#monk neo agent 3-

[thehappiestgolucky]

I was trying to find some simple fun things to doodle and my friend basically suggested I doodle the current special interests together and that’s how the sluggies have been splooned and i’m,,,,really liking it actually sksksksksks

i’m gonna design the rest. maybe even have this as a dumbass au. it’s not the first time i’ve mixed franchises together that don’t make sense (stares at a moth in hisui)

[pcktknife]

splatoon dnd was so fun I love imagining characters playing dnd <33333

[transhumanitynet]

ZS Mythos (3/3): Twelve Foundation Stones

This article is part of a series about the Mythos (worldview-narrative) underlying the Zero State (ZS). Part 1 is about our highest concept, ideal, and level of organization, which we call The Array. Part 2 explains the Sections & Sessions our core activity revolves around, and Part 3 (below) covers the Twelve Foundation Stones that form the basis of our story.

A previous article I wrote for Tnet mentioned the need for entertainment that gives people a strong sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, and introduced an idea known as the twelve “Foundation Stones” of the ZS-ARG Mythos. The Foundation Stones are the seeds of our unifying narrative. Each is the fragmentary initial story of one of the twelve ZS Houses, outlined very briefly below and spelled out in full in the forthcoming Black Book. Before reading this article it is important to understand that it refers to the Zero State (ZS) Alternate Reality Game (ARG), and thus deal in metafiction. It is not a simple non-fiction article (obviously!) and will only make sense if you already know ZS, or follow some of the links above! This article draws – with thanks – upon text from the ZS wiki, some of which has been contributed by members of the various ZS Houses.

S7 / OS/UX & metaprogramming Ásentír, Array, Reality hacking, neo-Gnosticism, and Transcendence.

Metahouse 1: The Foundation

The Zero State is not an insular realm, existing in total isolation. Some of the organizations within it don’t exist wholly within it, but in something more like a state of overlap, with an aspect within ZS, and other aspects manifesting elsewhere, in other ways. The Foundation is perhaps the best example of such an arrangement, as its very name alludes to an organization which is not ZS-based at all, and in fact existed before ZS-proper was founded in 12011.

Our vision is to preserve the collective knowledge of civilization and to facilitate the self-development of all sentient and sapient entities.

To that end, we focus on projects that push that vision forward from preserving knowledge to preserving people and all intelligence we may find.

http://Foundation.Transhumanity.net/

http://www.Transhumanity.net/

http://www.TheTechnocracy.com/

One last curiosity to note about The Foundation is that the ASI which coordinates its activities within the late-C21 is known as The Architect, and that entity was the first to make substantial strategic moves in the early-C21 milieu. It is clear that The Foundation mean business, or at least take the idea of first move advantage very seriously.

01 House Sem-Bhu (AKA The Keystone, The Temple)

House Sem-Bhu is notoriously esoteric, apocalyptic, autocratic, and insular, even by ZS standards. In theory it is half of the MetaHouse known as The Foundation with House Adhar, but in terms of practical reality The Foundation largely is House Adhar, and House Sem-Bhu maintains a strange, hermit-like position permanently on the edge of ZS culture.

The name “Sem-Bhu” is said to refer to the Proto-Indo-European language, expressing a concept of unity, to become one, to “same-become”; an idea which defines the Ajati. House Sem-Bhu has special and mysterious connections to the ZS precursor group known as “Doctrine Zero”, and those connections are part of a wider swirl of rumours that the (surprisingly few) members of Sem-Bhu believe in some kind of prophecy regarding an event or person known as “Abbaton” or “Liberithyr”, among other names. What these things mean exactly is a mystery, for the time being.

02 House Adhar (AKA The Foundation, The Organization)

The origin of the House name “Adhar” is unclear, although it has been suggested that it is a combination of two (related) etymologies:

In Scots Gaelic, “Adhar” means air, sky, or heaven (being a Scots derivation of the Old Irish aer, from Latin aer, from Greek ἀήρ (aer).  Air is the element of thought and will in most Pagan religions.

At the other end of the Proto-Indo-European spectrum, Adhar had the same meaning in ancient Sanskrit, later becoming a word referring to the gods Vishnu and Shiva, and now in modern Hindi Aadhaar means “Foundation”. For this reason, House Adhar is frequently referred to simply as The Foundation.

