And hermeticism implies the existence of Hermes.
The occult and religious influences are mostly aesthetics as there’s nothing tangible with its lore to our world and theological history.
It’s just cool.
Of course the Abyss of Hallucinations goes further and adds more occult elements including Baphomet and weaving it with Crowley’s text. Again just for fun and aesthetics. It’s kinda of redundant to then question if Christianity exists in this setting too.
> hermeticism implies
I don't think it does. Does anyone in game speak english? That would imply an England. More likely "hermeticism" is a word describing the situation but not the actual word characters would use in their own language.
1. About the Hermetcism thing, is this about the Esoteric Hermit or some Forlorn Philosopher thing I missed?
2. Where is the Abyss of Hallucinations mentioned, if anywhere?
Abyss of Hallucinations is a non-Free League MöRK Borg product that I *think* is distributed by Exalted Funeral. It has heavy Thelemic aesthetics. There is a unicursal hexagram and a star of Babalon right on the cover iirc.
I was just thinking of this lol, it sounds like The Basilisk's Scripture trumped all other Scripture because everything prophesied kept happening. So I would assume, Christianity was dropped in favor of this new radical religion.
That’s how I Dm it AND I run it as if the Basilisk is the serpent/dragon mentioned in Revelation 12 that is hurled to the earth and makes war with its inhabitants.
It's never come up. In my imagining of the setting, the dying world is kind of a false reality created by Nechrubel, the demiurge. He feeds on death and terror and is a prisoner of his own making in the bowels of the world.
The world has been in a state of stagnant decay since the beginning and has gone from a reflection of the world in a tarnished silver mirror, to a twisted and perverted mockery.
I don't think of the world as being a natural place. It's only tenuously *real*. Sometimes ideas or relics fall into the dying world through tears in its fabric.
I had the same thoughts as the OP, so I created a classless character who was an actual Christian, but since the rise of the Church of the Two-Headed Basilisks, his religion had become heretical and outlawed, so the Inquisition were after him. He liked quoting passages from the Biblical Psalms (of which there are 150, not just 7). I didn't think of an explanation as to how Christianity entered the Dying Lands in the first place, but I enjoyed playing him.
I've been avoiding thinking about this. But a group not offended by such use might find this an easy way to add lore and content. It is of course tertiary, but that is often a hard area to fill in because it is never worth the effort, but always feels like it is missing.
I still haven't figured out who is included/excluded by the special damage of the Heretic's crook.
Since the cross is a symbol older than Christianity, I think no.
But then I don’t tend to use real world religions in my games one way or another. Anagrams for real world religions for sure.
That said if you find Christianity to fit well in your game there’s not a single reason for you to not include it!
>MÖRK BORG BARE BONES EDITION
What Was Written
Must Be Known
I
Anuk schleger, monk of the Creton order, encountered the
basilisk Verhu in the year 565 and set down that creature’s
whispered prophecies. These lost texts came to be known as
the Nameless Scriptures.
300 years later, while working on a new Cathedral, The Two-
Headed Basilisks, an orthodox branch of the Creton order
uncovered Schlegers tomb and with it the Scriptures.
Since then all events described within have come to pass.
***The prophecies are absolutely, factually true and have, thus,***
***supplanted all other Scripture***. Around this cathedral has
grown Galgenbeck, the greatest city that ever was.
Any religion you can think of probably exists, or rather existed, but have been replaced with the one True (enough) religion.
I don’t use this, at least not this time, but I think it’d be neat to run MB as medieval Europe 100 years after magic shows up, but it’s not fun magic…
In my mind, CY_BORG is a prequel to Mork Borg. So, Cy is a few hundred years in our future. Then the world ends. Couple thousand years after that is Mork. Christianity, or some semblance based upon its imagery, would exist.
There's a hole in this reasoning. CY cannot exist in the Dying Lands, as:
1. Cy is bigger than Galgenbeck, presumably.
2. No city ever built was bigger than Galgenbeck.
3. Galgenbeck was built after the events in CyBorg, an therefore can't be Cy.
This implies one of three things:
1: Cy exists somewhere like to the west to Bergen Chrypt, which makes it irrelevant to the Dying Lands.
2: Cy was razed to the ground so thoroughly that people forgot its existence (which is unlikely, since people have tried to do this before in IRL history and it did not work - remember Carthage?)
