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COMING NEXT MONTH TO PATREON: THE FORENSIC DEPARTMENT OF PARANORMAL AND DEMONIC ACTIVITY

Release Date: 06/01/2024

The Unexplored Places

There had always been those who naively believed that hellstone could, in some way, in some novel form, actually be tamed—could be brought under control, made safer or more convenient, be “domesticated,” as the case may be. And there have always been opponents to that idea. When Eleanor Greer invented the process that would later go on to be cemented as the standard process for refining hellstone for safe use and safe shipment, the President of the Mining Guild at the time, a man by the name of Arn Goldman, would, allegedly, tell anyone who would listen for more than a minute or two,...

Ruin's Gate 46: Through New Eyes

The Unexplored Places

CONTENT WARNINGS: body horror (eyes) [00:05:09, 00:26:00], references to cannibalism [1:54:50] Now, what’s deceptive about a sleepy little town — which, though I’ve argued before that Ruin’s Gate was far from, but for the sake of poetry, let’s say the sentiment stands — is that, sleepy as they might seem, that doesn’t mean there isn’t always something going on under the surface. Trouble brewing out of sight. Pieces moving on chess boards in back rooms. Plans hatching, plots thickening, deals being made in the dark. And in Ruin’s Gate, in those days, there was plenty of...

Ruin's Gate 45: The Devil's Pilgrimage, part 2

The Unexplored Places

CONTENT WARNINGS: body horror (eyes) [2:01:00] Meanwhile, in the writings of Confessor Leviticus to her final congregants, this pilgrimage is characterized somewhat differently. She speaks of the pilgrimage not as a promise, or even as a journey, but as a kind of fortification, a taking up of arms. This should hardly be surprising: the visions granted to Leviticus by God were filled with this kind of martial imagery, and she seems to have seen herself as a kind of warrior or soldier, rather than a shepherd or a leader. But the idea stands, nevertheless. The pilgrimage isn’t so much...

Ruin's Gate 44: The Devil's Pilgrimage, part 1

The Unexplored Places

In The Early Saints of Antarras, Apostle Celéne Osgood—who would go on to later undertake her own pilgrimage and become Confessor Psalms, the noted Evangelist—writes of the sermon given by Confessor Joshua upon returning from their pilgrimage. The pathway, Confessor Joshua is said to have declaimed, is not holy because it is the precise pathway Confessor Genesis once took, but because of the footsteps of those who followed him. The act of commitment undertaken when an Apostle sets out on that path is simultaneously an act of contrition, of devotion, and of service—to the town or...

Ruin's Gate 43: The Mother of Bones, part 2

The Unexplored Places

The origin of what have come to be known as hellbeasts—distinct from the native animals found on the planet—has also been debated by historians of Antarras. Where the line between animal and hellbeast falls is not arbitrary, but neither is it universally agreed upon. Are the hellbeasts endemic to the planet, or are they, like us, invasive, coming to Antarras from somewhere else, like that unknown place the church calls the Burning Beyond? Do they evolve, the way fauna does, or change at all according to their environment? And, if so, what were they before they became the monsters that...

Ruin's Gate 42: The Mother of Bones, part 1

The Unexplored Places

The first hellstone mutations that appeared, in the earliest groups of settlers, were in fact less likely to appear on the miners and more likely to appear on those who handled the pure, unrefined hellstone after its removal from the mines—couriers, bankers, or those scientists who first worked to develop the refining process that would come to be standard. The image of the mutated specter, a potent and lingering phantasm of anxiety in the mind of the Antarran settler, didn’t become the norm until much later, when external pressures to meet new quotas forced the miners to stay underground...

Ruin's Gate 41: Delving Too Deep, part 3

The Unexplored Places

CONTENT WARNINGS: drug use (0:09:30) One can’t help but wonder, thinking back on the early days of Antarras, just how and why the staple institutions ended up with the influence they did. Could it have turned out another way? Could, for instance, a different church have found purchase in the hearts and minds of the early settlers? Could a different corporation from Earth have gotten here first, before Creon Construction, Communications, and Co.? How different would life on Antarras have looked, if just one decision had been made differently, just one change in the way things were when...

Ruin's Gate 40: Delving Too Deep, part 2

The Unexplored Places

Funerary traditions on Antarras vary by town. The early settlers brought with them a range of belief systems, cultural traditions, and dispositions towards death, so in the earliest days, there were as many cremations as there were burials, and almost as many mourning practices as there were settlements cropping up on the planet’s surface. Eventually, most of the planet settled into the same—or at least similar—general traditions, though there were some smaller settlements that held out against the planet-wide preference for cremation and kept well-tended cemeteries of their own dead...

Ruin's Gate 39: Delving Too Deep, part 1

The Unexplored Places

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who was alive that doesn’t remember the day the sun didn’t rise. You’d be even harder pressed to find anyone who could agree on what to call it. The eclipse, the great cloud, the long, dark night. No one wanted to talk about it, when it happened, so no easy name ever came into common parlance. Everyone had their own way of thinking about the darkness outside, and locked alone and scared in their homes, they took to thinking of it however they might. This week, on Ruin’s Gate: The search begins. GET YOUR "SAY OK TO THE CLOCK" SHIRT HERE: ...

Ruin's Gate 38: Between Greatness and Ruin

The Unexplored Places

What to do, with the truth? It’s a question as complicated on Antarras as it was through the history of human civilization on Earth. What to do with the truth when it’s more dangerous than a lie? When it presents a risk you might not be willing to take? Do we have a moral obligation to share the truth at all costs? To spare the feelings of those who might be hurt by it? To inform those who might not have otherwise known? Personally, I have always believed the latter: the truth at all costs. On a planet so hostile, when all we have is each other, it seemed necessary in a way that life was...

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In his 1962 book Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

He was almost right.

Unfortunately for Mr. Clarke, he had it backwards. What he should have written was that any sufficiently sophisticated magic is indistinguishable from technology. In fact, few are aware of just how many of the technological developments seen in the second half of the 20th century were the result of magical interference, and that’s at least in part because there are organizations in place to ensure that they don’t.

Organizations like the Forensic Department of Paranormal and Demonic Activity — a top secret private organization dedicated to studying, containing, and preserving the secrecy of rogue magical effects on the world. Utilizing a well-studied paranatural ability known as "Redaction" to maintain their confidence from the rest of the world, the Department has kept the existence of magic a secret since its founding.

But with the advances of magic-inflected technology now growing at an astronomical rate along with the approach of the turn of the 21st century, will it be enough to keep the truth from getting out?

The Forensic Department of Paranormal and Demonic Activity begins this June for all Patrons at the $1/month tier and above. Back us on Patreon now: https://www.patreon.com/unexploredcast

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