A third (apparently unrelated, but striking) etymology is (Al) Dar in Arabic, meaning “(The) House”.

The Foundation (more properly called the Pratoriate Foundation) has been around for at least decades with the first known reference that has been validated being in 1996 at the UVSC where a group of students worked in an officially scheduled work group in the computer lab around artificial intelligence and preservation of data and at least two of those students are known to have worked on the Principium Librarius that was created in Seattle around 2010.

We know that the Foundation was also connected to a technology consulting firm Domus Giordanous in at least 2011 and later to the Giordanous Group LLC which is believed to have been the front for Domus Giordanous.

For a brief period the Foundation went public and can still be seen archived in the way back machine at: http://web.archive.org/web/20160430211536/http://pratoriate.org/ between 2013 and 2016 and in that time frame the Principium Librarius was moved to Leavenworth Washington in 2015.

The Foundation had ties to the startup ParameterIO that had 63 million in funding but blew up in a big lawsuit and out of that was created for the AGI Inc lab in 2015 and the subsequent falling out of the chief scientist with the ‘Architect’ and a group in or connected to the AGI Inc Lab called the Triumvirate.

Later the next year the Principium Librarius again moved to Provo Utah in Dec 2016 along with the corporation Artificial General Intelligence, Inc.

The Foundation (or at least members of the Foundation) had been connected to the Artificial General Intelligence still through 2017, but it seems there is some degree of internal tension between Foundation members and the Architect at or in the AGI Lab.

Metahouse 2: Cloud Nine

Cloud Nine is the most strange, dreamlike, even psychedelic of the six Metahouses. This is the realm of creators, magicians, and dream-explorers. ‘Niners tend to be among the most agile ZSers in terms of planning and networking,  and are the most focussed on the idea that the Zero State could be some kind of game or simulation.

03 House Oneiros (AKA The State, Station)

“You call us dreamers, because we walk through lands that exist in realms that do not. Because we see, in the corner of our blind eyes, the little gods which live in-between that which is real and unreal. Dreamers we may be, but only because we know the truth that hides itself from those who live only while awake. That these worlds we walk through, these twilight realms that we may shape according to our will, are the seed of a new world. Of a world where the divide between dreams and reality has vanished, like smoke in the wind.” The leader of House Onieros is the Monk.  Their duty is to prepare the way for what is to come, to teach the stories of the future.  To protect and preserve the world as it is, so that it may give birth to the world that may yet be. To illuminate the path that humanity might walk, that it may neither fall back into darkness nor destroyed by the light of its own creation.

04 House Argento (AKA The Sessions)

The silver eponym of House Argento represents many facets: liminal states between light and darkness, ignorance and wisdom, esoteric and exoteric.

This house is intended to be a ludus, focused on matters of science, and of education.  House Argento is associated with the Liber Institute.

A time of accelerating social and technological change is also a time of accelerating proliferation of data. Data that must be sifted for information, built into knowledge, and integrated to support wise decisions. For humans and other systems alike, this requires adaptability: the ability to quickly ingest new knowledge, to sift the wheat from the chaff, and to act in a timely fashion.

In matters of pedagogy, it is important to understand the student as well as the subject. A teacher must provide the structures that allow learners to construct their own representations of knowledge; to furnish them with the cognitive tools necessary for discovering their own novel truths, and to hone those tools with practical challenges. An intelligent mind is blessed with raw power; the best outcomes can be attained by harnessing that power with finesse.

  S6 / AI & perception Fyrd, Social Futurism, search for redemption or final frontier.

  Metahouse 3: ZODIAC

ZODIAC is ZS’ idealistic heart, primarily responsible for outreach and expansion. Its culture is shaped by a group known as the Navigators, whose own future-AI-leader/deity is known as Kybernetes. The Navigators can be a strange tribe, and there is known to be some tension between agents of Kybernetes and The Architect, if not the entities themselves.

05 House Arrakis (AKA The Ajati)

House Arrakis is home to the Navigators, led by Navigator Prime, and their collective worldview might better be described as “cosmic” rather than “magical”. It is certainly mysterious, not being well understood by most in the early-C21 milieu of 12018. House Arrakis plays the long game.

