FF X: Curious Clubs

[ffutures]

I've decided that I'll definitely go with the "clubs" theme for FF X; I ought to be able to come up with a few easily enough, and I've got plenty of fictional examples to point at.

Phase 1, the scanning of books, is well under way - I finished The Suicide Club last night - and I ought to be pretty much done in a week or so since I'm off work. Then I'll write the "what clubs are about, how they work, etc." linking text, with lots of examples of fictional and real clubs, e.g. Whites, The Reform Club, The Diogenes Club, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, etc. then I get on to the fun part, which will be a few imaginary clubs with members, some associated tech or weirdness, an adventure or outline, etc., not based on any particular source. It'll be more like FF IX than earlier releases, but I don't see that as a disadvantage.

So... I need a few weird clubs. So far the ones I've thought of (but won't necessarily be using, at least at any length) are

The Lunar Explorers Club - this will mostly refer back to the space travel part of FF IX; I doubt that it'll be developed at length.

The Society for the Abolition of Electricity - not quite sure where this one will be going, probably some weird science.

The Fonetik Riform Sosiety - what it sounds like. Te challenge, uv curse, wood bi tu rite te entire entree een riformed Eenglish...

The Guild of Psychic Detectives - fairly obviously for a "weird shit" campaign. Founder member Thomas Carnacki, of course.

any suggestions for more?

Comments

[pauldrye.livejournal.com]

Society for the Re-Establishment of the Roman Empire. Yeah, I've no idea what to use them for either....

The Panopticon League.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Aqueducts?

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Drones?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Of course the Drones (smacks forehead). And the servants' club Jeeves belongs to.

[ggreig]

I think that's the Junior Ganymede.

[ggreig]

Concerned Brothers Against The Telegraph - a brotherhood, not averse to direct action, worried about the threat to public morals posed by the telegraph. It could be anyone on the other end of that line...

The Horseman's Word - a real society, but fictionally surely they have an opinion on mechanisation?

The Royal Aeronef Club - analogous to the real Royal Aero Club, for airborne adventurers: Biggles with steam.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

CBAT is a bit to much like the electricity thing. Horseman's Word... I'll have to take a look at them. The Royal Aeronef Club sounds like a good idea.

[timill]

The Babbageans?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Works for me. Thanks!

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

The Royal Orthodox Chronologians Society?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

GURPS already has a time traveller's club. Maybe a society for the elimination of time travellers?

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

Exactly, hence the Orthodox bit. They're very annoyed at the folks who want to go back and actually experience history, rather than study it from books. It's just not sporting.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

The society for the abolition of Wales.

There is a source of evil and corruption in this world - and it is Wales.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Interesting idea - not sure what I can do with it but I'll certainly think about it.

[keith5by5.livejournal.com]

The Humanitarian Church - A society that believes there is no god, only that which we create within our own souls and act accordingly.

The Luddites - not just against electricity, against ALL technology.

The Spoken Word - people who believe writing anything down corrupts the message and records should be kept by 'Living Recorders'.

Okay, I'm weirded out now...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I used the Luddites fairly heavily in FF IX but I'll certainly mention them. I don't really want to get into religion too much in this one, but the HC might be a possibility. I like the Spoken Word - what's their take on phonographs?

[keith5by5.livejournal.com]

Phonographs? They're a corruption, an abodimination, the word can only be carried in the heart of man and communicated by speech.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

How about the Luddites as they were? Not adverse to technology per se, but opposed to the consequences of rampant technological rollout.

[suewilson.livejournal.com]

The Assassination Bureau.

There is Mark Gattis's book the Vesuvius Club which would be worth a read.

Blades - (Ian flemings moon raker)

Boodles - (Avengers movie)

League of Temporal Explorers. (Oswald Bastable and co)

[suewilson.livejournal.com]

Deep aquatic Young Farmers Club - dedicated to faming the ocean floor.

[suewilson.livejournal.com]

The society of young edwardian gentlemen and their major rivals - the league of modern youth.

