Horror Punk

—Narrator, Burgrr Entries by Johnathan Wojick.

Punk Punk is composed of two halves: The Aesthetic (steam, cowboys, World War 1/2 technology, nuclear power, the internet as imagined circa 1985 and bionics, organitek, magitek, etc), and defiance of authority (the actual punks). Now, how could that be applied to horror movie trappings? Ghosts, zombies, slashers, etc.

I'd imagine it to be a (smelly, diseased, and rather dangerous) relative of Biopunk. Why build a computer when you can use a zombie (or two, or even more)'s Brain in a Jar? Why use fossil fuel when undead muscle can tirelessly spin a wheel, or provide energy directly if fed a few brains or some fresh meat?

Ghosts, I imagine as a kind of mischevous or demanding Smart Home device. They'll mostly do as you ask, but they have a mind of their own and ideas about repayment, and/or weather or not they should fulfil a request at all. And God help you if the installing technician accidentally got something that was never alive to begin with...

Slashers, of course, are the punks. Willingly (or not) taking the horror into their own body to A) make themselves Better, or B) fulfil a purpose. This, of course, comes with a huge downside; namely, becoming prone to bouts of psychosis or a Horror Hunger.

Edited by dvorak on Aug 17th 2023 at 10:49:37 AM

In my mind:

Horror Punk ghosts = Oil specters.

Which will be tangible enough to do harm like poltergeists, intangible enough to not be harmed at what's thrown at them, and if things goes really south, burn down their haunting grounds if anyone tries to cleans them with fire.

And in the larger picture, these things are an energy resource hunted for their ability to keep generating more oil to replace whatever volumes they lose in one way or another.

But only to a certain amount, prompting the oil-industry to hunt more and more of them down.

Is like skipping the middle-step of finding and digging it up first.

Horror for both haunted and the haunters.

Good idea! Oil is always relevant. If not for fuel, then as lubrication/ plastic.

There'll always be someone who prefers gas over electric, as well.

I say there might be room for Body Horror here. Say a Frankenstein wannabee decided to mix and match various parts together, organic, human or otherwise. As an attempt to create the ultimate slave.

I'm also willing to argue that X Punk is filled with so many horrific elements, that this nascent subgenre would be the most adaptable and mutable of them all.

I also expect vampires to be the titans of industry that the punks would rebel against.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 16th 2023 at 1:29:57 AM

I might suggest lamps—whether illuminating streets, or homes, or institutions—are lit by virtue of holding within themselves bound ghosts or spirits.

The lamp-glass allows the glow of those spectres to pass—but not their screams of anguish. It does nothing, however, to hide their tormented, pleading faces...

I was wondering what to do with vampires. Werewolves too, for that matter.

Body horror is also a given. Considering that undead are sometimes justified by giving the human body runaway healing, I figured that machinery based on them wouldn't so much decay as ferment. It would more gnaw on itself in the dark, getting stronger, angrier, and more dangerous.

I like that. And of course, if a bulb were to break, now you have an angry ghost in your house.

Edited by dvorak on Aug 17th 2023 at 9:25:12 AM

Perhaps werewolves are what the military does to its soldiers: taking new recruits and turning them—without consent—thus producing supersoldiers with less restraint against killing.

Publicly, they claim that they only turn those who volunteer, and no-one can prove otherwise. It's just funny that in all engagements, the only soldiers that are ever seen are the werewolves...

That's the thing about the military: If you joined, you volunteered.

And of course, there's no One Curse Limit. Vampires can be zombified, werewolves can be vamps, and zombies can find themselves turing into rotting wolf-men over the course of a week.

Edited by dvorak on Aug 17th 2023 at 7:33:06 AM

My take on the werewolves in a Horror Punk.

Drug-addicts.

People addicted to a addictive substance known as "Charcain", which looks like a black powder and made from moldy charcoal (in other words, something that have evolved to live and thrive on soaked coal), and gives the high of a lifetime when inhaled as a smoke (aka burned).

If they can keep it at a minimum, they can behave like normal people when not in the aftermath or on their way to a high. When on it, they are unapproachable.

