Watching the third Avatar Movie has convinced me that this series maybe the most interesting current sci-fi setting in popular culture
Spider Sirocco, the lithe blonde-dreadlocked teen who flirts with digital Sigourney-Weaver-Cat in Avatar Three, is now a mycelium symbiont. Invaded, at his Cat-Girls command, by the glowy tentacles of Ey’wa, the intelligent mycelium world-spirit which envelops, (‘rules’? ‘serves’? ‘enslaves’?) Pandora, glowing moon of Polyphemus, a gas Giant orbiting Alpha Centuri-Two, the mycelium has gurgled throug his corpus, forming some kind of secondary pulmonary/arterial system which lets him breathe Pandoras’ toxic air. It is also growing a neural crest out the back of his head; a tuber of mind-roots which allow him, like the native Naavi Cat People, to link with various plants and animals in the Pandoran Biosphere, and even to enter the mind-world of Ey’wa herself!
This strange confabulation of hard science, (the Avatar movies might be one of the ‘hardest’ Sci Fi movies of the modern era), and absolutely New Age hippie dreamcatcher bullshit, exemplifies the setting.
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| Camerons self-drawn art for ‘Xenogenesis’ from the 1970’s |
And it’s the setting I am talking about. The Avatar Movies are utterly fascinating from a, pictorial, technological, cultural and forensic angle, but as much as artefacts as art. James Cameron is two people in one body; the obsessive hard-science worldbuilder and the absolutely loopy new age driver of the groove bus. I could go on about the films for hours.
But the setting;
Earth, in the midst of a slowly-unfolding environmental catastrophe, hyper-population and something called the ‘Resource Wars’, discovers the living moon of Pandora, in stellar terms, not too far away.
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| Probably one of the most scientifically-accurate interstellar space ships on film. |
Over a gradually-more-complex series of missions, humanity reaches Pandora, investigates it, discovers the human-like cat-people Naavi, and also discovers that Pandora is riddled with deposits of a room-temperature superconductor, and also that the brain-juice of the local self-aware space whales grants humans functional immortality.
Humanity dedicates increasingly huge and complex resources to the exploitation of Pandora’s natural resources, while the native species, linked by the mushroom mind of Ey’wa, which they worship as a goddess, try to stop them.
It’s the Columbian exchange in space, (as seen through the mind of a technophile hippy).
Its also an exercise in identity-drama as both sides develop methodologies which allow body alteration and mind transference, as well as simple cultural swaps, with various humans going over to the Ey’wa side and various Naavi going over to the human side. All of these methods compile and flow over one another, producing some fascinating effects. (‘Potential’ effects at least.)
All of which leads to our once-Human, now-Naavi freedom fighter, Jake Sulley, pulling a ‘Binding of Issac’ scene in which, after being rescued from the evil RDA techno-city by his adopted son, the mushroom Spider Sirocco, he takes him off into the forest and nearly cuts his throat.
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| this is not that scene, but this happens to Spider a lot |
Why? As an Ey’wa-created human-mushroom-Pandoran hybrid, Spider can breathe Pandoran air and interface with the Mycelium network. This is either the worst thing to happen to Pandora ever, as humans will replicate it and colonise the moon, or an ultimate mega-chess move by Ey’wa; by giving humans the ability to walk unaided on Pandora, but ensuring they will also grow a spinal crest that allows them to merge with her, Ey’wa accelerates her absorption of the human species. Uno Reverso, Mankind!
Who, or what, has the moral upper hand here? (In the films it’s absolutely Ey’wa - that is the point, but we can consider also the setting as something that stands alone, and since James Cameron is utterly schizophrenic in his divide between technophile militarist precise worldbuilder and utterly deranged boomer woke environmentalist, in a sense he aids us in this, because the complexity and systemisation of his carefully constructed reality, implies fascinating moral conflicts which the story he is telling largely ignores.)
False Gods; Ey’wa vs RDA
A human megacorporation vs a planet-wide self-aware Mycelial web and varied symbiotic (’employed’) species; WhoWouldWin?
The RDA keeps trying to dominate Ey’wa but their very life blood is the transportation of bits and pieces of Pandora back to Earth for profit - how much of Pandora can they take back before Earth gets ‘Pandora’d’ - generating its own Ey’wa?
The Whale Sauce - incredible biomaterial presumably injected directly into rich people to give them eternal youth. Will this carry the Ey’wa symboite? And how will this class of immortals respond to Pandora? They must dominate it, but they cannot afford to kill it. They must feed on the whales but they must also sustain their numbers. How secret is this immortal faction? Surely no-one is boasting about it but surely they can’t keep it secret for ever.