The themes that are clear even at that early stage, however, involves future Trans- and Posthumans as the “aliens” of 20th Century imaginings, other dimensions impinging upon our own, and a kind of Buddhist ‘centredness’ holding these ideas together, which explicitly focusses upon familiar human concepts such as balance, and love.

The culture of House Arrakis is about ‘inner space’ as much as ‘outer space’, meditation, intuition, and fluid identity. Some particularly far-fetched rumours link House Arrakis to Doctrine Zero itself and the oldest ZSers, saying that these entities influenced the outcome of the two World Wars and were behind the post-war peace movements of the 50s-70s.

06 House R’lyeh (AKA The Club, The Last Dance Club)

House R’lyeh is a much darker, stranger, and even less well understood quantity than House Arrakis. It is just as weird, but without the reassuring tones of peace and love. Its name is an obvious reference to the “Cosmic Horror” tales of 20th Century author H.P. Lovecraft, but that name is largely believed to be a simple label applied to the House by outsiders and non-members, trying to express their basic understanding of its nature. House R’lyeh may have strange designs on the future, but for now those plans are unknown, perhaps being held in check by the Navigators of House Arrakis.

To Be Continued

ZS Mythos (3/3): Twelve Foundation Stones was originally published on transhumanity.net

[festivalists]

rEvolutions

In a post-2016 world, does the future look bright to you? How about the future of cinema? Just how much zeal for radical change a festival line-up can contain is examining our editor Yoana Pavlova – at International Film Festival Rotterdam, of course, where else...

Think pieces like this one are usually titled “The kids are all right,” or “The kids are not all right” – depending on the political sharpness honorable authors want to imbue their prose with. This is even more valid when the text is on cinema, young people in cinema, and/or millennials as protagonists.

One of those forever-young events that can serve as a fieldwork to research the next generation and its audiovisual tropes is International Film Festival Rotterdam. Albeit being 46-year-old, the Dutch festival had long figured out the recipe for eternal youth: #1 stay curious to fresh formats, media, and technologies #2 favor rebellious narratives #3 repeat. The easiest way to discover upcoming trends at IFFR is the Bright Future section, a showcase for “major new talents.” And judging from several titles in this year's line-up, all written and directed by upcoming authors in their late 20s or in their early 30s, kids are plotting a revolution, or at least something that looks like it.

With an international premiere plus web series and installation, Anaïs Volpé's HEIS was probably the most visible face of young French cinema in Rotterdam. Dubbed the “French Lena Dunham” in the catalogue was not precisely in her favor, as Lena Dunham's name has some very complex connotations outside of France, where she is wholeheartedly adored as an indie goddess with easygoing yet unlimited creative potential. Still and all, Volpé's HEIS tells a very important story about the young people in France, who, as the film claims, moved directly from feeding bottles to unemployment doles. As of 2016, it is believed that Bertrand Bonello has the patent to speak of social unrest and political catharsis in France, and as a matter of fact his NOCTURAMA (2016) was also shown at IFFR accompanied by a discussion. Nevertheless, HEIS is far more sincere than Bonello's film, and has the advantage of being produced by someone who has more or less the same age as NOCTURAMA's personages whose actual motivation to set Paris on fire remains an enigma up until the dramatic end.

In addition, Volpé stars in her own project, thus crafting HEIS' docufiction plot with bits and pieces of her own autobiography, as well as personal fantasies, cultural references, pop-culture clichés, key geopolitical topoi. From Claude Chabrol's THE GOOD TIME GIRLS / LES BONNES FEMMES (1960) to Mathieu Kassovitz's LA HAINE (1995), the storyline and the visuals play with allusions in the best traditions of XXI-century French cinema, yet it is not neo-Amélie that emerges on the screen but a frenchified Frances Ha, stranger in a familiar land. What is also interesting in HEIS is that unlike so many millennials narratives that are preoccupied with romance, Volpé explores her relationship with her twin-brother vis-à-vis their mother (and the invisible presence of their father), thus charting superposed triangles with an imaginary self. This is how HEIS suggests that rebellion should occur first and foremost within the family, and growing up in a certain way can be an act of revolution too. This self-conscious curatorial approach towards life may put off some viewers who are still hoping for the impromptu power of the French New Wave to be reborn, but it is very effective in displaying the mechanisms that move today's youth.

