Unknown Armies

Is the very first edition worth checking out?

It's barely distinguishable from the second. The only thing the book has on it is sample characters in the end (which honestly, I don't know why they didn't add to the second as an afterthought or something). Most of the text is literally identical, there's just less of it (portions of the 2nd edition core book are actually bits and pieces of supplements for the first one, in addition to original material).

Unless you are a truly hardcore fan and want to read it all just so you could say that you did, it's very, very hard to find an excuse to read the 1s edition core book.

(the supplements have plenty of neat stuff in them, though, even if some of it is in the 2nd edition core).

Thanks for the quick answer!

Who's got cool new ideas for Rooms of Renunciation?

unnaturalphenomena.com/wp/?p=2822

This may be relevant to your interests, although as you stated here they specifically deal with the symbolic qualities of the sun, not light itself.

The Cult of Crossfit

The Shores of Placidity

Description: A cramped family photo center that looks like it could have been in the back of a supermarket. The walls are crudely painted to resemble the beach fronts that were closest to wherever you grew up. The photo stage is plain ol' velvet curtains and a modest, if not stylish, chair. The camera is a late 19th century dry plate-style camera.

The Renunciation: When you sit in the chair, the eldest of the Barbershop Trio takes your picture and then reveals it to you. The picture will be of a younger you with a family you don't recognize, inside a living room that wasn't yours. You are convinced that was your childhood. A faux nostalgia washes over you causing you to cry. The youngest of the Barbershop Trio will hand you a handkerchief. You lose half-round up of your hardened notches and half-round up of your failed notches. The middling member will hold open the door for you as you leave. Your new, false childhood memories may actually be of a real family and a real house that exists somewhere or may be a complete fabrication.

Agents: The Shores of Placidity have three agents at any given time. Each are finely dressed in red and white-striped suits and hats. Each adorned with a mustache, real or fake. When a new agent is adopted into the room, the senior member is led out of the room and awakes somewhere where they felt powerless regardless of real or false history. I new agent is adopted if, when handed the handkerchief, they refuse to give it back to the youngest member. They now keep it and are fitted into their own barbershop trio uniform. The agents rarely, if ever, leave the room.

What's its purpose? What aspect of the human condition does it exist to reverse?

Fuck if I know. From what I remember of the Library of Discord, its renunciations are mostly superficial so I didn't think every room needed to reverse the human condition on any deep level. If you have any suggestions to make it better then I am all ears.

Oh Jesus, don't tell me you're going by the third edition? The third edition fucked up the House of Renunciation to all oblivion. Barely any of the rooms there fit the themes explicitly stated for it before. They're bland, samey and uninspired. It's like four different variations on "take Adepts and show them magic is bad, wooooo~"

Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Statosphere. It's one of the best UA supplements ever and the House of Renunciation is a far too amazing concept to let rot with the lackluster 3e.

I was going off UA3. Off the top pf my head, only the Chapel of Mirrors was about that and I actually really like that one. I'm kinda foolish because I actually didn't care for the Library of Discord, yet that was what I was going off of. I'll workshop the Shores of Placidity but it was mainly an exercise to see if I could quickly spit one out.

Sort of. The 3e makes it very vague compared to previous ones. Originally, yes the idea of the House of Renunciation was that each Room is dedicated to reversing one aspect of the human condition. The examples we were given:

The Room of True Penitence. Takes the guilty and releases them from their burdens as it takes the guiltless and fills them with regret.

The Room of Upheaval. Takes stagnant political figures and fills them with the desire to change the world.

The Otherside Room. Takes those who loudly profess false beliefs and either forces them to truly accept them or cast off their pretense.

The Room of Cold Reflection. Takes those who callously cast aside people to achieve their ambitions and makes them mellow and humble.

The Room of the Heart's Burden Lifted. Takes those unsatisfied with their lot in life and grants them a new one.

The Room of Ignorance. Takes those who believe in the virtues of civilization and technology and makes them embrace life as an animal.

The Room of Rusted Things. Takes the apathetic and replaces their lack of care with fiery passion.

Latter supplements have narrowed the concept down, explaining that the House isn't so much about reversal as about "change". Its purpose is to make things as far away as possible from what they presently are. That's why its main purpose in the cosmos is to reverse fallen archetypes.

Then came 3e. The House of Renunciation, eh... convinces adepts that magic is bad.

that sounds assholish

>The Room of Rusted Things. Takes the apathetic and replaces their lack of care with fiery passion.
that sounds nice.
take me there user.