Bits of Mycelial Web - if you are taking people and materials off Pandora and transporting them back to earth, surely no matter how careful you are, bits and pieces of mycelial web are going to be transported too? Maybe this doesn’t matter if the pieces are too small to ever come into contact with each other and too small to carry any ‘Eywa’ identity, but what happens if they do meet, and do start to grow in earths Anthrocene Environment - could there be a Hive Mind Plague on Earth? If a Hive Mind emerges on Earth, what would its character be?
She would be derived from whatever fragments of Ey’wa survived in the fungi, but much of her impression of sentience would be born from the human species – a much more cosmopolitan, technophilic, dominant species, which, unlike the Naavi, has not spent several millennia ‘living in balance’ with nature, but trying to control it. Shadow-Ey’wa might be a lot less pleasant to deal with than Hippy Ey’wa, and might also be more directly intelligent – having absorbed the knowledge of relentless centuries of human development. Imperial Ey’wa?
Standard plagues and viruses - any kind of Columbian exchange is going to end up accidentally dumping an absolute shitload of active alien biomaterial into each others biospheres. most will be functionally inert, some might produce actual plagues - Terran and Pandoran viruses and bacteria crossing each other in space; others might be poisonous or harm in other ways - things like Prions.
Who is going to be better at adapting to this alien biomatter? Terran Science, or Ey’wa? Ey’wa essentially is the environment. Who knows how deep or subtle her power is?
Why hasn’t Ey’wa just wiped out the human presence with some undefeatable combination of complex plagues and toxins? Presumably she could do it - more fuel for the ‘Eywa is Colonising Earth’ theory.
Meanwhile, on Earth..
Alternate Invaders of Pandora
What happens when the Chinese Communist Party gets to Pandora? have you SEEN the size if their Skaven fishing fleet? They will make the RDA look like wet blankets. (In Cameron’s Avatar Movies no non-western or even non-white character or organisation will ever play a major part on Pandora working for the RDA)
An Immortal Elite
What is going to happen to or about the elite now they can become literally immortal and ever-young? What if you are the guy in the Elite just poor enough that you don’t get the magic oil but others do? Surely there will be some war or something about this on earth? Polities rejecting an immortal overclass, billionaires either faking having the oil and not having it, or faking not having it while they do have it?
Or what about the children of billionaires born to immortal parents but aging past them? Due to the obsession of narcissistic billionaires with creating as many genetically optimised children with as many willing brood mares as possible, the future Musks are going to number hundreds, thousands - there is not enough Whale Juice for all of them to get some - will the neo-Catholic anti-Pandoran revolution be lead by the mass spawn of immortal billionaires? Or even the abandoned Engram bodies of failed billionaire experiments? Glitch-Musk verses Musk Prime.
The Alternative Immortals
What about the answers of human technology to space-whale immortality? The RDA has the power to take complete-mind engrams and transfer them to specially-grown clone bodies, even hybrid bodies of mixed human-Naavi; creatures which have never existed before. What about uploading engrams of yourself into clone bodies? What if you make a League of Yourself, or make a chain of clone-selves?
Pandoran animals on Earth
The RDA can make a Naavi body and put the engram of a dead marine in there - bioinformation is easier to transfer across the stars than brute matter, so what are they cooking up in the labs on Earth? Surely you could make a Naavi body that’s engineered to breath earth’s Atmosphere? How many people would want to create a second self as a tall blue cat person? What about the space whales? Can you make those on earth too?
‘Avatar’ Technology on Earth
Pseudo-Naavi in the sex trade, Pseudo-Naavi Avatar celebrities. What if the new Elite are purely-Terran clone-uploads into nine foot tall sexy blue Naavi with the inherited minds of the rich, or celebrities? Surely uploading or just ‘Avatar-ing’ yourself into a range of clone bodies will be the hot new thing amongst the super-rich of earth? The ultimate possession of the Native. The super-rich engaging in actually-lethal sports in human, or hybrid bodies. Why not holiday as a Space-Whale and write a book about it later?
Layers of Identity;
‘Avatar’ into Animals
Human directly ‘porting in’ to a Naavi Avatar body. If you can do this, then why not almost any other Pandoran Animal? It would be hard to learn, and hard to gain the resources for the really big ones, but, why not convert Avatar Dragon things? Why not Avatar Whales? If your enemy is a primitivist cult who just don’t use technology, then assuming the form of animals to spy on and infiltrate them makes perfect sense. A deep-oceanic Whale scout can just eat its way wherever its going and doesn’t need to worry about sinking or refuelling. A Demon Whale with a Human Mind!
‘Avatar’ into a Mycelium Web
If you can ‘Avatar’ into a flesh-brain, and if the Ey’wa mycellium web can carry consciousness, then why not ‘Avatar’ into a deliberately grown structure of Mycelium - you could attach to and infiltrate Ey’wa, or just form your own island, with your own sub-Ey’wa, that works according to your rules. Build a God for the Company.
