MU Podcast 029 - Achtung Underground

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cjearkham
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Re: MU Podcast 029 - Achtung Underground

Post by cjearkham » Wed May 08, 2013 1:05 pm

I want to take issue with @JMAbrassart's statement that Ubbo-Sathla is in the Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign. While I haven't read the campaign cover to cover, I do at least own it, and I have read the section where Ubbo would mostly likely be mentioned, and it's not there. Also, Ubbo is not mentioned in the Index at all. Details of a fuller counter-argument are under spoiler tags, so as to hide campaign revelations from those who may hope to play in it.

I think the person has confused the Unknown God of the campaign with Ubbo-Sathla, possibly for a number of reasons.

1) Ubbo is supposed to dwell somewhere at the South Pole region. The campaign's Unknown God is also found at the South Pole region.
2) The Unknown God sheds "animiculi" or "seeds", as Ubbo-Sathla spawns offspring.
3) The animiculi are black, plastic blobby things, resembling Ubbo-Sathla.

But here's why the Unknown God is not U-S.

1) According to Mythos lore, Ubbo-Sathla came into this universe first, then brought Earth with it. The Unknown God was simply the latest of many entities the Elder Things lured to Earth, so Earth existed long before the Unknown God appeared at the Pole. (As the Malleus states, Ubbo's story is probably romanticized. I suspect the truth is something like this: Ubbo-Sathla came into this universe at the point in Sol's orbit where Earth now lies, and the Earth accreted around Ubbo.)
2) Ubbo-Sathla can be seen, through the Crystal of Zon Mezzamalech, to be dwelling in the grey-litten cavern of Y'qaa, where it spawns its brood. The Unknown God is trapped in a singularity known as the Cold Hole, where all motion has stopped. While one might make the point that the first is a romantization of the second, that seems to me to be a matter of modifying the evidence to fit your theory. Every Mythos source clearly treats Y'qaa as a physical place underground.
3) In Beyond, the animiculi are "flakes" of the Unknown God, which are shed into the Antarctic cold, where they lie still and frozen, looking like black stones. Up until the events of the campaign, there's no indication that any of the animiculi have ever left that area, and the campaign clearly states that, if the animiculi do get out, Earth is doomed. According to Clark Ashton Smith, Ubbo's brood clearly move and have gotten out. (This is more speculation, but when HPL says the Elder Things are shown as being afraid of an unseen something which has washed down from the Mountains of Madness, I like to think it was a particularly horrible, but fortunately dead, offspring of Ubbo.)
4) Along this line, the campaign says the Elder Things know what the animiculi are and are collecting them to drop them back into the Cold Hole. Knowing how dangerous they are, it seems unlikely they would use them, or any cast-off of the Unknown God, as the source of their shoggoth tissue. It makes more sense to assume that they had another source for shoggoth tissue -- assuming that is Ubbo, Ubbo-Sathla is therefore not the Unknown God. Even if it turns out that they didn't get proto-shoggoth tissue from Ubbo but developed it themselves, since the shoggoths are their servant class, they would have had to have had shoggoths long before they build the God Trap that brought the Unknown God to Earth.
5) Merely spawning shapeless offspring is not a unique enough feature to assume two entities which do it are the same entity under different names. Abhoth also does this, but Gary Myers to the contrary, Abhoth and Ubbo-Sathla are not the same. Similarly, the black blobby "formless spawn of Tsathoggua" presumably come from Tsathoggua, and no one's claiming Tsathoggua and Ubbo-Sathla are the same.
6) Finally, if the Engans had intended the Unknown God to be Ubbo-Sathla, they would have said so. It's not like Ubbo was unknown at the time they wrote the campaign.
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Re: MU Podcast 029 - Achtung Underground

Post by Dr. Gerard » Wed May 08, 2013 6:06 pm

cjearkham wrote:I want to take issue with @JMAbrassart's statement that Ubbo-Sathla is in the Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign. While I haven't read the campaign cover to cover, I do at least own it, and I have read the section where Ubbo would mostly likely be mentioned, and it's not there. Also, Ubbo is not mentioned in the Index at all. Details of a fuller counter-argument are under spoiler tags, so as to hide campaign revelations from those who may hope to play in it.