>The Room of the Heart's Burden Lifted. Takes those unsatisfied with their lot in life and grants them a new one.
this also sounds good.
except it will probably make me an untouchable in india or something ironic

>Go into room
>feel nothing
>whatajip.jpg
>walk outside
>get framed for crime you didn't do
>"wtf? this is outrageous!"

Trust me, you don't want to go there. The common theme to just about every Room of Renunciation is that they aren't nice. Most are horrific hellscapes where you are tortured beyond reality until your ego turns inside out. The one that comes anywhere remotely close to being "nice" is the Room of the Heart's Burden Lifted, but that's precisely because it tends to target people so desperate any change at all would improve their lives. It's where a person about to commit suicide because they feel like they can't win they decades long struggle with alcoholism goes in and emerges as a day laborer in Dubai where alcohol is illegal.

I feel overwhelmed by many of these things.

I just fear the inevitable monkeys paw.

I guess there should be a sign outside that says, "You must be in this much existential despair to enter"

Greg Stolze actually made it very clear in a forum post years ago: the Rooms of Renunciation are amoral. Not immoral, amoral. They are beneath and beyond morality. The House of Renunciation does not care about good or evil. It has neither compassion nor cruelty. It doesn't want people to be better or worse off.

It only wants to reverse them. It wants change. Whatever the cost, for good or bad. It will turn a murderer into a saint - and it will turn a saint into a murderer. Both are equally worthy in the eyes of the House.

yeah, but none the less the net effects could be either good or bad. I'm just afraid that like most nuetral things, it will take the path of least (cosmic) resistance and you will always end up worse than when you started cause entropy seems to be the current paradigm we are running in.

If you are an american teenager, then you are objectively a terrible person and bad things will probably happen to you.

Subjective opinions of yourself don't really factor into your karma. We can't really know who holds the scales and how they choose to judge us.

That would be an interesting experiment, tracking people who enter the rooms and seeing if their net change is more positive or negative. It would reveal any innate bias, you'd basically be acting as a celestial censor for the heavenly bureaucracy.

I mean, after all, whats the point of correcting a spiritual imbalance if there is no accountability?

The Primrose Room: A place where those who are content with standing on the sidelines and keeping to themselves become hungry for attention and recognition.

The Room of Howling Stillness: Makes people who shun human company and makes them crave connection.

(these two have an uneasy relationship, they have similar Agendas so on the one hand they usually agree but on the other they compete for the same Renunciations)

The Room of Broken Birds: A horrific room where those so consumed by nostalgia they cannot make the most of the present come to hate everything about their pasts so that they can only hope for the future.

but then thats just me, trying to force order onto everything. Maybe its just a gamble, you throw the dice and take your chances.

But it would be nice to know the odds.

>Then came 3e. The House of Renunciation, eh... convinces adepts that magic is bad.

To be fair, for most adepts, this is a huge change from what they believe in.

the odds are unknowable. You buys your ticket and you take your chances.

And given what I know about the universe, I would probably opt out.

In the Room of Sensation, hedonists whose lives are wasted chasing external stimuli become ascetics who care only for what's within.

Across the House is the equally feared Room of Numbness, where the self-absorbed and self-denying learn that the point of life is to experience as many pains and pleasures as possible.

A room where those who enjoy only the routine and familiar become fanatical xenophiles who only wish to find out new things (to an unhealthy degree, because it's the House of Renunciation).

I'm so glad they were able to preserve everything from the previous iteration. I was proud of some of the stuff I made there.

Which things are yours?

The Room Board or the Board Room. The idea of cosmic statisticians pontificating over an uncaring series of pocket dimensions is pleasing to me.

I dunno, I feel like it kind of diminishes the House of Renunciation. It's supposed to be like a force of nature. It's as fundamental to the cosmos as the Invisible Clergy or the Cruel Ones (if not more so, given that the Archetypes come and go but the House is always there to see them out...). It has an agenda, but not a guiding principle. Nobody's running it, nobody's in charge, and nobody's supervising what it does. It simply is.

I find it amusing that you think so.
I had this idea that people with Dynamic Avatars were always pursuing formlessness and flirting with entropy. Its nice to know even they crave a bit of stability.

Or are you simply amused at the irony of the sissiphean task of trying to know the unknowable.

>Invisible Clergy
I'll never understand this.
I'll never understand my aversion to it.
It seems like a quick and easy way to power.