Mass-Produced Consciousness
We have seen this with Quaritch, but what if you did it ‘en-masse’, really made a production line - if you scale up you could be pumping out tens, maybe hundreds of exactly the same guy.
If you can put the memories of a dead man into a Naa’vi body based on his Genome, then surely you could just as easily, more easily, put them into an actual human body, either his, or another. How about bringing back old personalities and old memories in a fresh new, very different, body? A human engram in a Gunship, or logged into the command and control centre for a fleet of drones.
‘Stealing’ Souls
Engram-Collection doesn’t need to be voluntary – what if you have a prisoner, or an enemy, and you can’t afford to, or don’t want to, keep them? Just take an Engram, then you have a copy you can play with in whatever form, whatever body, whatever reality, you want, for as long as you want. You can even replicate them to discover the best methods of manipulation.
Invasive Ey’wa.
Not only humanity can play at this game. Ey’wa can create mycelium symbiotes. She merged with Spider to give him new physical capacities and the neural crest to commune with Her, are those the limits of Her power? If she can fully infiltrate a humanoid body, can she do that without permission? What happens if she grows within someone who doesn’t know it has happened? Can she fugue out the consciousness of the bearer? Alter memories? Pilot them around physically? Or just add cravings and desires? Alter broad personality functions? What if you were a mushroom and you didn’t know?
Ey’wa Consciousness Reborn
It seems like Ey’wa can inculcate ‘virgin births’, producing parthenogenic clones of the mother. Can Ey’wa return dead personalities into new bodies in the same way humanity can? This would be strongly against the spiritual self-identity of most Ey’wa worshipping Naavi - they think the copy in Ey’wa is the contiguous soul, not just a memory copy. How about a generation of ‘reborn’ souls – the greatest martial heroes of the Naavi past reincarnated with their basic personalities and abilities intact, all growing up at the same time; like the last generation of Native Americans all getting pregnant and all giving birth at the same time just before the 19th century, and every child has the soul of some conquering hero from the deep past – truly an Age of Myth.
Pirate Software
What if Ey’wa sympathisers gain access to RDA technology and start Cyberpunking it against the system. How about Naa’vi ‘Avataring’ human bodies on earth itself? They might be excellent spies, but maybe, like Jake Sulley, they would adapt too fully and ‘Go Native’
How about Ey’wa factionists using En-Com engram technology to reproduce personalities favourable to them and not the company? Or even infiltrating the facilities where the Engrams are managed to sabotage or alter ones the RDA thinks will be loyal?
Simple Cultural Betrayal
From the para-media, we know the RDA did a forced cultural domination schooling thing with some Naa’vi - what if that worked, or half-worked, producing personalities and loyalties which were neither totally loyal to Ey’wa or to the RDA, true free radicals, or highly fluid spies?
Pandorified Humanity
As much as we are seeing what an Earthified Pandora is starting to look like, perhaps back on Earth, we might begin to see what a Pandorafied Earth starts to look like. Some will desire this, and others fearfully resist. Do you want to merge with the Mushroom Goddess and have your population reduced? Living in harmony is also living in material poverty. (I mean almost everyone who cares about the environment is in favour of theoretical human population reduction but you don’t see them jumping off bridges.)
Religion
Zoraster on Pandora
The Worlds most Racist Man has been reborn in a hot cat body and, like a true alpha-Chud, has a goth Latina GF who also hates the fucking environment; cat-girl Varang had her forest exploded by a volcano – accustomed to seeing Ey’wa as an all-providing Goddess, she was surprised to find literally no fucking help whatsoever coming from the carbonised mushroom queen.
Thusly, she converts to anti-Ey’wa-ism; Ey’wa is a False Goddess who keeps the Naavi enslaved to her will and actually can’t do a lot of the things the Naavi think she can. Therefore; lets start burning stuff down.
Varang is not far away from inventing Proto-Abrahamic religion on Pandora. She already believes that ‘fire is the only true thing on this world’, and that the rule and effect of Ey’wa is not truly universal, only local (though powerful and real).
As much as the existence and products of Ey’wa might cause moral chaos on Earth, the existence of the ‘Sky People’ and revelations about a fundamentally different way of being, and about a whole cosmos in which Ey’wa plays no part, might cause a totally philosophical implosion amongst the more intelligent and independent Naavi; imagine knowing that your God is real, but limited, surely this could cause some kind of massive moral challenge on Pandora, and not just in freaks like Varang who went through a particular set of traumatic circumstances. What happens if you know human tech can replicate some Ey’wa powers - for instance returning the dead to life, but the humans are clear; these are just copies, not the original. Does this not mean that the ‘souls’ in the Ey’wa afterlife are not actually truly real souls? and are just copies, impressments, memories, and that the real actual people all died and that in fact hundreds of thousands of real Naavi have just died permanently and absolutely and that only their fading memories are held in a network as big as the world, but no larger?