The prisoners aid society

[suewilson.livejournal.com]

Real club wise there is the luna society

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - several good ones there.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

You're welcome to mine if you want it. I haven't done anything with it yet...

The Club With A Nail In It. General explorers and occultists, no specific purpose, but over the bar is a glass case with a blackened, pitted wedge of metal, that might just be a nail of the ancient Roman kind, origin believed to be the Middle East somewhere...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Might fit in with the occult detective thing, maybe a rival club? Not sure I can use it, it'll be a while before I get to this stage so it you decide to do something with the idea first let me know.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

Well, from the pythonesqe realm: The Society for Putting Things on top of Other Things.

The Brotherhood of Sumerian Mysteries

The Society of the 13th Baktun, a group that is helping the last Baktun of the Mayan calendar to occur as prophesied. Each Baktun lasts 144,000 days or 394.52 years thereabouts, and there are 13 Baktuns in one Great Cycle. We're in the last Baktun right now. :-)

You can generate the Mayan date using the calendar tools here: http://www.pauahtun.org/Calendar/tools.html

Isn't there also a Damocles Society?

And another silly club: the Daughters of Dagon.

Finally, the Redheaded League, the real thing, not the one perpetrated by John Clay. However, their goals are the preservation of all knowledge, as well as seeking out means to rescue documents and scrolls from destruction. And they are, to a man, redheaded.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Don't know about the Damocles society or Sumerian Mysteries, I'll have to look them up. The Python one can certainly be mentioned.

I like the 13th Baktun one, but wasn't most of the info on the Mayan calendar lost for a few hundred years, and only rediscovered in the 1950s? Makes it a bit anachronistic for my Victorian / Edwardian purposes.

I like the Daughters of Dagon but I'm not really sure what I can do with them in a Victorian/Edwardian setting - votes for fish-women?

And the Redheaded league sounds good. Have to think of a good reason for them all to be redheads (and I don't think being descended from Lazarus Long or avaters of Willow Rosenberg will quite work...)

Many thanks!

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

Well the 13th Baktun is a mystery club, so they may have actual Mayan priest descendants as their founders and complete codexes that weren't burned by the Jesuits and Conquistadors. It's payback time baby!

And the Redheaded League may not be made entirely up of natural redheads, if you get my meaning.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

The Historical Reform Society

Not another bunch of time travellers, but a society to believe that recorded history is messy and irrational, and should be made neater and more logical. On the surface, they're just a bunch of amateur historians who indulge in counter-factuals. In fact, they're dedicated to sanitising and rewriting the history books so that the past "makes more sense" (regardless of what the truth actually was). Their activities include making very good fakes of historical texts and documents, and placing them in libraries and universities, and infiltrating the educational establishment so they can teach their version of history. Their specific intention is to gradually alter percieved history so that it fits their vision of how reality should have been. In a magical reality, this could end up having the effect of actually altering the past, when enough people believe the false history...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Neat - I like it. It might be that they have been conned into believing that the past can be changed that way.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

They sound like they would be the perfect foil to the Redheaded League that I proposed.

"Farnsworth, may I have a minute of your time?"

"Yes sir, what service can I be to you?"

"Farnsworth, it has come to my attention that your counterfactuals are, well, just not counterfactual enough. In fact it seems that they are very much factual."

"Ah, I'm new at this sir, and well, I thought I'd try my hand at altering history by using the truth. It's easy that way, especially with recent history, that way the reader hits bits of information they may have personal knowledge of and that paves the way for the rest of the counterfactual."

"Ah, hmm. We'll see Farnsworth, we'll see. By the way, are you a redhead..."

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

Hey John! (waves) Maybe we should come up with a Fringeworthy Club?

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

Yup, the Society for the Prevention of Mellors?

Or the Tehrmelern Appreciation Society

Or the Fratenal Order of FringePath Walkers

Or the Schmert Society (Members in rhyme must speak, when they gather each week. In iambic pentmeter or in pantoum, they speak of the mellor's pending doom. And lest they speak of a certain color, they will in passing call a yellowish burnt umber.)