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Pinjata
2015-05-13, 01:33 PM
Hey guys,

I'll strip my story of all interesting addons and give just the basics, I need help with.

There was this sort-of-standard dnd world. Peoples of the world (mostly humans) were opressed by the gods (many would agree that opression in this case is too harsh a word, but never mind) untill The great war, where humanity brought all the wit and magic to the table and managed to defeat the gods. Most were put in some sort of stasis, but a few traded their minds remaining active for allowing humans to leech parts of their power. So, gods are defeated, some are effectively human slaves, all is well, Empire is founded and even starts to invade other realms.

My question is: Who would in such a turn of events be declared an enemy for the massess? An Empire is meant to be a rather opressive system where imperial saints are venerated by the masses. Basically "we have saved you, praise us". But every system needs bad guys, even if made up. Since bad guys were effectively defeated, who would such a system declare as "never sleeping, ever lurking enemy"?

thanks

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-13, 01:40 PM
Celestials/Angels/Archons engineering the return of the gods, so that they can be rewarded as loyal servants with humans forced to serve them. And then you have the lovely Erinyes that resembles such a being and is clearly lawful evil...

Maglubiyet
2015-05-13, 01:42 PM
What about these realms the empire is invading? Would it work to demonize the inhabitants or those in power of these realms to justify wars of conquest? "We aren't invaders, we're liberators..."

Of course, there's always the standby of "terrorists". That seems to work pretty well for some governments.

GorinichSerpant
2015-05-13, 02:42 PM
Any sentient race that happens to be biologically alien to humans could be easily scapegoated. If the mushroom people over there don't breathe, don't bleed, don't have family in the human meaning of the word, then you can demonize them and you hardly even need to make things up.

Segev
2015-05-13, 02:42 PM
"Enemies of the Revolution" are a typical go-to. These are elements in your own society which are secretly loyal to the fallen gods and are planning acts of domestic terrorism and treason to return the gods to their thrones over you all. Conveniently, any resistance to your government's own very real depredations is obviously motivated by the intent to restore the gods.

rafet
2015-05-13, 03:00 PM
Blame a minority like elves for all of the Empires problems. Is crime up? It the elves! Is economy slumping? It's the elves! Things like that. If not a race it could be anyone religious. Did the god's have paladins or priests? Where did they go, what are they doing now?

If the people are particularly gullible it could be a made-up monster. "No one is allowed to climb up that mountain because the man eating monstrous Hygodgenantors inhabit it and they will eat you!" Yet really it's a literal massive gold mine funding the Empire's war machines on the back of slaves in the mines.

NomGarret
2015-05-13, 05:23 PM
Piggybacking on the Sympathizers of the Old Regime idea: is there a subgroup that had it relatively good under the old way? Not every gnome might be secretly plotting to overthrow the government, but most will say in private they enjoyed living in the nicer houses.

Kantaki
2015-05-13, 06:57 PM
Lets see, who could be an propaganda enemy an human empire can unite its people against? Servants of the gods (both supernatural and mundane) who "want to return us to the days of weakness and suffering under the tyranny of the gods!",
the denizens of hell who "cowardly try to corrupt good citizens of the empire to weaken us for they saw how we defeated the gods and now fear we will do the same to them!",
nonhumans who are "jealously guarding their secrets of immortality and dark magic ,envious and fearfull of our strength!" and those they want to conquer. Not giving an example for the latter to easy and to close to real life.

Aunt Edith says: Don't Forget to include those that question the Empires politics and its propaganda on the list.

Pinjata
2015-05-14, 04:40 AM
I really appreciate your input. Just what I was looking for.

Still, may I ask a bit more about names we could pick for these people? I like the 40k lore, where picked words are quite, how to say, casual - but they fit. Like "Suffer not heretic, mutant, the witch/psyker". They reflect the "threat". Historically Hitler hyped up Jewish question so hard that word Jew still carries certain tone that goes beyond just a nation. I guess "those heretical Elves" can be given weight if done right, but I had these three ideas (which are all sort of weak, IMO): Revisionists, heretics, miasmators (Miasma as something negative, bringers of corruption ...). Perhaps I should make up like a religious order, something that was not against the Empire, but not with it? Maybe a group that saw the fall of the Gods as a chance for Man to grow, but was stomped by the Empire? How could we call such movement? Was there a name for a group in PC Game Bioshock: Infinity for the group that took to the sky? Libertarians or something? It should be a harmless group really, killed off and hated by the ruling power. Something like Templars in medieval Europe?

Hopeless
2015-05-14, 06:35 AM
Anything and anyone that in any way causes people to question what they've been taught or reason to disbelieve the Empire's right to rule.

For example what if during that battle the losses were so great that it was assumed no one remained who directly fought in the conflict so the survivors or rather those that hid and later came out of hiding to claim the credit for the victory spent the intervening years cementing their place as the rightful regime.

However someone did survive that conflict someone who knows the truth and otherwise really couldn't give a toss for the Empire.

Now even if that person decided to live a quiet life only intervening when the Empire makes the mistake of letting their paranoia seize control that the Empire is eliminating anyone coming into contact with that person let alone attempts on the one who knows the truth who having survived the battle of the gods and survived means they're far too powerful for the Empire to defeat but of course hubris being what it is they overlook that unfortunate fact...