Even if your god is verifiably real, if you realise they are not all-knowing and are actually limited, and that possibly they have been, deliberately, or tacitly, deceptive, or that you believed the wrong thing about them, would not that strongly effect your perception of the way you live?
How about realising that without your ‘God’, you, like humanity, would effectively rule your world?. and that this has been taken from you by Ey’wa? (I’m pretty sure 90% of Naavi, at least as written in the movies, would still be full Eywa-ists, but there are always going to be a minority of either malcontents or just unusually rigorous thinkers. What about the Martin Luther of Ey’wa?)
It’s a hard hit to realise death is, and always has been, real, (and that the only people getting ‘true’ contiguous, immortality, are the scumbags eating your whales.)
The Abrahamic View on Ey’wa
What is the Catholics church view on Ey’wa? Or a more general Abrahamic view? Or a Buddhist view?
Is she a new mega-soul, a new gestalt entity made of memories, which will persist as long as the biosphere of Pandora does? Or is she a kind of Demiurge, or sub-god, or semi divine entity, like the Halls of Mandos on Middle Earth, or is she a demon or False God, an Antichrist world, sent to tempt people away from the only real immortality with false immortality?
I want to see a sequel to ‘Conclave’ where Raphe Finnes and co all get together and discuss the actual spiritual implications of Ey’wa.
Na’avi Possibilities
Realistic Hunter Gatherers
On earth, Hunter Gatherers are ruthless, as almost all human populations are through time, with controlling their populations, and will often do things that are strange, savage, and deeply troubling to the consciences of modern liberal people.
They (we) are sometimes strange and worrying.
This is an aspect of ‘living in harmony’ with nature which will never be described or shown in any ‘Avatar’ movie because the moral universe of those films is ultimately very childish, but it’s interesting to think about what that reality might look like if the Naavi were a little more like actual hunter gatherers and ‘lived in harmony’ via methods that modern humans found disgusting, and/or were (like humans) actually occasionally sometimes super sadistically violent with each other
Varangists
Varang - the Eternal Prophet of Fire; her boyfriend is an Engram. A personality useful to the RDA, the Sky People can just bring her back as many times as they need to. They have her Engram, her genome, they can make you a bazillion Varangs, a Varang for each continent, for each tribe. Forced cultural revolution via the mass-production of hyper-charismatic revolutionaries. A Stalin in every house.
Agricultural Naavi
What if the Varangists work out agriculture on their volcanic fields (irl volcanoes provide the endless nitrates that make hyper intensive agriculture workable) - are they going to be using slaves? It’s a better story if they do, but they present more of a moral threat if they don’t. How about if the RDA sells them robots for Whale Juice, Unobtanium, or something else.
What if the Varangist community starts growing faster than the ‘natural’ Naavi tribes? With hierarchies and palaces and scribes and all that shit? Mayan-Varangism? Aztec-Varangism? (She would probably approve).
Now you have a simultaneously primitive, neo-stone age pseudo Maya/Aztec fire-worshipping agricultural Naavi people, with their own Fire Prophet, with the agricultural work done by RDA spider-robots. A slave society without the slaves, a pure warrior aristocracy. Sounds interesting, no?
A City to Dream Of
We really need a ‘marginal’ setting, a particular location where all the wild and whacky potentialities of what might, or could, happen on Pandora, are allowed to flourish?
Maybe one of the flame-spewing astro city-cores meant to be landed on Pandora went off-course somewhere? Maybe it landed on a strange and unpredictable patch of ground that was not what it seemed, or a Tsunami and/or Volcano smashed and ruined it - but there is enough tech for the ‘natural’ humans to survive there, but they can’t do it without Naavi help, which they have to trade for?
Where?
Possibly it landed on the near-exact antipole to ‘Bridgehead’, the current main human techno-city. Maybe in Pandora’s equivalent of the ‘deep southerlies’ where very strong seas and massive storms are common, regular enough, along with magnetic disturbances, to make space descent and direct travel very difficult for most of the year. Perhaps at the far end of a range of islands and sub-continents diminishing to archipelagos, across, or sitting on, some kind of ‘Wallace Line’, with dramatically different species and biospheres on each side..
And the site itself is on the last isle in the chain, out in a new-Zeland style position, surrounded for the most part by ocean, with irregular links to the closest islands, from which you can get to other islands, and so on – maybe a little like Papua New Guinea without Australia.
Ideally we want this to be somewhere it is hard, but possible, to survive, and for the varied opportunities of resource gathering to make working together look like an actually-good idea.
Geography
The long burn of the crash site, and long spread, with bits of tech scattered liberally across it – by now this is being reclaimed by native Flora but could still prove a good base for experimental Naavi agriculture, Varangist or otherwise.