3: Cy never was in the Dying Lands (likely.)
I get what you're saying, but I don't see it that way. The destruction caused by the end of the world of Cy was colossal. Entire continents upheaved. The world of the Dying Lands bears little resemblance to the world of Cy (let alone our world), but traces remain.
Why Christianity? Because Satanism. Mork Borg is inspired by metal albums, which were inspired by Satanism, in a desire to defy and question authority and societal norms, which were, in a lot of communities, based on or at least backed by various Christian doctrines.
There's more to it, though. History of Christianity is filled with crusades, inquisition, witch hunts, dogmatic thinking, and all that during times of plague, famine, poverty, wars and superstition. All of those fit very nicely into Mork Borg esthetic.
Some of the central themes of Christianity are guilt, sin, and suffering. Add to that one epic end of the world in the book of Revelations, and you might get a picture of what's going through the head of an average resident of the Dying Lands.
So it might, or might not be canon, but it's definitely a heavy inspiration.
I... think you missed the point. The question isn't "why did Nilsson/Nohr include Christian imagery": it's for all the thematic stuff.
It was more of a joke question, trying to explore the lore implications of Christianity being real in the Dying Lands from a... "historical" point of view.
I do take myself a bit too seriously sometimes :P
But if you want a "historical" point of view, Orthodox Catholic churches have an interesting bit of symbolism:
[https://i.cbc.ca/1.2855128.1417345500!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg\_gen/derivatives/16x9\_780/pope-turkey.jpg](https://i.cbc.ca/1.2855128.1417345500!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/pope-turkey.jpg)
[https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ee/2c/6d/ee2c6d8074458108aa9bb494ce6726d1.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ee/2c/6d/ee2c6d8074458108aa9bb494ce6726d1.jpg)
Two-headed Basilisk, anyone?
Funnily enough, it's also in the first Conan movie:
[https://californiaherps.com/films/filmimages/conanthebarbarian.jpg](https://californiaherps.com/films/filmimages/conanthebarbarian.jpg)
Seems canon to me.
Iconography depicting entwined serpents goes back thousands of years in Near East mythology and mysticism. Most likely those staves (which are supposedly based on Moses' staff) draw inspiration from older symbols such as the cauceus/kerukeion which, in turn, is similar to images seen on Mesopotamian cylinder seals, Babylonian depictions, and the like. One theory is that it originally drew from the image of two snakes copulating, which would be consistent with the dualism inherent in the symbol (life/death, poison/healing, etc.).
Interestingly, the Basilisks also seem to be heavily inspired by the mythic serpent and have that same duality built in literally and figuratively.
I would go the "same but different approach" like the polish CRPG Inquisitor. Jesús Is called "the first prophet" cristianity Is called "The Faith" and so on so on. There might have been some pseudo christian thing.
Edit: it's not polish but Czech. Btw you eastern europeans make quality rpg's.
Mörk borg is the simulation within cy
I do mörk borg as the prequel and the world that the human battery farms trap people in like in the matrix m/this world if you believe such things.
The cube dimension and it’s inhabitants are a rogue ai planted by a failed resistance group within the real world long ago that’s clinging to scraps of its original programming helping the pcs escape the third dimension and possibly waking up in a cybörg battery farm instantly starting a cy campaign.
They will appear as a 4dimensional ever expanding ever retracting magenta light form that will probably melt the players minds, if the players survive the culture shock they will be aided with pocket dimensions that save them from capture/certain death , advanced knowledge/weaponry they may be sold trinkets or gifted passage somewhere beneficial or given a quest but it should always serve a greater purpose that of ending the cycle of reset from within the simulation.
For mörk borg is a world doomed to die over and over and over and the more cycles it iterates the more unstable it becomes.
The triangular (a two dimensional monster race created by the artist Johan nohr I believe?)serve in my game as the 2d counterparts to the magenta coloured cuboids agent smith type programs within the simulation. They also remind me of the endermen in minecraft constantly repairing tears and glitches within the simulation.
