The Heretic's Guide to GemStone: The Broken Lands - Episode 3: Allegorical Interpretation (Half)

This is an historical exploration series for the massively multi-player online text based game GemStone IV. Each series explores the history or hidden subtleties of some aspect of GemStone.

(NOTE: This video is still in post-production. It is the full audio and subtitles, but only half the images. It is really two episodes in one video, but their subjects are not fully separated.)

(Disclaimer: This is a "best approximation" of the truth situation, only the creators of things know for sure what they intended.)

Episode 3: Allegorical Interpretation

In this second series, Xorus explores the Broken Lands, one of the oldest parts of GemStone III. The third episode reviews "allegorical interpretations", trying to reconstruct the "subtexts" or possible hidden layers of meaning. These are parallels or extended metaphors referring to some other set of ideas or works of fiction. This is distinct from the "context" analysis of episode two, which interpreted the Broken Land in terms of the Shadow World and Rolemaster source books, its own unique documentation as well as its surface relationship with the Graveyard story.

With the Broken Land these parallels include several H.P. Lovecraft stories, the death mechanics of GemStone III, its "Underworld" and fallen gods relationship with the Graveyard, a parallel between the two sides of the Misty Chamber, Dante's Inferno, medieval monastic architecture, word plays rooted in etymology, Western and Eastern esotericism, and implicit fidelity to the "world logic" of natural sciences including geology, zoology, ecology, and the thermal physics of radiated energy. There is also a qualitative engineering analysis of how the Monastery door might work with waterwheels.

Episode 3 Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

Part I

03:48 Methodology

Implicit Parallels
18:04 Implicit Parallels: Religious Architecture
50:28 Implicit Parallels: The Dark Mirror

Lovecraft
01:06:00 Lovecraft: Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
01:26:00 Lovecraft: Coexisting Places
01:34:31 Lovecraft: Through the Gates of the Silver Key
01:50:43 Lovecraft: Other Eldritch Stories

Death
02:02:57 Death Symbolism

Part II

Science
02:12:54 Science: Geology
02:44:12 Science: Sounds
02:56:44 Science: Touch
02:58:10 Science: Smells
03:00:20 Science: Ecology
03:23:31 Science: Physics

Engineering
03:37:28 Engineering: The Monastery Door
03:46:24 Engineering: Waterwheel Design
04:00:04 Energy Barriers

04:18:28 Conclusion

Historical Exploration Series 2: The Broken Lands

The historical series explores the I.C.E. Age context of the Broken Lands and its backstory, as well as constructing a theory about its "grand design." This includes a theory about the meaning of GemStone's original death mechanics, and an allegorical interpretation of the Broken Lands.