In spots in this fresh environment, larger parts of the fallen ship and city-core have formed isolated townships – re-colonised from the main City, and links by tenuous roads, but solid enough chunks of metal to form strange ‘castles’ in the ruins of the forest.
Population
Substantial numbers of the main crew died trying to bring the ISV into something like a landing, along with a majority of active security personal and the entire executive – the main active survivors were low-level ship personal and almost all of the construction and scientific clade, (many of whom were in cryo-sleep) – most of the core construction fabricators also survived (lots of Spider-Bots, but not always humans to supervise them), as well as partial generators and a large majority of the human ‘cargo’ in cryo.
Cryo went into full emergency mode during the crash and isolated itself from everything, much of the sleep section deliberately breaking away from the core mass of the ship to avoid destruction and floating/falling into Pandoras atmosphere, landing at varied unknown points. Many, perhaps most of these were destroyed during the fall, but there were around 300 in total and some estimate a 10 to 30% survival rate – cryo-clusters, and in some case, individual high-status pods, are well protected and have separate backup nuclear generators good for up to 100 years autonomous – it’s only been about 20 years since the crash and people are sometimes recovered from crashed lifepod-cryo sites.
This can cause a lot of cultural and psychological difficulty as the culture of Splashdown has changed a lot in those years. Its also a great starting introduction for a story.
Forced Adaptation
With few people, some power, no executive and a fair amount of cybernetic constructs, as well as much of a logistics corps in deep freeze, once the surviving humans had stabilised their immediate situation, they linked together and began building to ensure their survival – they needed air, masks and food. Of which air was the most important.
The ‘ant lines’ were constructed, based on the surviving superstructure of the ISV, with airtight tunnels linking them. This is where unaltered humans are born in Splashdown, is where their children are raised, at least until they can learn mask discipline, and is where most of them go home to sleep at night, and to live without a mask. This makes the unaltered humans of Splashdown, by their own description, something like ants, surging out from the Ant Lines during the day to work and gather resources, or simply to explore and be outside, yet returning around dark.
In most cases ‘family life’ for unaltered humans is still centred around the Ants Nest, but almost all humans have an ‘outside life’, with social and psychological peculiarities developing in the human culture of Splashdown – in some ways the humans of Splashdown are some of the most outward-facing and eager explores of all human colonies on Pandora, and live in much closer relationships with Naavi and the environment as a whole, but the fact that many more have families, and more, being young, are born on Pandora, gives them a special attachment to the Ants Nest as a source of safety and continuity. There are extremes at each end, with rare radicals exploring for a lifetime, and effectively living in their masks for years at a time, while there are some humans who have never left the Nest, and never directly seen the sun, stars or seas of Pandora, living a kind of hermetic ‘Terran’ existence.
Many of the original tunnels of the Ants Nest are tilted side-on by the end stage of the crash and various complex adaptations have been made to make them liveable – the 90-degrees ‘side on’ old architecture can be seen under new usage, re-worked screens, doors, fans, pipes etc.
Coastal City
The final crash of the ISV was stopped partially by the ocean at a very high tide and the main mass of Splashdown lies directly adjacent to the ocean, forming a massive metal bulk which rises up (still), like a burned fortress.
Within, beneath and burrowed into the lands to the rear is the Ants Nest, but all over the outside of the structure are new wooden constructions, which make up the ‘outer city’ – that part of it open to the environment and air of Pandora – which now makes up the majority of the structure and is where most humans spend most of their time.
There are extensive wooden pontoon docks, and behind and around the main mass of the blackened ship, extensive wooden and robot-constructed extruded-material buildings, with main streets running off in every direction. The city has multiple small generators, extensive solar farms everywhere, small wind-turbines and some tidal power but is still massively electrically ‘underpowered’ compared to all other human settlements on Pandora. Electricity is available, but is expensive, can be unreliable and is far from being ubiquitous.
Shifting Political Integration
The Sea, the Land and the Sky – you can get to Splashdown all three ways, but the availability of each method changes constantly with the seasons and with the varied political/ecological situation on Pandora.
Splashdown has an airfield and runway for human-tech shuttles from either other human cities on the opposite hemisphere, or directly from space – this is useable (safely), only for a month or so out of the year, the rest of the year it is slowly overgrown until, as the correct season arrives and the storms and magnetic fluxes abate, the airstrip is cut back and re-flattened – something which has become a kind of impromptu ritual festival for the ‘Downers’.
It’s really only during this period that people and material can be brought directly and quickly from larger, more industrial and distant human settlements, or from orbiting ISVs – for this period of months, Splashdown is much more of an ‘RDA Colony’ and is much more directly integrated into the RDA government, policies and systems.
In the gaps between the magnetic storms, which crump human tech, and the physical ones, the Sky-Trader people can visit – floating about in their rattan balloon-beast caravans, they can touch down directly by the docks of Splashdown City itself.