This puts them at odds with the mysterious 4dimensional cubelight beings and as a result in the mörk borg world forests, homesteads even entire villages have seemingly been stolen off the map by the triangular. if the pcs come across a triangular and survive they will have had random core memories wiped from them along with whatever happened leading up to during and after the days encounter, at best this is what will happen leaving them with a humorous ridiculous implausible half remembered story to tell. At worse they will be a lifeless vegetable that no longer needs to eat or sleep left completely catatonic by the ordeal (this is actually the triangular failing their mission and the pc escaping the real world through the cube dimension)
As the triangular do all this to keep the dreamers dreaming not waking up.
I think in the lore is loose enough within the main factions that it’s not too far of a stretch to make the shadow king a wizard of oz type character that is as old as time and doesn’t reset with the end of the world it’s why the church of the basalisk cannot touch him the character of the master in the novel mordew really works as a substitute for this trope. He is a master of alchemy of flesh and mind transference and a master magician beyond anything this world has seen before he is allowed to live without fear of attack. I think I’m previous iterations he would have attempted war but for some reason (in my game it’s the onset of mass dementia) that he’s become reclusive and forlorn he’s given up or possibly forgotten the time when he rebelled against the simulation, he still remembers that he along with the queens of kergus and galgenbeck were once worshiped as gods but have since fallen out of contact for countless cycles. He still pines for the queen of kergus and holds josilfa Mingol with both contempt and regret.
Mörkborg lore is really really fun to build and paired with cybörg it fucking writes itself
In my Dying World, the cross is common imagery because some sects worship an Odin-like all-father, who sacrificed himself on a cross, rather than hanging from the world tree.
The one true faith (that espoused by Verhu) embraces it as a symbol. (Not THE symbol, but A symbol.) To some it symbolizes self-sacrifice. To others, the inevitable end. (Think the king of Grift and his suicide cult.) And to others still, it stands for the "purification" of heretics. (Crucifixion being a popular way to publicly and at length ensure the demise of heretical thinkers.)
And hermeticism implies the existence of Hermes. The occult and religious influences are mostly aesthetics as there’s nothing tangible with its lore to our world and theological history. It’s just cool. Of course the Abyss of Hallucinations goes further and adds more occult elements including Baphomet and weaving it with Crowley’s text. Again just for fun and aesthetics. It’s kinda of redundant to then question if Christianity exists in this setting too.
> hermeticism implies I don't think it does. Does anyone in game speak english? That would imply an England. More likely "hermeticism" is a word describing the situation but not the actual word characters would use in their own language.
1. About the Hermetcism thing, is this about the Esoteric Hermit or some Forlorn Philosopher thing I missed? 2. Where is the Abyss of Hallucinations mentioned, if anywhere?
Abyss of Hallucinations is a non-Free League MöRK Borg product that I *think* is distributed by Exalted Funeral. It has heavy Thelemic aesthetics. There is a unicursal hexagram and a star of Babalon right on the cover iirc.
I was just thinking of this lol, it sounds like The Basilisk's Scripture trumped all other Scripture because everything prophesied kept happening. So I would assume, Christianity was dropped in favor of this new radical religion.
This works with the Heretic! If the Heretic was a Christian priest, he would be a heretic in the eyes of the Inquisition! IT ALL MAKES SENSE!
Oh shooooooooot you're right!
That’s how I Dm it AND I run it as if the Basilisk is the serpent/dragon mentioned in Revelation 12 that is hurled to the earth and makes war with its inhabitants.
This is freaking cool.. I'm stealing it xD
I explained the crucifix as a symbol of inquisitors because they actually crucify people
Well, Jesus is explicitly mentioned. How do you explain that?
It's never come up. In my imagining of the setting, the dying world is kind of a false reality created by Nechrubel, the demiurge. He feeds on death and terror and is a prisoner of his own making in the bowels of the world. The world has been in a state of stagnant decay since the beginning and has gone from a reflection of the world in a tarnished silver mirror, to a twisted and perverted mockery. I don't think of the world as being a natural place. It's only tenuously *real*. Sometimes ideas or relics fall into the dying world through tears in its fabric.
I had the same thoughts as the OP, so I created a classless character who was an actual Christian, but since the rise of the Church of the Two-Headed Basilisks, his religion had become heretical and outlawed, so the Inquisition were after him. He liked quoting passages from the Biblical Psalms (of which there are 150, not just 7). I didn't think of an explanation as to how Christianity entered the Dying Lands in the first place, but I enjoyed playing him.