So add in anyone unable to defeat that truth and more importantly fails to prevent it leaking out that the Empire isn't as all powerful as it wants everyone to believe that's quite a huge number of people not even counting the propaganda needed to cover the inevitable cracks or chinks in the wall that occur over the intervening centuries...

Heck what is the truth out of curiosity?

Kantaki
2015-05-14, 10:30 AM
Names for enemies? For non-humans anything that emphasises their differences from humans. (Monsters, pointy ears, blackfurs, redfurs, cave-dwellers) For humans from outside the empire things that deemphasise similaritys. (X-eaters where X is something civilised, read who live in the empire, People don't eat. Things like Skin-colour, Fashion, or cultural quirks are Options too) For inside enemies take things that underline their outdatedness. (Groundkisser for religious guys, things like animal-lovers for the pro-nonhuman-crowd, Traitor, Saboteur, Spy for those that seek peace with other nations or stand in Opposition to the Empire)

Slipperychicken
2015-05-17, 10:37 AM
My question is: Who would in such a turn of events be declared an enemy for the massess? An Empire is meant to be a rather opressive system where imperial saints are venerated by the masses. Basically "we have saved you, praise us". But every system needs bad guys, even if made up. Since bad guys were effectively defeated, who would such a system declare as "never sleeping, ever lurking enemy"?


Those other realms which are being invaded. Empire could portray them as idiot barbarians who need to be civilized or exterminated.
Heretics who still worship the gods and plot to return them to power. More or less enemies of the revolution.
Deviants too. The empire might not take kindly to those nancy-boys, elf-lovers, tree-f***ers, and furries. They could portray them as corrupted by the gods to rebel against human nature.

Jay R
2015-05-18, 08:30 AM
All true clerics (actually followers of their gods) now consider the empire to be blackest evil, and are working to get the gods back.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-18, 12:47 PM
I had these three ideas (which are all sort of weak, IMO): Revisionists, heretics, miasmators (Miasma as something negative, bringers of corruption ...). Perhaps I should make up like a religious order, something that was not against the Empire, but not with it? Maybe a group that saw the fall of the Gods as a chance for Man to grow, but was stomped by the Empire? How could we call such movement? Was there a name for a group in PC Game Bioshock: Infinity for the group that took to the sky? Libertarians or something? It should be a harmless group really, killed off and hated by the ruling power. Something like Templars in medieval Europe?

I wouldn't worry about making a word with a negative context -- as you pointed out any word used in a negative context will develop those connotations on its own. Like "communist" is a still a dirty word in some places in the USA, just as "capitalist" still is in parts of Eastern Europe. In both cases it's probably simply due to repetition of dated propaganda messages that causes this. The words and literal meanings themselves are fairly innocuous.

You could even call your outgroup something NOT evocative of evil/negativity, used in an ironic sense maybe. "Free-birders", "Joy Bringers", "Independents". Any of those could sound sinister in the right context.

I would probably come up with an official name and then a slang term that's the pejorative, e.g. - the "League of Independent Thought" is the official organization and what people call them is the "Indies" or "Independents" or "Leaguers".

nedz
2015-05-20, 08:26 PM
You could go for the Rise and Fall setup.

Invite some Gnomes to live in the Empire and give them nice houses etc.
... some time later ...
Blame the Gnomes for taking all of the nice houses.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-20, 10:01 PM
You could go for the Rise and Fall setup.

Invite some Gnomes to live in the Empire and give them nice houses etc.
... some time later ...
Blame the Gnomes for taking all of the nice houses.

Those filthy Gnomes, always acting like they're better than everyone with their fancy houses...they are a blight on our kingdom!

AceOfFools
2015-05-21, 12:48 PM
I really appreciate your input. Just what I was looking for.

Still, may I ask a bit more about names we could pick for these people? I like the 40k lore, where picked words are quite, how to say, casual - but they fit. Like "Suffer not heretic, mutant, the witch/psyker". They reflect the "threat". Historically Hitler hyped up Jewish question so hard that word Jew still carries certain tone that goes beyond just a nation. I guess "those heretical Elves" can be given weight if done right, but I had these three ideas (which are all sort of weak, IMO): Revisionists, heretics, miasmators (Miasma as something negative, bringers of corruption ...). Perhaps I should make up like a religious order, something that was not against the Empire, but not with it? Maybe a group that saw the fall of the Gods as a chance for Man to grow, but was stomped by the Empire? How could we call such movement? Was there a name for a group in PC Game Bioshock: Infinity for the group that took to the sky? Libertarians or something? It should be a harmless group really, killed off and hated by the ruling power. Something like Templars in medieval Europe?

Assuming followers of the old gods, you could call them "the Faithful" or "Cultists".

Assuming more generic terrorists or rebels (that you don't want to just call terrorists or rebels ), you could call them sepratists, or war mongers for maximum hypocracy.

"Be ever vigilant against the warmongers. And any who wish to tear down all that we have bult together, with the work of our own hands, in their greedy quest for personal glory.

We are united. We are strong. We are the Empire."

Segev
2015-05-21, 02:49 PM
Point to simple cultural differences and demand that those "others" conform to the standards of your culture; doing otherwise is a sign of beligerance, arrogance, and backwards thinking that marks them as primitive reactionaries for not using the obviously superior standards of your own.