The storms, magnetic and actual, vary, as do the currents, but the area around Splashdown had a native Naavi sea/shore tribe living there, and they can float about on deep-water canoes, drawn perhaps by sea-beasts, or by whales. Depending on the shifting currents the Port-City part of Splashdown might form a nexus for Naavi sea-dwellers from all over the local ocean, and even beyond. Perhaps there are hairy Polar Naavi? Sinewy Australia-type Desert Naavi, or Plains Naavi who ride huge animals long distances.
Depending on the shifting patterns of travel and the migrations, Splashdown could form an irregular Nexus for a wide variety of cultures - a new adventure every week.
Creepy Experiments
Perhaps abandoned by the RDA, or partially abandoned - actually the company is letting the experiment run, to see what happens, the Crash City itself is also somewhere the RDA can hide its more illegal experiments, and where it can hire people who shouldn’t exist for things it shouldn’t be doing (turns out for a MegaCorporation, having a ‘criminal underworld’ is actually very useful).
A half built, half-ruined human city complex, interlaced with Naavi structures, maybe on an archipelago, maybe somewhere quite distant from the main human deployment and so difficult to directly influence - and here you find literally every single kind of human, Naavi, engram, symbiote, corpo, primitivist, prophet etc - like Casabanca it’s a city of spies and intrigue, but it’s also an oceanic and space port, and the centre for a possibly-whaling fleet, an exploration fleet, those sky caravans the Naavi have, experimental Varangist agriculture, a free market on Biotech and full experimentation on symbiotes, a dumping ground for failed experiments; humanised Naavi and ‘gone native’ humans - kind of a dirtbag city, with everyone poor enough that they need to hustle and adapt to survive (making them highly available for various RPG ‘missions’)
Here is where you could gather a really crazed group of kooky characters - all with different identity issues, different biological needs, different skillsets.
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Char Gen;
Human Characters
Human Origin
1. Human – Earthborn Veteran (lived through ‘Splashdown’ 40+ yrs old)
2. Human – Pandora-Born (12 to 20 years old)
3. Human – Cryo-Recovery, Earthborn, limited Pandora Experience, socio-political views 20 years out of date.
Human Identities
1. A normal human being.
2. Human to Naavi Avatar (assume they have the tech for this). Human form stays in the Ants Nest while the Avatar travels. Vulnerable to power outage.
3. Human to Pandoran Animal Avatar (possibility they are ‘covert’). Same power issues.
4. Soul Chip Human – younger, or altered body, 50+ years of memory and personality on top of that. 50/50 chance they are ‘covert’ and not telling anyone about their true loyalties.
5. Soul Chip ‘other’ – personality ended up in a mech suit, Skel Suit, vehicle, weapon or something else. They have some central skill or experience which makes their ‘resurrection’ useful.
6. Recombinat – Human/Naavi hybrid suited to Pandoran ecology. Will be ‘Soul Chipped’ with identity loyal to the RDA, (for now).
7. Human/Pandoran Mycellium Hybrid – absorbed, via ritual, or forcibly, into Ey’was’ mycelium web. Can breath Pandoran air unaided. May have a neural crest. Small (2 in 6) chance they are unaware; a covert infiltration with no crest.
8. Naavi ‘Avatar’ infiltrator. Almost certainly covert. Somewhere a Naavi (likely with radical science-group assistance), is ‘Avataring’ into a human body.
Human Ideologies
1. Manifest Destiny – sincerely dedicated to human rule over Pandora, could be a career Corpo or raised by same. Could be security personnel, some science personnel. More common in older, recovered or visiting personnel. Probably an RDA loyalist, but even the RDA may not go far enough for this person.
2. Security Loyalist – loyal to their ‘team’ and immediate chain of command, but perhaps not philosophically loyal to dominion over Pandora.
3. Human Family Loyalist – an ‘Ants Nest’ human who puts the safety of their family unit above anything. May be trying to get ‘home’, or willing to adapt to Pandora to survive.
4. Abrahamic – a sincere Abrahamic. May view Ey’wa as a strange alien mind, a ‘meta-soul’ or even an Antichrist. Absolutely does not believe the ‘souls’ in Ey’was’s mind are ‘real’ souls.
5. Tentative Ey’wa-ist. Some attraction to Pandora and Naavi culture. Would probably like to bind with animals as they do and breathe the air. Not really philosophical or extremist about it.
6. Strong Ey’wa-ist – arguable human traitor, fully committed to the superiority of Pandoran Culture and may believe Ey’wa is a ‘real’ Goddess. Perhaps anti-human, definitely anti-RDA.
Human Skills
1. Logistics – the most common amongst baseline humanity. Skilled in principals of building; can organise, repair and perhaps build, spider-bots and other semi-autonomous drones.
