In year 3486...

>which one would scare you shitless?
The one which would lead me to damnation.

DEUS VULT

Sounds good to me. I like the idea of Humanity being caught in a crossfire of extermination.

>Either die
>Or sell your soul for your love ones to live

Either way in this Humanity is just a small pawn

Yes, especially if I can attract the attentions of a cyber succubus who'll help me become Space Pope on the grounds that I not perform an important spiritual duty in my lifetime while still allowing me to strengthen the church in other areas.

Sylvester II had the right idea even if he was a kinky french bastard.

This sounds like Darksiders In Spaaaaaaace, which I am totally down for.

>Darksiders In Spaaaaaaace
Welp, better go flying through my kitchen cabinets to look as over designed as possible!

I think Drabblecast had some recurring stories in a setting like this. Mankind advanced in their understanding of science and the eldritch to the point where they could traverse space and mostly avoid the lovecraftian perils of the void, almost on par with the Mi-Go, while Earth itself was wrapped up in the kind of end times that see Cthulhu rising and devouring all those on the surface.

So Earth is a horrorscape and generally a no-fly-zone until it cools down in centuries or millennia and mankind is surviving pretty well in space with a few other star-faring races and the stranger eldritch creatures which inhabit the void and the nearer dimensions.

Shut your fucking mouth

Darksiders is gold

Never said it was bad, but War looks like he dresses by wearing everything in his closet at the same time.

Conversely Death looks like he robbed a Hot Topic and stole only blankets and trip pants.

>tfw no sequel where a quippy black humour Strife has to get his guns back

Can I rally humanity behind my back and destroy these supernatural foes who brought death and destruction upon my people in

>tfw this is my setting but without ayys

the bussard ramjet does solve the issue of carrying fuel letting you constantly accelerate until you have to start deceleration at the halfway point which would let you go a lot faster.

No it's not true. Turns out bussard ramjet has a fairly low top speed (but still several % of C, like 7%C or something) because in scooping up the hydrogen the magnetic scoop create drag on the ship, and since fusing hydrogen is rather inefficient there is a point were power released from fusing hydrogen only just cancels out the drag from picking up that hydrogen in the first place and the ramjet reaches its top speed.

You can increase the speed by a lot by carrying fuel on your ship (say anti-matter) and use the scooped up hydrogen for only propellant, that is you further heat the hydrogen and shoot it up the back without a fusion stage to slow it down. This miminises the drag at the cost of having to carry the fuel onboard.

I don't think that's the point of the setting. The way I imagined it, these extradimensional creatures are so far beyond the scope of mortal reckoning that expelling them from this reality is almost impossible, especially since humanity doesn't have FTL travel or their biggest guns without the magic unobtainium provided by both sides. Imagine Angels are a bit like the Vorlon.. You shot Archangel Michael with a battlecruiser-class singularity cannon? Great job, he'll take a week to scrape himself back together from all over the known space, but when he does, he's fucking mad.

I'm not sure if I should play this straight and dark, or go full pulp and just play the setting like it was a comic book.

>God is literally standing across the street surrounded by an army of angels roaring like thunder as they sing his praises
>I will organize a resistance because I don't believe in him!

Why is there always at least one fedora wanting to shit up these settings with their bullshit? No, you can't rally humanity behind your back anymore then you can rally humanity behind the goal of fighting gravity.

I'm not a fedora but there killing my people over a petty argument to them and I can't let that happen

To fucking bad.

>God is a petty tyrant who creates sentient beings for the sole purpose of worshipping him.

No thanks. I rather bleed for my free will.

>bowing to an inhuman God
If man is not God, than we shall artifice our own.

no not to fucking bad.
Just because he's god doesn't mean he automatically deserves our respect or worship.
If he's being a malevolent dick then he deserves to be punished.

>something something by definition God is perfectly good just and moral and attempting to impose human ethical standards upon His standards is the height of hubris
t. christslave

in that case this "god" is just a pretender and should be opposed.
In either case fighting him is the just and morally good thing to do.

It doesn't help that between the Apocalypse of John (which Luther wanted to remove from Canon) and Milton's Paradise Lost (which has a lot of influence on early modern and later perceptions of the Apocalypse and piles on that literally turning Satan into Prometheus), it's really obvious which side would be taken by most.

