Need Help Brainstorming How A Xenophobic Empire Can Arise

[Oversquid]

I know I keep coming here constantly with questions, but thats what these forums are for, yes?

First off, my campaign is of a D&D style, but thats not the important thing, what is important is that I get ideas on how a Xenophobic Empire can arise from an existing one.

So what I want is for an enormous metropolis that houses the seat of many of the leaders of the deities, a city that has the most diverse population of races, and has the most prestigious university of both the sciences, languages, magic, psionics, engineering, etc. to turn into a city that banishes the worship of deities, believes that humans are superior to all other races, and that ultimately turns to a view of extreme scientific analysis of the universe, to find the nature of magic, psionics, the soul, natural phenomena, etc.

What I expect from such an empire is one that enacts atrocities to all non-humans, and will go through an engineering/industrial revolution in an attempt to find the magic behind magic, the biological basis of psionics, and the origin of all souls.

This new empire will believe themselves to be the heirs of the universe.

My question to you of EN-World, is how do I make this transition work without being clunky?

I did do research on Nazi Germany already, but the context in which Nazi Germany was founded off of seems to be very different from the empire that I want to see.

How do I get the people to distrust the gods, and do away with them? And in my game, gods are real existing things.

How do I get the humans to believe themselves superior to all others that live? Up from accepting all shapes and sizes within the walls of their city.

How do I get the people to turn to finding the nature of the universe, beyond magic, beyond the gods, and beyond the powers of the mind and soul when before they stopped at that and did with that?

So, help!

 

[Umbran]

Disaster.

You have an enormous metropolis? Sure. But there was a bigger metropolis, probably the previous capitol, and now it is gone. Those 'deities" didn't do anything to stop it. It was done by magic, by non-humans. Probably through sacrifice of souls, or the like.

Simple, blunt, but effective.

 

[Celebrim]

The first thing you have to realize is "assume xenophobia". The case of a cosmopolitan empire is in fact the unusual one that needs explanation. People are xenophobic by default; probably because they realize their neighbors really are out to get them. It requires a lot of cultural technology to change that.

How do I get the people to distrust the gods, and do away with them? And in my game, gods are real existing things.

Again, you are making this harder than you need. Trust of the divine is not default. It requires a lot of cultural technology to achieve.

Have you ever read the Greek myths? Polytheistic gods are generally concieved in very petty, arrogant, and manipulative terms. The assumption of the Greeks was that the gods were continually harassing, mistreating, and abusing mortals for their own purposes and pleasures, just as men were continually doing the same to other men. It's not hard at all to reach a point where you don't think that the gods are worth worshiping if you concieve of the gods in those terms. It's not unusual at all to see the gods as something to be at worst appeased and at best avoided, precisely because they are real existing things.

There is no reason to assume that the best of the gods have the traits of ominescent, benevolent, unchanging, loving kindness, and mercy. Even the best ones might be things you'd rather didn't exist. And even if the best were that way, men might still prefer to be rulers over their own lives than to submit to even benevolent tyranny (as they deemed it).

Frankly, it happens in my game world all the time. My current campaign involves a group of heretics that have decided to try to thwart what they see as the unfair will of the gods collectively. While they are the 'bad guys' I also confess that, given the nature of gods in my campaign world, I have a lot of sympathy for their rebellion (hense the reason they make good bad guys).

I would turn your questions completely around. Virtually every human already sees themselves as the center of the universe. Every human tribe already assumes that in some way they are the best of all. The really unusual culture is the one that doesn't assume it has some moral basis for superiority and is snearing at all the others. I mean, forget Nazi Germany and other trite obvious examples for a moment. Virtually every tribe in the North American continent, despite the vast differences in their languages, had as its word for 'people' the same word as its name for itself, and conceived of every other tribe as being in some way 'not people' having had a separate and distinct creation from 'real people'. From what little we can reconstruct of the history of North America, it's one dang genocide after the other. The really ironic example for me is the Souix, favored icon of North American nobility in White folk's literature, drove the Pawnee from their native land in the Black Hills in historical times. The Pawnee - facing extinction - allied themselves with the newly arrived White Folk, and for their trouble White folk have thereafter depicted them almost without exception as cowardly, dishonorable, quislings of less worth than the people who had murdered them and stolen their land.

The answer to your question is I think very simple. The people of your empire believe that they have been wronged. When a people believe that they have been wronged, there is nothing that they won't do. Because it requires complex social technology to not see the world as a place that has wronged you, and to not see everyone else in it as enemies, a nation that feels collectively wronged and humiliated quickly destroys its social technology and burns it on the alter of their rage. Every nation, every peoples, and indeed every person is in my opinion only a few short steps from making war on the universe.

 

[LurkAway]

I would turn your questions completely around. Virtually every human already sees themselves as the center of the universe. Every human tribe already assumes that in some way they are the best of all.

I don't think that would be the case if the modern world was inhabited by demons, dragons, etc. As the dominant species on this planet, I don't think it's comparable to a D&D setting, especially a PoL one. To have a human D&D civilization (that is not a full-grown empire) believe that they're superior is, to me, unbelievably delusional, like arrogant rats in the era of dinosaurs. Unless it's a "gonzo" style campaign, of course, then anything is possible, but that's not what I gather from the OP.

