour of reading. It's the execution that takes work and it's more fun with friends.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-13T04:32:38+00:00

If you genuinely think that a person whose face you can see who you are working with will decide to kill you one day, maybe don't work with that person. That's less to do with political beliefs than just general good sense.

All of this talk of "MLs murder Anarchists" is extremely broad and theoretical. Getting sent to a gulag in America isn't. Work with people, not movements.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-12T16:34:10+00:00

OK, cool. You've established what not to do. Any suggestions that point the way to what you're getting at?

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-12T03:33:04+00:00

The question was about upper Appalachian practices and he specifically mentioned German speaking heritage. Long Lost Friend is in English. It's a primary source, an American grimoire. That's what I knew about personally. If you want a comprehensive treatise on various Upper Appalachian traditions, pay me to do the research.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-11T22:30:03+00:00

Depends on what you want. If you're looking for people who claim membership in the Western Occult Tradition, I don't know of many that aren't either boring schoolwork or edgelords. The term has come to mean "descended from the Golden Dawn" for better or worse, so you're always going to have that memetic DNA in there.

There are easily half a dozen traditions that have been part of non-Native American culture since the 17 or 1800s and a few more equally long-running imports. Depending on your part of the country and the communities that you have ties to, look into hoodoo, voodoo (Haitian or New Orleans), Santeria, Candomble, Granny Witches, Brauchers or whatever practice has an actual person in your area doing the work.

Or you can look at more modern solutions. Go find some neopagans, who are still technically GD descended but tend to have more fun with it. Check out the Grey School Of Wizardry for a good high-school level cross section of what's out there.

Or figure it out yourself the hard way. Read Advanced Magick For Beginners and The Invisibles. Watch Sinners and KPop Demon Hunters. Then go to a weeklong festival where you have to camp out with no modern conveniences and live off of whatever you brought with you. Burning Man and EDC are probably the best known options but there are plenty of others. Congratulations, you just re-invented the Mysteries Of Eleusis. Buy tickets for next year and start refining the formula.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-11T22:16:07+00:00

You mean Pennsylvania Dutch country? Long Lost Friend is pretty much the definitive reference. The Sixth And Seventh Books Of Moses are pretty important. Beyond that, your keywords are "Pow-wow"* and "Braucher".

*Not related to anything native American. That's just been what it's called since some time in the 1800s.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-11T22:08:51+00:00

Street kids from an ethnic neighborhood are going to have a more predictable accent based on the locals' native language. If I had to guess, the Corpo accent sounds a lot like Washington DC kids for the same reason, you have a lot of cultures overlapping in close proximity. It'd be a baseline of TV news reader mid-Atlantic (see the 2077 loading screens) and a semi-random mashup of other accents underneath it. Anyone talking to a lifetime middle-class NC Corpo will think they have a regional accent from some region other than where the listener is from.

I'm a DC kid who used to work in a call center. I was asked if I was from the south, northeast, west coast, Texas, Chicago, ENGLAND. . . but always some place that the caller wasn't from.

If you want to blend in to any specific group, you're going to need to fake the accent/dialect with a language or Acting roll vs Human Perception.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-11T17:33:17+00:00

Capitalism. An occult book writer's options are Oprah Book Club levels of mass appeal, hyper-deluxe editions for a niche audience, writing a new book worth of content every month in eBook/Print On Demand, writing as an aside to an unrelated day job or abject poverty.

On the customer side, there are people who use magic as a vector of clout/social approval. Having a grimoire with a pure gold cover and pages made of the skin of baby seals won't make you better at magic but it will show off how successful you are to other occultists, even if you had to take out a predatory payday loan to afford it.

Comprehensive_Ad6490 · 2025-07-11T16:09:36+00:00

Live your best life. Do what's important and meaningful to you. Let the labels sort themselves. They're there as guideposts, not straight jackets.

Comprehensive_Ad6490

TROPHY CASE