The fact that so much of the whole theological edifice was meant as a representation of the ideal world to the people who wrote it (i.e. absolute monarchy led by an unquestioned king) is part of the problem of religion ultimately being created by men applying their own prejudice to the concept of the divine.

>something something you can't know God and attempting to pass judgement upon Him, citing Him as a pretender, is mortal hubris

It's actually been a position of some opponents of the whole mess of theological justifications of absolute rule since the middle ages.

If this is the world god wants, then as king above all kings, god is as unworthy of worship and obedience as any other king.

It's a slightly gnostic view.

if he's not being good then he can't be the real God can he. Because God is only perfectly good.

And we're back too
>something something the human notion of good is not necessarily God's notion of perfectly good, and to imply that man's good is greater than God's good is hubris

Except it isn't. It's the world man chose. We were given free will and we chose to sin.

Yeah, I know the typical theologian's response to the problem of evil.

The fact that they haven't come up with anything better, and that it took centuries to even have a response to Epicurius, isn't actually a plus for religion, and I'm saying that as an agnostic.

Yeah that works for adults. But if a 3 year old gets lukemia thats gods choice. They're too young to have sinned.

which means were also at god is an underlserving cock goblin.

I know we're going in circles but every step is one where we should oppose this "god" fellow.

The point is that there's really no arguing against an entity whose very essence is the definition of "perfect good". You can only argue against this if you reject the concept of that entity entirely.

Except it's only true if there is a proper response to the problem of evil.

When your response to it is literally "The black death happened because humans are allowed to sin" it's retarded.

I mean to be fair the fact that these beings even have to bother with things like spaceships and battles seems to suggest they don't possess literal godly power? Like I don't know a whole lot about the Rapture and stuff but all these 'angels' and 'demons' just being super-advanced extraterrestrial dickbags doesn't seem like that ridiculous of a possibility.

Ok, if you actually know about Christian theology can you please enlighten me on this:
Doesn't the first sin come when Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? And if so, doesn't evil not come from free will since knowledge of it existed before humans had ever sinned?

I like it.
Could use more mystical factions

This guy gets me.

Guys, guys...getting away from the crazy space battles here...

Yes. Pen and paper or miniature I would totally play this.

Sounds like mongoose's infernum broke out of hell and is now guzzling loads of HFY style sour cream while the salvation war on audio book plays in the background.

TAKE OUR MONEY!!

Yeah but what system?

But 3468 is a more random year because it doesn't end in a 0 or a 5!

I'm 100 percent sure OP didn't mention aliens.

>captcha is 1666

As long as you don't have some dumb plot twist in which the aliens and demons are just aliens in a long-standing war, I'm down.

F T L
T
L

Remove the Christcuckery and make it Ragnarok instead.

My favourite part of the salvation wars

The pope excommunicating god.

>Powerful mystical beings vastly superior to us are in a war with each other
>Somehow both sides of the fight decide at the same time that the obviously inferior humans are the key to victory

Overall sounds good but this is making my autism senses tingle.

>God makes man in His image
>His Son comes to Earth as a man

???

Stolen, with a little work.

Needs a system, but there are plenty to choose from that would fit.

Needs plenty of expansion on the lore.

Needs human factions. Specifically multiple factions on each side, plus an in-between or two so independents and deserters/spies from both sides can party together.

Also ship/station/colony designs, weapons,(power)armor, misc gear and the like. All with variations themed for both sides. As well as some entirely human made stuff that's possibly cheaper but less advanced. So true haters of god and demons can fanatically avoid godly/demonic gear to their own detriment (Ignoring the fact that it's mostly just crudely reverse-engineered godly/demonic gear for HFY purposes.)

Any ideas along these lines?

youtube.com/watch?v=Ew01FGfOZdE

I'd have to ask: have you thought your cosmology all the way through?

Because my recurring bad experience with this sort of thing is that the DM hasn't thought his cosmology all the way through, he's imported pop culture theology, and then fedoras, autists and theologians all come together to point out that pop culture MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE if you try to use it for theology rather than just playing murderhobo with a couple of new monsters involved.