2. Security – skilled in weapons and the many varieties of human military equipment and tactics. Probably has at least a gun, may also have a Skel-Suit or more.
3. Executive – Highly intelligent, ambitious and manipulative. Expert in RDA systems of governance. Some part of their power comes from possible RDA responses (when available) or ever-more theoretical ‘rewards’ on Earth. Later versions often assume leadership and diplomatic roles. Good with Languages.
4. Science (Pandoran) – knows and can learn a lot about Pandoran biology, culture etc.
5. Science (Terran) – expert in human tech, likely specialised but may include Avatar Programme, biotech, military tech, etc.
6. Exploration – very good at getting out and about on Pandora.
Naavi Characters
Tribes
1. Local Forest Tribe – as seen in the first movie. They fly around on lizard things. Much of their forest got scorched when the ISV crashed, its growing back but takes time. May be against the ‘Sky People’ for this, but may also be willing to adapt to survive.
2. Local Water Tribe – powder-blue Tahetian dolphin-riders, friends with whales.
3. Sky Trader – cosmopolitan here-and-gone, very ‘clued in’, possibly left behind as they were sick or lost.
4. Southern Desert/Plains Tribe – dark blue animal-riders and herd hunters.
5. Cave Tribe – pale, spindly, black eyed long-lived wierdoes.
6. Polar/Tundra/Icepack Tribe – from Pandoras southern pole, chunky for Naavi and actually wear clothes when its cold.
Age
1. Post Childhood but pre-adulthood - about the size of a human and a rough physical match for one. Adaptable and ready for adventure.
2. Grown but Not Bonded – they haven’t yet joined with or mastered one of the Pandoran Animals this tribe lives with. Not a ‘real’ adult yet, may be bitter about it.
3. Beast-Bonded – they can ride the sky lizard, or space dolphin or whatever it is this tribe does.
No partner or children yet, more ‘free to choose’ than perhaps they will be at any other point in their life.
4. Adult with Partner and Young – bound to their partner and children.
5. Adult w Adult Children – bound into family structures of tribe, but immediate dependants no longer need regular help.
6. Old – may be in last few years of useful life. All family are now independent. May be deeply considering death and meaning of life. May be more free than others to explore alone or choose for themselves.
Role
(For a child their role is ‘child’ unless they belong to a family with some important cultural inheritance.)
1. Low-Status – something a bit ‘off’ with this Naavi, for some reason*. And they know it.
2. Standard Hunter/Gatherer – they can all do this but this Naavi is generally trusted as a reliable food hunter/gatherer/
3. Skilled Builder/Crafter – clothes, houses, weapons, nets, musical instruments, other tools.
4. Skilled with Animals – most tribes have a bond with a particular type, this Naavi is amongst the best with them, and knows a lot about their local animals generally.
5. Long-Range Scout/Explorer – goes a long way, comes back and tells what’s going on.
6. Hunter/Killer – different from general hunting, this one is skilled in fighting other intelligent foes, other Naavi, perhaps intelligent predator animals, and perhaps humans.
7. Storyteller/Shaman/ Culture Worker – smart, excellent memory, lots of influence with the tribe. May think too much.
8. Tribal Leader – either foisted on them by birth or circumstance, or attained through achievement or ritual, they wear the big hat and often have the final choice. High CHA, good awareness of the group.
Weird Naavi
1. Damaged neural crest (its not growing back, this makes them ‘less than’ and cuts them off from the Naavi religion, often provoking a spiritual crisis/investigation).
2. Mixed child of Avatar or Recom clone.
3. Raised in RDA forced schooling programme.
4. Used in RDA experiments, may have been kept in Cryo a long time.
5. Believes self to be, (and may be), ‘reborn’ soul of ancient of famous hero.
6. ‘Virgin Birth’ – parthenogenic clone of mother, perhaps Ey’wa inspired.
7. Last of their tribe.
8. Mutated, flesh-altered or visibly ‘strange’ or non-optimal, i.e albino, withered limb, hare lip or something else, this may be down to human pollution, Ey’wa’s will or just random chance – in any case they may be exiled.
9. Beast-bonded too early and/or with too powerful/intelligent an animal – this resulted in permanent personality alteration with something of the beast left in the Naavi and something of the Naavi left in the animal – kind of a ‘were’ creature.
10. Life saved by human medical science, may even have an artificial organ, eye or limb – does not make them super-popular amongst other Naavi.
Naavi Ideologies
1. Xenohobic Ey’wa-ist – sky people are demons, this Naavi would probably drop a meteor on earth if they could. They may hide this around others.
2. Strong Ey’wa-ist – a normal, traditional Naavi, Ey’wa is the good mother goddess. Go to her when we die. Doesn’t like Sky People but not insanely xenophobic.