I think the person has confused the Unknown God of the campaign with Ubbo-Sathla, possibly for a number of reasons.

1) Ubbo is supposed to dwell somewhere at the South Pole region. The campaign's Unknown God is also found at the South Pole region.
2) The Unknown God sheds "animiculi" or "seeds", as Ubbo-Sathla spawns offspring.
3) The animiculi are black, plastic blobby things, resembling Ubbo-Sathla.

But here's why the Unknown God is not U-S.

1) According to Mythos lore, Ubbo-Sathla came into this universe first, then brought Earth with it. The Unknown God was simply the latest of many entities the Elder Things lured to Earth, so Earth existed long before the Unknown God appeared at the Pole. (As the Malleus states, Ubbo's story is probably romanticized. I suspect the truth is something like this: Ubbo-Sathla came into this universe at the point in Sol's orbit where Earth now lies, and the Earth accreted around Ubbo.)
2) Ubbo-Sathla can be seen, through the Crystal of Zon Mezzamalech, to be dwelling in the grey-litten cavern of Y'qaa, where it spawns its brood. The Unknown God is trapped in a singularity known as the Cold Hole, where all motion has stopped. While one might make the point that the first is a romantization of the second, that seems to me to be a matter of modifying the evidence to fit your theory. Every Mythos source clearly treats Y'qaa as a physical place underground.
3) In Beyond, the animiculi are "flakes" of the Unknown God, which are shed into the Antarctic cold, where they lie still and frozen, looking like black stones. Up until the events of the campaign, there's no indication that any of the animiculi have ever left that area, and the campaign clearly states that, if the animiculi do get out, Earth is doomed. According to Clark Ashton Smith, Ubbo's brood clearly move and have gotten out. (This is more speculation, but when HPL says the Elder Things are shown as being afraid of an unseen something which has washed down from the Mountains of Madness, I like to think it was a particularly horrible, but fortunately dead, offspring of Ubbo.)
4) Along this line, the campaign says the Elder Things know what the animiculi are and are collecting them to drop them back into the Cold Hole. Knowing how dangerous they are, it seems unlikely they would use them, or any cast-off of the Unknown God, as the source of their shoggoth tissue. It makes more sense to assume that they had another source for shoggoth tissue -- assuming that is Ubbo, Ubbo-Sathla is therefore not the Unknown God. Even if it turns out that they didn't get proto-shoggoth tissue from Ubbo but developed it themselves, since the shoggoths are their servant class, they would have had to have had shoggoths long before they build the God Trap that brought the Unknown God to Earth.
5) Merely spawning shapeless offspring is not a unique enough feature to assume two entities which do it are the same entity under different names. Abhoth also does this, but Gary Myers to the contrary, Abhoth and Ubbo-Sathla are not the same. Similarly, the black blobby "formless spawn of Tsathoggua" presumably come from Tsathoggua, and no one's claiming Tsathoggua and Ubbo-Sathla are the same.
6) Finally, if the Engans had intended the Unknown God to be Ubbo-Sathla, they would have said so. It's not like Ubbo was unknown at the time they wrote the campaign.
I totally agree, and this thorough post is wicked cool. I saw the same thing in BTMOM, that there are stats for animiculi and plot points surrounding them. I feel like we should mention this next time we mention U-S. Not to start a flame war, but to present a good case and because it's just good fun to talk about monsters.
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Re: MU Podcast 029 - Achtung Underground

Post by Shannon Mac » Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:56 am

Enjoyable podcast.

I am playing Achtung with a new Keeper at the end of June. :cthulhudance:
My gaming blog with pretty pictures: http://www.storytellersjem.blogspot.com/

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