> as hulking, armoured forms of demons board enemy ships

Case in point, why the fuck are there hulking, armoured forms of demons? Did you borrow them from Hinduism or something? (asuras) Because I'm pretty sure you didn't get them from Christianity, even if you've thrown some Christian trappings over the setting.

I'm not necessarily asking to know all the backstory, if the campaign is supposed to involve discovering it, but I ask that there be a coherent one - and this doesn't look like one so far. This looks more like "what if numbers became physical creatures and the odd numbers began fighting the even numbers and humans were invited to pick sides", an idea that is going to fall apart if I start picking at it.

No

They use to humans to vastly expand their armies give them supernatural assistance and we'd be pretty useful

The point isn't that either side "needs" humans, rather than the fight for humanity. Maybe due to a clerical error, Rapture began only after mankind has been scattered across the stars, which makes the uplifting of believers a long and arduous process, especially with the whole bunch of people who just aren't fitting to the gold standard of the angelic host. It's not a war over resources, territory or anything logical like that, it's a war for the soul of humanity. That's how I see it.

I think "redeemed demons, fallen angels" thing would be out of place. Humans have to pick sides, whether they like it or not, because both sides are massive and immense in their power, and they don't care if you don't want to be a part of the conflict. It's the End Time, you don't get to have a time out.

The whole aesthetic I had in mind comes from the fact that I imagine demons are fallen angels who rebelled against god. The fall broke their forms as much as their wings, which is why they have to possess things to have a fighting chance - and instead of possessing weak humans, they instead assume direct control of war machines and powerful armoured shells that let them wreak havoc on a whole different scale.

The evil comes from the fact that Satan managed to convince Eve that God was being rhetorical. Thus, she had no problem eating it. Then she convinced Adam to do so, convincing him it was rhetorical when he was explicitly told not to eat it. The belief is that Adam did a shit job of telling his woman that God was literal, and that he then decided he knew what was up, thus causing the sin

> they have to possess things to have a fighting chance - and instead of possessing weak humans, [demons] instead assume direct control of war machines and powerful armoured shells that let them wreak havoc on a whole different scale.

Oh, that's clever, I like that.

You might also want to crib from Space Trilogy for ideas, which has the conceit that the great emptiness and vastness of space around Earth was a sort of planetary quarantine for a fallen world.

Or The Great Divorce, where an angel grabs a fragment of a man's personality and asks (the rest of) the man: "This is wicked. May I kill it?" and then man shudders in fear both at the thought of having the angel kill part of him if he says "yes", and what the angel might do instead if he says "no". Seems in line with the sort of thing going on here.

The point of the Rapture is the war for the souls of humankind, that is the only objective of either side. If the galaxy burns in the process than oh-fucking-well, it's not important

>that pic
That's the kinda talk that gets a species split apart into two distinct genders

AFAIK, there is no official Christian stance on whether evil comes from free will. It's a commonly suggested response to the problem of evil, sure, but it's not written into the theology.

Other Christian responses to what's up with evil include biting the bullet on Epicurus's first branch (God is not omnipotent, OK, still a superpotent creator, does this change all that much?) or saying that God sends evil to train us: you can't exercise courage unless you're in danger, which means there has to be danger, which means something out for your blood.

There's no consensus, and this is all a little academic, though. Christianity is more about the call to repentance and the response to evil, not the roots of evil. To borrow a mixed metaphor from Buddhism, when you take an arrow to the knee, you work on getting to cover and fixing your knee first, finding out who is shooting at you and why takes a lower priority.

This is actually the plot to my current game, kind of. Except God and Satan are ancient aliens, and humanity is still on earth in a neae future, using the harnessed powers of.mystical creatures in suits of power armor like Kamen Riders to fight Angels sent by Michael the archangel to destroy human civilization because our radio signals and em radiation is breaking the divisionary field that shields earth from both the mystical world as well as Earth from a larger, more hostile universe (the milky way is in a reality bubble placed by God to shield us from hostile forces while we evolve)

Also God is actually the devil and the devil is actually the old testament God and also Michael. It's wierd.

My character is a unicorn.

But don't forget that before they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, humans don't know that what God said was rhetoric or not until the Devil lied to them. And they only knew they were tricked after they ate.
Ignorance is bliss, they say. But I don't miss Paradise, because I know us humans can create a better one on earth.