I think that something special has to be in play, something insidious and propoganda-like that is convincing the masses to believe that they are Destined for Great Things.

 

[LurkAway]

The metropolis is infiltrated at the highest levels by powerful devils or Far Realm agents (like Emperor Palpatine and Coruscant). With infinite patience over the years, they plot to turn the people towards their own agenda. Perhaps a conspiracy shadow organization orchestrates a disaster that they blame on non-humans, and then use propaganda and agents to deceive royalty and public. Xenophobic them-vs-us is just another tool of persuasion. Once successful, the puppet-masters orchestrate a scientific revolution -- with some sort of ulterior motive, like finding a flaw in the universe that the Far Realm or devils can exploit, or finding a power source that they can use to overcome magic/divine opponents. I don't know if this falls into the concerns you had regarding Nazi Germany, but a conspiracy-style backstory would help explain why people would begin to believe things that they wouldn't naturally be inclined to believe.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think that would be the case if the modern world was inhabited by demons, dragons, etc. As the dominant species on this planet, I don't think it's comparable to a D&D setting, especially a PoL one.

For the vast majority of human history, men have believed that they lived in a world inhabited by demons, dragons, and gods. Indeed, the vast majority of people do in fact still believe that they live in a world inhabited by such things. Yet these beliefs have barely diluted the human inclination to believe in its own superiority, in its wisdom in assuming total control of its own affairs or the trust it places in itself with regard to its ability to assume responcibility when it aquires power.

And this has often struck observers as being unbelievable delusional.

I think that something special has to be in play, something insidious and propoganda-like that is convincing the masses to believe that they are Destined for Great Things.

Quite a few observers of the human species have concluded this thing you are speculating about is in play with regard to all of humanity, all of the time.

 

[LurkAway]

For the vast majority of human history, men have believed that they lived in a world inhabited by demons, dragons, and gods. Indeed, the vast majority of people do in fact still believe that they live in a world inhabited by such things. Yet these beliefs have barely diluted the human inclination to believe in its own superiority, in its wisdom in assuming total control of its own affairs or the trust it places in itself with regard to its ability to assume responcibility when it aquires power.

The human inclination is to believe in its superiority over other *human* tribes/nations, not over demons, dragons and gods that they presumed to exist. That is, the rats believing they are superior over another clan of rats, but dare not wage war on the dinosaurs.

There is also a difference between believing in the superiority of your culture (cuisine, language, politics, etc) vs believing in superiority enough to wage war on the world. The latter requires a real advantage, like the Roman technology and superiority in battle.

If the aforementioned empire believes itself superior over other low-level beings of equal or lesser intelligence, then fine (but the wording was "all other races" and "non-humans"). However, they are seeking to wrest the secrets of the universe from those much more powerful. That takes a certain hubris with no equivalent in the real world. In the fantasy world, such aggressive hubris could easily be suicidal. Dragons and demons and gods would laugh at them and then destroy them utterly.

 

[Janx]

I don't see how Nazi Germany doesn't illustrate this pattern Celebrim points out.

Or Japan

Or China

Or Burma

Or places in the USA where strangers aren't welcome. Like Boston, a town where it takes years to get them to stop referring to you as the people who moved into the "previous owner's family name here" House.

There are organizations here in the US that believe its members are more special than non-members. The even publish catalogs of businesses owned by members so members can support each other. And they have some pretty untruthful things to say about outsider groups.

humans tend to form groups and polarize around inclusion in the group and exclusion from the group. It drives cohesion and gives the group focus.

I bet there's even a strategic advantage to having the group be focussed on hating an external group, because it keeps them from dividing over internal issues.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Disaster.

You have an enormous metropolis? Sure. But there was a bigger metropolis, probably the previous capitol, and now it is gone. Those 'deities" didn't do anything to stop it. It was done by magic, by non-humans. Probably through sacrifice of souls, or the like.

Simple, blunt, but effective.

Have the disaster perpetrated by the divine agents of some of the non-natives in the city- say, a death cult raises an army of zombies that has to be eradicated- and you're well on your way. The locals will mistrust their ineffectual gods, the outsiders will get booted, and the people will believe that they defeated the evil by their own efforts alone.

And if this is a 3.X game, that belief will have its own divine force about it.

 

[LurkAway]

There's still a missing link between 'we scapegoat foreigners' (done easily enough as suggested) to 'down with ALL gods' (an extremist case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater) and especially to 'we are the heirs of the universe'.

Again, I don't think analogies can be made to the real world -- unless you truly believe that humans are in fact the 3rd most intelligent race on earth after mice and dolphins

I think this empire needs to have a sincere advantage (or serious brainwashing) in order to believe itself militarily and intellectually superior to all races and non-humans. Mechanically, it's all bad news: for example, we have an army composed of single-digit hit point soldiers who believe themselves superior to entities that are literally on paper waaaay more powerful.

Simultaneously, a nascent scientific intellectual class believes they can learn the biology behind psionics (starting at pre-industrial technology and not even a microscope invented yet) and the magic behind magic (without actually having the best magical minds and arcane concentration of power in the universe).

And they think they're going to accomplish all that just after alienating the non-humans and the very gods themselves.

And they're going to believe all that according to default human nature? I think that is clunky.