When off it...

Unfortunately, overdosing on it leads to a series of health issues, the more severe ones being brain damage. Excessive hair-growth being common (being the result of inhaling the spores within the moldy charcoal, growing and feeding off from the human body), alongside a more and more cannibalistic mindset the more higher brain-functions are affected by the drug, but the addicts do not care, the high is that "great" to them that reality cease to exist all together.

In the end, the addicts are coated in black, spiky, hairs and violently lashing out at anything while off the high.

The only way to fight of the damage, is to take a certain "specific cure" (which is basically just a less concentrated dosage of the "Charcain") that is only produced by a company who also happen to have a business contract with the military. Want to stop the (your) suffering? Join the army!

Hence the army of feral drug-addicts that can't escape their recruitment into the army as if they do, their supply of the "cure" gets cut-off and they'll turn into nothing but pure animals, until the withdrawal kills them by choking them from the inside out as a big black furry bush.

And all while this hostile life-form is thriving on all these people who got lured in by the high.

That would explain why they're "all volunteers," yes. I'd imagine that at the end of the physical, recruits are given a huge dose of charcain, addicted or not to make sure they need it.

Edited by dvorak on Aug 17th 2023 at 10:09:16 AM

Creature from the Black Lagoon-types: People modified, consensually or otherwise, for aquatic combat or hard labor.

Heck, do that to prisoners serving life sentences and you could potentially just use a small lake or something as the prison.

We could also go full-blown Cosmic Horror and have them go a bit loopy from living under the ocean, where they start/join cults to abhorrent, fishy gods, too.

Edited by dvorak on Aug 18th 2023 at 11:37:55 AM

What about mummies?

Maybe the necromancy used in lightbulbs and smart-home devices derives from Egyptian magic.

Could be that vampires trace their bloodlines (fnar!) back to Egyptian royalty, and begin to dessicate as they get older. Mummies are to vampires as silverbacks are to gorillas.

I might risk turning this into a kitchen sink of fantasy monsters but...what about demons?

Demons are those "something never alive to begin with" that occasionally gets conjured into smart-home devices. They willfully misinterperet orders in the worst way possible and demand a weekly blood sacrifice. A demon doesn't nescessarily need to kill you; they're just happy if your life sucks. Nine times out of ten, they get sent back to the factory soon after.

They also occasionally get used in lightbulbs and glower hatred rather than pleadingly beg to be released. They actively try to break out.

Edited by dvorak on Aug 18th 2023 at 3:02:46 AM

In my own sci-fantasy tabletop setting (might make a video game in it) there's a faction (the main villains) that are "horror-themed" and kind of a Big Boo's Haunt.

One device that they have that might serve as inspiration: Spirit Conduits. These are their equivalent of computers. They're large machines that resemble vaguely a pipe organ, but with an old CRT screen on them and some candles and at least one skull on them.

Essentially how the machine works is that it's a fancy ritual table that contacts the spirit world. You type in a question, and the spirits eventually reply with an answer.

I'm more going with a Body Horror Organic Technology vibe for computers. They resemble a collection of brains in jars (more brains="smarter" computer. One brain-jar can indeed run Doom, but you need at least three for Doom Eternal) with some interface devices wired in. They need to be fed raw meat occasionally, being derived from zombies. Maybe these "conduits" could play a part in how smart-home devices get built, or function as the router. They could also be an alternate technology, like Macs vs PC's.

Edited by dvorak on Aug 18th 2023 at 9:03:29 AM

Brains in crystal balls, serving as "oracles" of the binary-divine, or spirit-mediums, only it is still sentient in order to keep the phone-line "open" and not just one way due to the brain dying and heading over to the other side.

And when the call is made, the face of the person you want to talk to appears as a white smoke over the brain, which gets you the horror version of a "magic mirror". (Since as the developers eventually found out, removing the eyeballs from the brain was far more merciful than letting them remain. Even if it doesn't spare the brains from the horror of gazing into the internet with their other senses instead.)

Also, to discover the secrets beyond the afterlife and into the eldritch territory.