I like the Possession idea, but almost everything else in this post may be something of a hindrance to actual RP to some extent.

You've declared the universe 100% Black and White, and then taken away any idea that going with Black would be desirable to more than a fractional minority. Without the attractive Antichrist-ish aesthetic here and here the demonic side is just a bunch of murder-mo-trons, and how does that appeal to anyone other than a tiny minority of total psychotics?

Also, the idea that there can never be any factions aside from Black and White discards any notion of human nature and and reduces humanity to a resource, a simple soul-point counter. I don't know about you but if someone tells me there are 2 sides and both are about turning me people into cannon fodder to take the hits for them while they line up a broadside, I'm churning the old brain-gears fast and hard for a 3rd, 'fuck you both' option.

Not trying to tear your idea down, I really like it. I'm just trying to pose the questions that may come up in actual play. If it's one side or the other, I'd never get anyone to play it. I know for sure my group would be dead locked 50/50 in a vote for which side to play as, so a way to do both is absolutely needed. Such as rebelling against both.

So... basically that guy's one novel where humanity kicks both Hell and Heaven's ass? Just recycled in SPACE

Not OP, and in fact I hate nearly everything about his idea, but sometimes a plot is more compelling when one side is just pure evil, or has goals so misaligned with most people as to be purely antagonistic. Pic related.

I didn't say that an Antichrist figure wouldn't be present, or that Hell would be reduced to single-minded murderbots. What I said that to keep the conflict cosmic and ageless, there would be no "good demons, bad angels" thing going on. Sides were chosen long, long ago and this is just the end game, it's too late to switch trains now. Both sides will definitely have nuance, internal politics and complexity, but "redeemed succubus wat do" has no place here.

And while I said that humanity has to pick sides, I didn't mean that bands of renegades couldn't exist, or go-between smugglers and so forth that play both sides - there is just no hope of humanity conquering both sides. It's not possible and even though it's human nature to rebel and there certainly would be individuals and groups that would, it's a hopeless, doomed ambition.

>put people who can't tell they're being lied to
>next to the most accomplished liar in existence

That's like putting a chimpanzee in charge of the Big Red Button that launches your nukes.

Technically, the chimp pressed the button. But you REALLY should have seen that coming and instead put someone /not stupid/ in charge.

>you don't get to have a time-out

Well, I mean I could always just not get out of the cryo-pod on the off-course sleeper ship right?

REMOVE JOHJ

You cheeky cunt.

I do get it, and see it as valid, but I suppose I have just come to prefer a different approach.
Ahh, Perhaps I should have been more clear about the idea of 3rd party deserter types. I was thinking more along the lines of humans who were pressed into service for one side or the other becoming less enthusiastic one they realize their 'Cause of Righteousness" involves more slaughtering of other humans than demon slaying. I'm cool with a hopeless cause in between the sides. I just know there are at least 2 players in my group who would only play one side, and they would be opposite for sure. Letting them be former human members of their preferred side in a doomed rebellion seems like a decent compromise, and a damn fun conflict to RP.

Dualism is a pretty good resolution to the conflict. There's a perfect good, and a perfect evil, and their conflict is why good and bad things happen out of the control of human beings.

Yes user, we're both aware of the song. It's a very good song.

>>These are the End Times.
AND THERE IS ONLY ONE DUDE BAD ENOUGH TO DEFEAT BOTH HEAVEN AND HELL.
BEHOLD!

youtube.com/watch?v=IcUBI-YVRY8

That is what sin is. It is not an act of wickedness or pure malevolence, it is, at its core, the thought "I know better than God."

They were told not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, but they did anyway because they, if even for a moment, thought their plans were better than his.

Sin is a choice. Hell is not a place you are cast into as punishment, it is a place you choose to go to, because you have been given the freewill to decide for yourself if you wish to partake of God's plan for you, or try to make your own. Most people choose to make their own, and that leads to the evils of the world.

Your statement that man can make a paradise better than the garden is itself inherently evil. It is quite literally the core of all evil thought and actions.

>"supposedly", despite the mind of god being utterly inhuman
>a deceitful trick

And if we decide it to be good, then why is that bad?