Sometimes I wonder if I am being moral or traditional, and ofttimes I can hardly tell the difference.

I used to have a profound personal set of ethics. Now I am seeing that many of my revelations have come to others before me. I don't think it makes it any less unique, (we are all special snowflakes, after all) just that I may be wrong.

I guess without doubt, there would be no triumph in faith. (Even if that faith is in yourself)

I should've been more clear. The Room Board, in my eyes, would be just a group of schlubbish former accountants, statisticians, and auditors who have all have heard of the House and are fascinated by nothing other than crunching numbers on a cosmic unknowable to justify some weird moralizing theories on said cosmic unknowable.

The latter

Oh, that's fine then. I thought you meant it was literally a part of the House. If it's a concept for a Cabal that's actually pretty funny.

I don't always enjoy the unity like I used to. Sometimes I crave to be separate. Which is kind of like saying I crave others to be different, since I do not feel like I am the one who should change.

I am tired of changing. I seek permanence in my self. I had many things I wanted to do and to be, and I've spread myself too thinly, trying to be all things at once.

There are just some things I am not. There are some things that I don't want to be. Sometimes I think I'd rather just not be anything, that being aware of being, is.. futility.

Right. Not a room, per say.
Other in the sense that you can not leave

You notice as you work, you sleep less and less.
You notice that sometimes random people will drop by and bring food and coffee. When asked who placed the order, they will space. When who payed the bill, they will say, "I don't know." When asked for a receipt..

Many a young syndie has thought to work under more honest auspices, simply to possess the receipt and track its owner

but is it a house of renounciation?
No. It does not change ones fundamental nature.

What are you calling the villians these days?
The supernals?

Well, I refer to them as the NWO. I exist in a separate branch, called the Syndicate. Feel free to disagree if you like.

We are two sides of the same coin. We both crave order, but we also crave risk.

The syndicate understands that we must tolerate a little disorder to make life palatable. We know of things like the Giovani Banking Houses and their families cruel practices, or Italian Banking families going back generations.

The truth is, not many people in the world ask us permission before extending their own form of credit. You can't stop people from lending money and charging interest.

We do our best to regulate it. We come up with things like capital requirements and debt/equity ratios for banks. They ignore us. All around the world they ignore us.

If you think American businesses do business unfairly, you should see how it is in the rest of the world.

So if I bounce a check now and then, who is going to stop me? Are they going to ruin my credit rating? I don't even exist in their database.

You want a black AMEX? a credit card with unlimited funds? I've been trying to get rid of it. Most people can't handle it. They aren't frugal enough.

Would a regular /UAG/ be possible or is it just too niche for tg?

You see, a electronic pen pal of mine created an account that doesn't exist. Nobody knows where it came from, only that the account has priority. The way the corporate charter is written, they have no way of getting rid of it.

Do you know how hard it is filtering those millions down to the level of basic sundries? Have you ever been charged twenty dollars for a bar of soap? Been forced to use toxic hair care products because you have no other way of authorizing an expenditure to a billion dollar account?

People say that once a thing is old, it doesn't exist.

For instance. The illuminati.

Who is to say who is illuminati and who isn't? If I say I am illuminati, who is there to stop me? If I say I am from mason branch 404 and show up at a lodge meeting, who is going to check my records? If I say I am descended from a long line of roman emperors, who dares call me mad?

If I and a group of people say we are illuminati, then we are illuminati. If a man shows up with badge, black tie, black suit, black sunglasses, and a gun, are you going to argue with them?

Start by keeping one thread alive to the bump limit. I don't think anyone's managed that in a very long time.

Well, it comes dangerously close to namefagging to say, doesn't it? But since you asked:

Owl Mail: unnaturalphenomena.com/wp/?p=3277

Styrofoam Sentinel: unnaturalphenomena.com/wp/?p=3219

Death on the Screen: unnaturalphenomena.com/wp/?p=3150

As well as a few links to news stories I thought would serve as story fodder. Jesus, it was 2006/2007 when I wrote that stuff. One of the links was about Polaroid ceasing production and what that might mean, mystically. Oddly enough, now that sort of photography is more popular than ever.

Ha, I remember the SS. I had an encounter with one lined up for a one-shot a few years back that fell through. I know 3e has a Trash Golem described in the rumor book, but there's a certain style the Styrofoam Sentinel has that makes it just the right amount of weird.

Hey, thanks. I know I'll use it one day too. It's just too...disconcerting not to.