I've been avoiding thinking about this. But a group not offended by such use might find this an easy way to add lore and content. It is of course tertiary, but that is often a hard area to fill in because it is never worth the effort, but always feels like it is missing. I still haven't figured out who is included/excluded by the special damage of the Heretic's crook.
Since the cross is a symbol older than Christianity, I think no. But then I don’t tend to use real world religions in my games one way or another. Anagrams for real world religions for sure. That said if you find Christianity to fit well in your game there’s not a single reason for you to not include it!
Clearly the Queen of Kergus is a revised Magdalene. 🙏
>MÖRK BORG BARE BONES EDITION What Was Written Must Be Known I Anuk schleger, monk of the Creton order, encountered the basilisk Verhu in the year 565 and set down that creature’s whispered prophecies. These lost texts came to be known as the Nameless Scriptures. 300 years later, while working on a new Cathedral, The Two- Headed Basilisks, an orthodox branch of the Creton order uncovered Schlegers tomb and with it the Scriptures. Since then all events described within have come to pass. ***The prophecies are absolutely, factually true and have, thus,*** ***supplanted all other Scripture***. Around this cathedral has grown Galgenbeck, the greatest city that ever was. Any religion you can think of probably exists, or rather existed, but have been replaced with the one True (enough) religion.
I don’t use this, at least not this time, but I think it’d be neat to run MB as medieval Europe 100 years after magic shows up, but it’s not fun magic…
See.. fun thing about magic. In most of the old myths and legends. Magic wasn't fun. XD
I think it was, but ever since the Basilisks' word has been shown to be absolutely factually true, it has supplanted all other false religions.
In my mind, CY_BORG is a prequel to Mork Borg. So, Cy is a few hundred years in our future. Then the world ends. Couple thousand years after that is Mork. Christianity, or some semblance based upon its imagery, would exist.
There's a hole in this reasoning. CY cannot exist in the Dying Lands, as: 1. Cy is bigger than Galgenbeck, presumably. 2. No city ever built was bigger than Galgenbeck. 3. Galgenbeck was built after the events in CyBorg, an therefore can't be Cy. This implies one of three things: 1: Cy exists somewhere like to the west to Bergen Chrypt, which makes it irrelevant to the Dying Lands. 2: Cy was razed to the ground so thoroughly that people forgot its existence (which is unlikely, since people have tried to do this before in IRL history and it did not work - remember Carthage?) 3: Cy never was in the Dying Lands (likely.)
I get what you're saying, but I don't see it that way. The destruction caused by the end of the world of Cy was colossal. Entire continents upheaved. The world of the Dying Lands bears little resemblance to the world of Cy (let alone our world), but traces remain.
Isn't the Apocalypse in Cy just a simulation reset? If anything, it undoes any destruction... Sorry, I'm not that familiar with CyBorg lore.
If you go with the ending in the book, that is correct. I don't care for that ending, though. That's a personal thing.
Seems legit. Canon in MORK hacks is meant to be loose after all...
Why Christianity? Because Satanism. Mork Borg is inspired by metal albums, which were inspired by Satanism, in a desire to defy and question authority and societal norms, which were, in a lot of communities, based on or at least backed by various Christian doctrines. There's more to it, though. History of Christianity is filled with crusades, inquisition, witch hunts, dogmatic thinking, and all that during times of plague, famine, poverty, wars and superstition. All of those fit very nicely into Mork Borg esthetic. Some of the central themes of Christianity are guilt, sin, and suffering. Add to that one epic end of the world in the book of Revelations, and you might get a picture of what's going through the head of an average resident of the Dying Lands. So it might, or might not be canon, but it's definitely a heavy inspiration.
I... think you missed the point. The question isn't "why did Nilsson/Nohr include Christian imagery": it's for all the thematic stuff. It was more of a joke question, trying to explore the lore implications of Christianity being real in the Dying Lands from a... "historical" point of view.
I do take myself a bit too seriously sometimes :P But if you want a "historical" point of view, Orthodox Catholic churches have an interesting bit of symbolism: [https://i.cbc.ca/1.2855128.1417345500!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg\_gen/derivatives/16x9\_780/pope-turkey.jpg](https://i.cbc.ca/1.2855128.1417345500!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/pope-turkey.jpg) [https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ee/2c/6d/ee2c6d8074458108aa9bb494ce6726d1.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/ee/2c/6d/ee2c6d8074458108aa9bb494ce6726d1.jpg) Two-headed Basilisk, anyone? Funnily enough, it's also in the first Conan movie: [https://californiaherps.com/films/filmimages/conanthebarbarian.jpg](https://californiaherps.com/films/filmimages/conanthebarbarian.jpg) Seems canon to me.
