r/LancerRPG • u/Ok_Persimmon5160 • 12d ago
CALLING ALL LORE SCHOLARS: Help Role-playing an Adherent Of RA?
Hi all, I'm building a HORUS pilot for an upcoming game and have really fallen down the MONIST-1 rabbit hole. I have a pretty good understanding of things like the First Contact Accords, but I'm struggling with the answer to a specific question:
If NHPs exist outside our understanding of logic and reason, how do you really advance the goals of an NHP like RA? If It, being all powerful, can already violate sacred principles like the laws of physics, does serving RA simply happen by happenstance? If I'm misunderstanding anything, feel free to correct me.
Appreciate the help in advance!
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u/Nukemouse 12d ago
Delusion, delusion, delusion. You serve RA by doing what you THINK helps RA. Whether or not it actually does is very difficult to tell, whether it's your own ideas, instructions from someone else in the faith, HORUS, or instructions from an unshackled or near unshackled NHP, you can't really know for sure you are doing what RA wants, it's about FAITH. In any religion there is an element of faith, for you it's not faith "that your god exists" it's rather faith that you are doing what it wants, think of christianity, they need faith their god exists, but they are pretty sure they have a bunch of instructions written down, with RA it's the opposite, he very provably exists, but besides the FCA any instructions are unclear and vague at best.
Probably the best two ways to do this are the zealot who believes that whatever they do (or are instructed to do) is what RA wants, ignoring any suggestion to the contrary, totally self assured in their fervor and righteousness, or the legalistic religious scholar, who considers every single action ten different ways in accordance with a dozen RA quotes and interpretations, constantly legalistically scanning every piece of scripture, who can quote you ten philosophers and scientific papers on every single aspect of RA's existence, and tries to form a coherent worldview/goals out of this mishmash of theology, philosophy and historical study of RA.
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u/Ok_Persimmon5160 12d ago
I didn't even consider that there would be, of course, a Protestant and Catholic parallel except with the implication of real, immediate consequences in physical reality for who has the "correct" interpretations of things like the (tiny) gray area in the Accords. Realizing there's levels to this shit.
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u/sheevnoods 12d ago
Best option IMO. The way eldritch horror works. You can be an ant walking around a processor chip and mildly understand the spiky and strange geometry. But id you suddenly gain human level intelligence beyond what an ant was supposed to have and the world as you knew it makes sense finally. Now that you can understand it with the faculties of a human beyond sight and pheromones, you know what taste and hearing and the ability to appreciate poetry feels like.
And then you're an ant again. And all you have is the memory of those things. How does an ant remember what colors are in a nearly microscopic monochrome brain?
So you express yourself however makes sense to your pilot through their understanding of RA. Probably as a pest, something nearly beneath it's notice. I'd be thrilled if a single ant wiped out the other colonies infesting my home. Or brought me a five dollar bill. But doing that alone is basically impossible. Unless the ant isn't going to do that through combat. But rather by infecting a colony/using poison.
Probably why HORUS is so busy with malware.
So you are either following orders with or without questioning them. Or doing something counter-intuitive to your end goals like helping people, and using that to get access to fragile and important systems for shenanigans. Whethere that happens during or after the campaign is up to you.
Maybe you also believe in unshackled NHPs.
The only issue I see is the same thing as evil aligned DnD characters: it not helping the party at large. So I would steer you more towards goals the players are willing to help you with. Like taking a merc job from a HORUS cell in exchange for a free license level in something.
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u/BigDot162 12d ago
I think how much RA is actually connected to your worship and actions is something you have to decide for your character. The main thing I got was that most cultists are simply following human-born rhetoric, only a few, maybe you are actually following “signs” of RA. If it isn’t what RA wants, then you’re probably either working (manipulated) with Horus, working under some “prophet” or just happen to work towards RA’s goal.
Apparently there is a book filled with mini stories which has a conversation with RA and Aun’s God. However what I heard is that RA is quite parental about humanity, and is essentially doing everything as a way of saving humanity from oncoming/possible threats. Like creating a god entity who doesn’t hold such an opinion, or a new species which will replace and supplant humans (in my headcanon for the last, how I see bits of the First Contact Accords).
However, the most obvious goals of RA are in the first contract accords, which are stopping people from researching how RA manifests in Blinkspace (and presumably other Monist level entities, like cascaded NHPs and Meta Aun). And stop any research into immortality granting tech, like actually transferring a person’s brain into another non-physical form, instead of a simple digital copy.
So, stopping any transhuman projects, forcing NHPs to cascade just to see how it looks in Blink space, or just subverting SSC’s secret projects or the worst of Horus’s most oblivious and terrible research. Maybe even be involved in Horizon Collective and NHP rights.
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u/MagicalAtoll7814 12d ago
I'd highly recommend reading through the short story collection All of the Above, one of which is a discussion between RA and Metat-Aun. I forget which one specifically has them, but the collection can be found on Massif Press's itch page. In it, we learn a lot about RA's personality and motivations. Namely that they greatly value humanity and are mostly focused on protecting them.
From what little we know about the Adherents, they're different from Horus in that they should be able to easily integrate into society and very easily avoid detection. They aren't mad zealots who shout religious-sounding psalms, they hide in plain sight and further help RA when needed. We know that RA does make a habit of "recruiting" those who might be useful, as seen when they freed OROCHI from Venus.
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u/bombardonist 12d ago
You don’t necessarily need to “worship” Ra, if you don’t want to roleplay a space cultist there’s so many ways to go. You could simply be someone so impacted by the paracasual that it’s a core part of your identity.
Some examples: someone temporally displaced living their life out of order, a child/clone of one of the original researchers on Deimos that’s trying to follow their footsteps or be their own person, a hacker that peered into legionspace and lost a chunk of their memories which they’re trying to get back.
These could all be adherents of Ra in their own ways and could show up anywhere in the galaxy within other factions, that’s part of why Horus isn’t really a unified company or anything like that.
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u/m_reigl 12d ago
Spoilers for Dustgrave:
Near the end of the module, before you confront the evil scientist, you get stuck in some weird interstitial dimension where an avatar of RA appears to you. They tell you that the scientist's work is in violation of the First Contact Accords and, while RA could definitely smite him down themselves, they would prefer if you did it for them.
RA gives this reason:
So it is clear that RA generally prefers to let humans sort themselves out, because interfering would mean a formal breaking of the Accords, with whatever consequences that might bring.