Brainstorming: Lord of the...WTF?!?!

[Riley37]

Just have Sauron put them on the Terrorist Watch List.

The Eye of Sauron as surveillance technology would fit JRRT's theme of industrial technology as a corrupting influence on the idyllic English countryside.

Mordor - and Isengard - should be industrial; the final journey should cross a toxic wasteland. Maybe a Siberian facility which also produced nerve gas, and poisoned the landscape for miles downstream? Or Chernobyl?

Who's Saruman in this mess? Going with BRG's idea, maybe it's like the HYDRA take-over of SHIELD, so you have the moral complications of opposing former allies while hoping for their redemption?

 

[Bedrockgames]

The Eye of Sauron as surveillance technology would fit JRRT's theme of industrial technology as a corrupting influence on the idyllic English countryside.

Mordor - and Isengard - should be industrial; the final journey should cross a toxic wasteland. Maybe a Siberian facility which also produced nerve gas, and poisoned the landscape for miles downstream? Or Chernobyl?

Who's Saruman in this mess? Going with BRG's idea, maybe it's like the HYDRA take-over of SHIELD, so you have the moral complications of opposing former allies while hoping for their redemption?

Could have cool effect if the eye shows up on iPhones and computer screens. It is chilling but all makes a very needed modern tool risky to use (maybe have a roll or have it come up on failed skill roll)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You have an issue trying to justify it being a long and arduous overland journey, though, especially with an ocean in the way. Why don't they get on an [-]eagle[/-] jet plane and just fly there?



You may want the thematic element that carrying The One Thing is bad for you. A radioactive power cell, maybe?



Then read a bunch of Captain America comics, where the Red Skull is trying to bring up some old Nazi super-robot weapon, or somesuch.

Posts like this make me wish we could XP AND “Laugh With” a post. Power cell & Red Skull both have potential,
And the eagle reference is golden.

Much like the source material, I want to start off in a small town. So taking a jet would require some travel beforehand, regardless. Besides, this is set during the Cold War. One does not simply fly into Novosibirsk from the USA.

 

[Riley37]

Could have cool effect if the eye shows up on iPhones and computer screens. It is chilling but all makes a very needed modern tool risky to use (maybe have a roll or have it come up on failed skill roll)

Heck yeah. You're on to something here.

There's a scene in Neuromancer in which a guy walks past a row of public phones, and each phone rings, once, just as he walks past it: because the Wintermute program knows exactly where he is, and can control the phones. See also, the movie "Enemy of the State".

Remember when airports had rows of public phones?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I like the Eye of Sauron as a spy satellite system of some kind, but...

Could have cool effect if the eye shows up on iPhones and computer screens. It is chilling but all makes a very needed modern tool risky to use (maybe have a roll or have it come up on failed skill roll)

Cell phones may be available, but this is pre-smartphone tech. But the signal for the USSR’s Duga “Woodpecker” radar installation- operative until the Chernobyl incident- could be heard worldwide on certain frequencies. Perhaps the satellite’s emanations would disrupt local electronics in a similar way.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I like the Eye of Sauron as a spy satellite system of some kind, but...


Cell phones may be available, but this is pre-smartphone tech. But the signal for the USSR’s Duga “Woodpecker” radar installation- operative until the Chernobyl incident- could be heard worldwide on certain frequencies. Perhaps the satellite’s emanations would disrupt local electronics in a similar way.

Missed the time period. my bad

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Imagine hearing something like this in the background on a TV in the other room, a few car stereos or the like when the EOS satellite was actively monitoring your location..

[video=youtube;aOMVdOc9UbE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOMVdOc9UbE[/video]

 

[MarkB]

I feel like you could go with a Wargames / Terminator vibe here. Like, the "Ring" is a malevolent black-box AI that was stolen and then lost by foreign agents. In order to safely dispose of it, the device must be returned to the NORAD base where it was first created, to be safely disabled and disassembled by the ace team of government programmers, the Crackers of Doom. But if it were to fall into the wrong hands, it could be used to hack any civilian or military system, granting unlimited power to its wielder - or unleashing nuclear armageddon on the world.

 

[Riley37]

I feel like you could go with a Wargames / Terminator vibe here. Like, the "Ring" is a malevolent black-box AI that was stolen and then lost by foreign agents. In order to safely dispose of it, the device must be returned to the NORAD base where it was first created, to be safely disabled and disassembled by the ace team of government programmers, the Crackers of Doom. But if it were to fall into the wrong hands, it could be used to hack any civilian or military system, granting unlimited power to its wielder - or unleashing nuclear armageddon on the world.

NORAD is on (or under) a mountain, but it's not in an Mordor-esque industrial wasteland. Not yet, anyways. Chernobyl is already there.

So far we're going with evil use of technology vs. better, more ethical use of technology. What role does wild magic play in that mix? Are we applying Clarke's law, and explaining the super-jumps as an outcome of bionic leg muscles? Or is there a tension between magic and tech?

Saruman and Gandalf both use magic; only one of them has a base which produces smoke, soot, and oil stains. In JRRT's story, the battle between good and evil is also the battle of industrial vs. pastoral.

I favor this variant: the engineers who designed the Eye of Sauron satellite don't know their boss is a wizard who has augmented it with magic. The "ghost in the machine" is literally an undead spirit. Those augmentations are the reason why conventional counter-hacking methods fail, and our heroes are necessary. Only by opposing tech with tech, AND magic with magic, can our heroes defeat the BBEG. Maybe the PCs range from the white-hat hacker who doesn't believe in magic, to the martial arts mystic who counts time by dawn noon and dusk rather than by the clock. With the cyber-ninja in the middle of that spectrum.

We need hero named Ryu, and an antagonist named Ken, so that our hero can ask "Are You Ken?" while projecting a fireball from his palms.

 

[Riley37]

Imagine hearing something like this in the background on a TV in the other room, a few car stereos or the like when the EOS satellite was actively monitoring your location.

Oh, THAT's the source that sound? I always thought it was the Man in Black helicopters, in stealth mode. (We know by reason that they are invisible, because we cannot see them; we know by faith that they are black.)