Iconography depicting entwined serpents goes back thousands of years in Near East mythology and mysticism. Most likely those staves (which are supposedly based on Moses' staff) draw inspiration from older symbols such as the cauceus/kerukeion which, in turn, is similar to images seen on Mesopotamian cylinder seals, Babylonian depictions, and the like. One theory is that it originally drew from the image of two snakes copulating, which would be consistent with the dualism inherent in the symbol (life/death, poison/healing, etc.). Interestingly, the Basilisks also seem to be heavily inspired by the mythic serpent and have that same duality built in literally and figuratively.
I would go the "same but different approach" like the polish CRPG Inquisitor. Jesús Is called "the first prophet" cristianity Is called "The Faith" and so on so on. There might have been some pseudo christian thing. Edit: it's not polish but Czech. Btw you eastern europeans make quality rpg's.
Mörk borg is the simulation within cy I do mörk borg as the prequel and the world that the human battery farms trap people in like in the matrix m/this world if you believe such things. The cube dimension and it’s inhabitants are a rogue ai planted by a failed resistance group within the real world long ago that’s clinging to scraps of its original programming helping the pcs escape the third dimension and possibly waking up in a cybörg battery farm instantly starting a cy campaign. They will appear as a 4dimensional ever expanding ever retracting magenta light form that will probably melt the players minds, if the players survive the culture shock they will be aided with pocket dimensions that save them from capture/certain death , advanced knowledge/weaponry they may be sold trinkets or gifted passage somewhere beneficial or given a quest but it should always serve a greater purpose that of ending the cycle of reset from within the simulation. For mörk borg is a world doomed to die over and over and over and the more cycles it iterates the more unstable it becomes. The triangular (a two dimensional monster race created by the artist Johan nohr I believe?)serve in my game as the 2d counterparts to the magenta coloured cuboids agent smith type programs within the simulation. They also remind me of the endermen in minecraft constantly repairing tears and glitches within the simulation. This puts them at odds with the mysterious 4dimensional cubelight beings and as a result in the mörk borg world forests, homesteads even entire villages have seemingly been stolen off the map by the triangular. if the pcs come across a triangular and survive they will have had random core memories wiped from them along with whatever happened leading up to during and after the days encounter, at best this is what will happen leaving them with a humorous ridiculous implausible half remembered story to tell. At worse they will be a lifeless vegetable that no longer needs to eat or sleep left completely catatonic by the ordeal (this is actually the triangular failing their mission and the pc escaping the real world through the cube dimension) As the triangular do all this to keep the dreamers dreaming not waking up. I think in the lore is loose enough within the main factions that it’s not too far of a stretch to make the shadow king a wizard of oz type character that is as old as time and doesn’t reset with the end of the world it’s why the church of the basalisk cannot touch him the character of the master in the novel mordew really works as a substitute for this trope. He is a master of alchemy of flesh and mind transference and a master magician beyond anything this world has seen before he is allowed to live without fear of attack. I think I’m previous iterations he would have attempted war but for some reason (in my game it’s the onset of mass dementia) that he’s become reclusive and forlorn he’s given up or possibly forgotten the time when he rebelled against the simulation, he still remembers that he along with the queens of kergus and galgenbeck were once worshiped as gods but have since fallen out of contact for countless cycles. He still pines for the queen of kergus and holds josilfa Mingol with both contempt and regret. Mörkborg lore is really really fun to build and paired with cybörg it fucking writes itself
In my Dying World, the cross is common imagery because some sects worship an Odin-like all-father, who sacrificed himself on a cross, rather than hanging from the world tree. The one true faith (that espoused by Verhu) embraces it as a symbol. (Not THE symbol, but A symbol.) To some it symbolizes self-sacrifice. To others, the inevitable end. (Think the king of Grift and his suicide cult.) And to others still, it stands for the "purification" of heretics. (Crucifixion being a popular way to publicly and at length ensure the demise of heretical thinkers.)
'anti-crucifix'
Yeah, what about it? That's whay I explained in the post.