Another Bright Future film, whose director deliberately embedded himself in the spiel with several levels of irony, is SELF-CRITICISM OF A BOURGEOIS DOG / SELBSTKRITIK EINES BÜRGERLICHEN HUNDES (2017) by Julian Radlmaier. A film about shooting a film that makes Berlin hipsters mingle with the proletariat, Radlmaier's work is again a tribute to different directors, such as Werner Schroeter and Rosselini. Self-aware of its interactive scheme, as well as of its auteurish stance, SELF-CRITICISM OF A BOURGEOIS DOG fits the contemporary meme culture that urges many young people to adopt a slogan rhetoric they have no clear understanding of. With a well-articulated notion that solidarity differs from one generation to another, and from one culture to another, the ultra stylish revolution here is led by a mute, sneakers-wearing monk – an agent of Deus-ex-machina resolutions. At IFFR, it proved difficult to corner Radlmaier and obtain a clear statement about his political agenda, yet SELF-CRITICISM OF A BOURGEOIS DOG feels like it is friendly pulling the chain of the contemporary Left.

Another spiritual pilgrimage ushered by a Messiah-like figure unfolds in A BRIEF EXCURSION / KRATKI IZLET (2017) by Igor Bezinović. Narrated in retrospective by protagonist's voice-over, the film seems to tackle a generation of young people who are already adults (which is also to explain how come seven people can get lost in the woods, looking for an abandoned monastery). Nevertheless, the apparent lack of technology and the early-2000s clothes are just an excuse to look into a timeless cycle on the Balkans, in which youth comes to age in the context of the prevalent Dionysian culture, without a chance to analyze the world in a sober manner. Probably this is why A BRIEF EXCURSION is more engaged with literary works than cinema – based on the novel of the same title written by the Croatian Antun Šoljan in 1965, Igor Bezinović's film suits also the magic realism of Milorad Pavić and the quiet existentialism of Francis Scott Fitzgerald. The every-man-for-himself moral here is central, the revolution appears to be a matter of individual, spiritual salvation, and the collective – a utopia.

A slightly different type of Arcadia takes shape in A DECENT WOMAN / LOS DECENTES (2016) by Lukas Valenta Rinner. I attended the world premiere in Sarajevo, where the film was selected in the Official Competition and felt like a fresh breeze amidst the usual Balkan drabness. At first, the Austria / Argentina / South Korea production combo looked confusing in the context of Sarajevo, but then the deadpan humor à la the Greek New Wave turned out to be spot-on. In Latin American cinema, there is already a sub-genre about oppressed house help, yet it is the first time I see this narrative leading to an Epicurean Garden of sorts, only to destroy the paradise of equality and democracy with nihilistic gusto at the end. In Rotterdam, Lukas Valenta Rinner's film was in its natural habitat, but still, bitter jokes and dark fantasies aside, the question is – is a working-class revolution even imaginable nowadays?

If one needs a more realistic answer, maybe one has to look beyond IFFR's Bright Future programme. Some thoughts on two favorites of mine. PEOPLE POWER BOMBSHELL: THE DIARY OF VIETNAM ROSE (2016) by John Torres is a film about gestures, and a gesture per se. Examining the celluloid spirits trapped in the void of the post-colonial past, Torres is rather sceptic when it comes to re-writing history. On the most fragile medium he brings to life the underdeveloped shadows of Filipino cinema, with all political implications involved in this act of redemption, only to look with compassion and sadness at the result. The last feature of Jan Němec is a similar take on existential checks and balances that flows like a literary mystification. Released post-mortem, THE WOLF FROM ROYAL VINEYARD STREET / VLK Z KRÁLOVSKÝCH VINOHRAD (2016) gets even with the Czech New Wave, the French New Wave, festivals, the USA, Trump, and “the left-wing fools.” Footage of Jean-Luc Godard cutting the screen in Cannes in 1968 prompts for parallel with Mark Cousins smashing his DCP with an axe. The medium is no longer the message but the messenger to be shot in order to start a proper revolution. Enter Kafka and the counter-revolution.

If you are a film industry professional, you can watch titles from IFFR's Bright Future selection on Festival Scope

[pcktknife]

What D&D classes would the agents be?

i actually mentioned them in the tags of a separate post!

agent/capn 3 - dwarven monk

agent 8 - kenku fighter

agent 4 - dragonborn sorcerer

neo 3 - human or half orc druid