I don't want all Ken Hite's speculations to be made real...

…but this one just might be my all-time favourite. A replica air loom. What’s an air loom?

…a human Influencing Machine. Borne of the same paranoia and psychosis that characterises contemporary reports of mind control… [its designer/whistleblower] believed it ran on magnetic fluids. Operated by skilled pneumatic chemists who controlled the warp of the fluids that travelled out of the machine toward the intended victim. The primary targets were MPs and the patients of mad houses (including Matthews himself). Targeted in coffee houses by the Assasins who worked the machine, their victims were surreptiously primed with vapours, ready for the dreadful event-workings of the machine. Matthews writes of the formidable arsenal of tortures that the Air Loom could deliver. They include: Kiteing, Bomb bursting, Lobster cracking, Thigh Talking, Fluid Locking and Lengthening the brain.

Apparently it was (is?) on display in Newcastle.Dallas McNally suggests a dungeon that rises from the material plane to the ethereal or astral, using the old Yogic chakras:
The root chakra dungeon level is the level which abuts the PCs’ prime material plane. The third eye and crown chakra dungeon levels abut the astral plane.
My aim is not to make a new-agey D&D but merely to imagine how the pieces of the PHB Appendix IV fit together without ending up with Star Trek.Sounds like an example of Ars Magica’s regio to me, or maybe the hermetic idea of shaking off the influences of the planets to rise to your proper god-nature, but he mentions specifically the old new agey changing frequency idea – getting a new vibe – as a means for etherastral travel, and it set me thinking first about the air loom and second about what I actually want from the  ethereal/astral/altered states/ghost/spirit world/umbra in fiction or games. I always find the ones people come up with unsatisfying, maybe because when you talk about what this Other World of the Imagination is, you’re really asking “what is fantasy?” in the widest, most far-reaching and personal sense. And… I still want to be surprised. Any time you nail it down – any time I have to decide myself what it is – it can only disappoint.

Update: from the same G+ thread, Heikki Hallemaa mentions the Temples of Humanity, dug out of the mountains near Turin! How did I not know about this when I actually passed through Turin earlier this year, dammit! Must go back.

On the topic of fooling with things man was not meant to fool with, check it out, they’re digging out some Easter Island Moai! Unhinging of the continents in 10, 9…

On the topic of things that should be hoaxes but might not be, here’s a series of lectures by Borges! I know what I’ll be doing for the next few evenings.

Finally, there has been much discussion of DnD’s endgame – should you set about running a kingdom, or get lost in clearing brush and charming the locals, or fight gods to claim your place in the sky, or eventually kill the source of all the trouble in the gameworld (the DM?) and retire to the Western Isles? Well, if the campaign’s been a Tolkien manque with all your standard fantasy creatures and whatnot, then this is my answer right here:

That‘s planar travel I can get behind.

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