3. Cosmopolitan Ey’wa-ist. More likely amongst Sky Traders, diplomats or travellers. A believer in Ey’wa and holds to the No Wheels/No Stone/No Mining rule, but otherwise quite adaptable to foreign, and ‘human’ concepts.
4. Uncertain – May have begun to question the ‘Way’.
5. Soft Anti-Ey’wa-ist – Ey’wa is a physical thing, not a supernatural god, but isn’t really evil. However, since she is not god and we can die, it might be reasonable to adapt some human tools and concepts. (Agriculture?) (May be a potential Abrahamic).
6. Varangist – FUCK Ey’wa. Metal weapons. Fire worship. Suicide bombing. Maybe also kill some humans but will use any technology available. The ancestors are DEAD and those visions are MUSHROOM DELUSIONS.
Missions for ‘Splashdown City’
Mission-Givers
1. The Turquoise Council – the mixed Human/Naavi council that deals with anything that affects the ‘outer city’ (i.e. not the Ant Heap).
2. The Augustine School – the mixed college set up by idealists of the achievements of Grace Augustine.
3. The RDA – above board; they need something legitimate doing and are willing to pay, or arrange services, to get it done (there are plenty of places the raw RDA can’t go as either the Naavi will kill them or the environment will.
4. The RDA – under the table; it may not even be the ‘real’ RDA, but a faction or element in that increasingly fractious organisation, or even a ‘lone operative’, what they are asking for may be reasonable, but they don’t want to be seen dealing with it, or it may be straight-up illegal, or it may have ‘hidden depths’
5. One of the bordering tribes – most likely the forest tribe of the crash zone, who are trying to reconstitute and sustain themselves after the disaster of the ISV crash.
6. ‘Interested Parties’ – if a crime has been committed, and its outside the legal or tribal jurisdiction of any other power, or if some mercenary, exploration or recovery work needs doing, and its only the individuals directly affected that are asking/paying.
Missions/Adventures
1. Cryo-pod recovery. Someone rich may be alive out there, go wake them up, and bring them back (you may not be the only ones involved).
2. Re-Open the road to scrap-town.
3. Go out into the Outer Islands to check on the Tsunami Warning system (which seems to mysteriously gone down).
4. Investigate the source of intra-tribal Warfare out on the borders of Splashdowns area of influence.
5. Hunt the Demon Whale (a failed Avatar/Whale experiment with a psychotic human mind) – try to recover the soul chip from this one.
6. RDA personnel have gone ‘off the books’ out in the deep bush and may be pulling a Colonel Kurtz – the Main Company wants that shut down quietly.
7. Human Smugglers are operating somewhere out there and someone wants them shut down.
8. Varangist Cult.
9. Extreme-Xenophobe Ey’wa cult.
10. Dangerous animals acting chaotically/dangerously (likely some environmental problem, you need to find the source.
11. RDA construction drones have emerged from a crash site and started building, they may have gone loopy or be under someone’s control, but you have to go out there and find out.
12. A body in the surf – between the land and sea, it looks like a murder has been committed, but no-one has any idea as to why, and no tribe or polity will take responsibility for finding out – now a bunch of weirdos have to be ‘hired’ to find out more.
Things to ‘Pay’ Naavi Characters
Many of those who end up as PCs will be ‘weird’ Naavi who have their own reasons for doing things, but in general, there is very little humanity can ‘pay’ Naavi since the stone age symbiotic primitivists simply have no interest in the products of human culture. Here are some potential ideas of you need to motivate some ‘less interested’ Naavi PC’s.
1. Tribal duty – dealing with questionable human bullshit is something this tribe has to do, and a role has been created for that. Your turn has come up. Look, no-one actually wants to do this shit but we need the northern border and human relations stable so go up there and play your role for a year, then you can come home.
2. Medical Attention – its very ‘down-low’ but Naavi do sometimes get sick, or have medical problems, and its known that human science, while cold, can be effectual, either this Naavi, or someone they care about, needs human medical access and this will help pay that debt.
3. Satellite Imagery Access – especially useful for plains or sea tribes; the ancient skills of your people help you predict the weather, but that’s still not quite as useful as having a human just look at a picture of it from above every day.
4. Infiltrator – you are actually learning more about the Sky People as part of the resistance, you will play this role well but everything you learn and every ally you make will be added to the war effort when the time finally comes to Remove the Sky-People forever.
5. Media – there is a whole planets worth of culture out there and, once translated, it can be traded worldwide by the Sky Traders – how about a Naavi copy of ‘The Odessey’ or mobile projector that shows ‘The Wizard of Oz’, or a copy of Camus’ ‘The Plague’ translated into Naavi, or ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’?
6. Coms – I mean its not technically breaking Ey’wa’s rules if you get a human to send one or more messages to another human on the far side of Pandora, and then they tell a Naavi that you happen to know…
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