The brains in the balls are not happy about being used as lovecraftian computers.

And this is not even touching on the models using Otherworldly-tech, acquired through usage of the MB-computers (MB = Mono Brain).

The ones connected to octopus-schematics for example...

Edited by Trainbarrel on Aug 18th 2023 at 10:40:09 AM

"The brains are not happy about being used as computers" is a given. I had imagined them needing to be "punished" with electric shocks occasionally.

"If:

• Graphical artifacts resembling screaming faces appear on your screen,
• Blood starts dripping out of monitor, peripherals, or casing,
• Weeping sounds from the speakers,

Press the button labelled 'behave yourself in there' on the computer tower. It is located next to the 'Eject Disc' button."

Alternatively, they are cultists, who willingly became computers in order to become one with "a higher being" and decided "INTERNET" was that higher being to join forces with.

If there is one thing more horrifying than being reduced to a computer, then it would be to willingly be reduced into a computer because someone "told you so".

As that would play into psychological/religious horror as well.

And the horror coming from when an outsider finds out about this when they are there to fetch a family member (let's say a sister in this case) who they've learned, joined some weird cult while they where gone and does not approves of this, but once they get there, they come to realize that this "969G"-cult is a machine cult where their higher members have abandoned their physical bodies and now inhabits machine-forms instead, that values "function" over "appearance" and look more and more eldritch in form the deeper into the cult the protagonist gets in his search for his sister.

Only to realize way too late that his sister, have been given a higher purpose than anyone else in the cult have been given thus far, and already given a form that crosses the line between Mechanical Abomination, Angelic Abomination and Eldritch Abomination with flying colors.

I just say this to the protag. "Good luck getting her out of that thing. Assuming you're still sane enough to try after finding out the truth first of course."

Edited by Trainbarrel on Aug 18th 2023 at 11:44:20 AM

The machine-cult could be a kind of "ethical alternative" to the more visceral "zombrain" computers, I'm thinking. Theirs are more expensive, but also more upgradable and have less problems overall. They're hard to look at though, due to the Alien Geometries in their physical build.

What I've got so far:

General info:

• Biotech based on zombie tissue; especially brains (computers, cars, power generation, etc) or Black Magic.
• Punks=Slasher villains due to "taking horror into themselves" and going crazy.

Monsters:

• Zombies: Virus causes runaway healing (Organ Autonomy, fully-functional teratomas-ie, grow copies of organs in random places in the body- survive 1) without brains or 2) as only brains). Begin to merge into each other over time.
  • Anaerobic, immortal metabolism perfect for organitek. Need to be fed occasionally.
  • "Ferment" and get stronger rather than rot away.
  • Melding effect makes oranic manufacture v. easy, as it ammounts to simply mooshing infectees together.
• Vampires: Captains of Industry. Trace their bloodlines back to Ancient Egypt
  • Immortal, but begin to dessicate after ~ 1,000 years of "life."
  • Treat the condition with oil-soaked bandages.
• Werewolves: Super-soldiers
  • Addicted to drug "charcain" (charcoal+cocaine? Made of rotten coal) that makes people grow fur and behave agressively. Fur is fungal mycellium from moldy coal.
  • Military has antidote.
• Fishmen: Convicts re-engineered for underwater labour/combat.
  • Start/join/maintain cults to malevolent fish-gods.
  • Cannot breathe air.
• Ghosts/demons/etc: Used in various technologiesLightbulbs, smart-home devices, etc.Ghosts are sad, demons are hateful."Oil Spectres" can be captured for cheap petroleum.

Technology:

• Organitek (Necrotek?): Based off of zombified brains, tissues, organs. Cars, power generation, computers. Controlled with electric shocks.
  • Brain-jars range in shape from mason jars to double-conical vases to delicate crystal spheres that incorporate displays, depending on manufacturer.
  • Machine-cult manufactures computers from willing initiates. Hardware is non-euclidean.
• Magitek: Based off of necromancy. Traces origins back to Ancient Egypt. Lightbulbs, smart-home devices, internet.
  • Internet=netherworld

What are you planning to do with all of this?