Forum Inception, let's call it a creative exercise

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So I'm trying out Cortex Prime these days and for that purpose, I've created two private solo games on here. One of them plays in modern-ish times and is about Perihelion, the human mage who can control the various energy flows of the universe and Xan, an alien creature who has the once-in-a-generation special ability to travel back in time in order to protect her people. In Scene 1, Xan found a large part of her people slaughtered by the first human landing party to arrive at her planet. She vows to undo this and what follows is Scene 2.

While in the process of procrastinating hard today, I created this beautiful little abomination for the second scene out of Perihelion's perspective, when he was still a teenager recreationally obsessed with Astrophysics and unaware of his magical powers


Astronomy Today
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Forum > Astrophysics > General Questions > Am I going insane?

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Perihelion

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Am I going insane? Sep 12, 1995 4:49 AM
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Hey guys, this is going to sound crazy but you know I'm a regular user here and not just some random troll. So listen, tonight I jolted awake, no idea what woke me, but I had an uncomfortable feeling in my gut, so I first thought maybe someone broke in or something. So I went to check but there wasn't anyone in the apartment except for my roommate and my neighbours aren't really all that loud.

I couldn't go back to sleep so I figured I might as well go through my folder but something is off. Where is AD-a11? I suddenly can't find any mention of this goddamn galaxy. It was there yesterday, I swear, but it just disappeared. Can anyone help me out?


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CoronaOnMyHead

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Sep 12, 1995 5:04 AM
New UserRe: Am I going insane? Sep 12, 1995 5:02 AM
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lolz we all know that your "roommate" is your mom. get off your sugar high and go to bed kid









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little.green.martian

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ModeratorRe: Am I going insane? Sep 12, 1995 5:25 AM
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CoronaOnMyHead, this is your one and only warning, don't be demeaning towards other forum members. Review our comment guidelines in the wiki (here)

As for your question, Perihelion, I unfortunately have never heard of AD-a11, but I know you like to do very thorough deep dives, so this must be quite an obscure one. Sorry!





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UFOSteve3

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Regular UserRe: Am I going insane? Sep 12, 1995 5:28 AM
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Nah dude, I've got no clue what you're talking about, but it sounds hella trippy.









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AstroProf

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Sep 12, 1995 9:18 AM
Experienced UserRe: Am I going insane? Sep 12, 1995 6:11 AM
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Dear Perihelion,

I have read your submission with much interest and would like to hear some details about this supposed missing galaxy, you might only have misremembered the name. Here are some questions that would help me figure this out with you: Whereabouts was it located prior to its disappearance? How big was it approximately and what was its morphology?

Yours sincerely,
Kenneth Ruben Stafford, PhD

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Perihelion

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Re: Am I going insane? Sep 12, 1995 6:32 AM
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Thanks for the replies. AstroProf, I've written out a file with all the data I remember in the meantime, hope it looks familiar to you or anyone else. But I'm pretty sure that was the name and the spot where I remember AD-a11 being is now empty on the photograph I have



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Open Attachment: "AD-a11.txt"

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AstroProf

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Sep 12, 1995 9:18 AM
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Re: Am I going insane? Sep 12, 1995 8:44 AM
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Dear Perihelion,

I am sorry to tell you that after looking through the considerable amount of data I have access to, there is no AD-a11 or, indeed, any galaxy you could have mixed it up with. It's a combination of several galaxies that you describe in your text document. I dug into it a bit because I was curious and my cursory research and calculations show that such a galaxy could physically exist where you pointed it out, but as it is, it simply doesn't.

I don't think, however, that this means you're insane at all, likely it is merely a result of attempting to learn too much too quickly and conflating information. I hope this experience doesn't discourage you and that you maintain your interest and curiosity in Astrophysics. Our academic institutions can certainly use young people with a strong passion.

Yours sincerely,
Kenneth Ruben Stafford, PhD



No claims are made on period authenticity, I wasn't born yet in 1995, haha

Reminds me of some of the early VtM fictions written in bulletin boards format.

Actually, Perihelion was initially a Mage: the Ascension-character, just to test out that system as well but there was so much lore associated with the setting, I didn't know which parts I could safely disregard and how. Plus I there were definite parallels in how spells are cast between those two systems anyway, and I now already know Cortex Prime, so here we are.

From what I noticed in reddit posts, the presence of so much fluff text in rule books is hotly debated. Some love it, some hate it

Tips for authenticity

All grey background

lots of [code][hr] and [table][code]

really weird sigs

Thanks for the tips! I've been to a couple of old-school forums in my quests to find the most obscure information one could possible think of (incidentally most often for TTRPG research), but because I haven't lived it, it's tricky to seperate "Forum Culture" by decades. What I mean by that is that for example I have seen all kinds of strange signatures, but 1995 was really the early years of the www, have they already been around back then? Or these archaic emojis that are little gifs (? they move in any case) but are so grainy you often have a hard time figuring out what they mean, when did those come about?

The World Wide Web existed in 95, certainly, but more of the "discussion board" type conversation was happening on USENET at that time, in threads like rec.games.frp.advocacy and the like…

No little emojis. The classics instead: :) ;) :-) 8) =] :* \o/ and so on…

I like both the mock forum and the scenario of remembering something nobody else does, good stuff. I would consider experimenting with that myself, but looks like a formatting hell I'm not prepared to handle, lol.

Yeah, not gonna lie, the formatting was annoying LOL but it precisely struck the requirement of helping me procrastinate