Skip to main content

Hollow Earth

Back in 2009, I was having a great time hiking in what is called “Trilha do Morro Pelado” (naked hill trail). It is located in the South of the country, in Santa Catarina state.  

And recently I was watching a youtube channel in which the crew was also hiking there. One of the crew members mentioned a book that reports local caves leading to The Hollow Earth (this is also the title of the book). It is a conspiracy book written in the 60s, by a Dr. Raymond Bernard.  

The main theory of it is that the Earth is hollow, and inhabited by a high-tech society that has UFOs, and the reason of UFOs sightings is the threat of an atomic cataclysm, back in the 60s and 70s. 

On the first pages of the book, we could see the following:

Freely Translated: “Is this the greatest discovery in history?” Dr. Raymond, famous scientist and author of the Hollow Earth, says that the real UFO base is an immense subterrain world, in which the entrance is an opening at the North Pole. Dr. Bernard believes that in the interior of the hollow earth lives a super race that doesn't want to be in touch with the surface man. Their UFOs were launched after the man threatened the world with atomic bombs”.

The basis of this book are: 

1. That the Earth is hollow and not a solid sphere, as commonly assumed and that its hollow interior communicates with the surface through two polar openings.

2. That the observations and discoveries of Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd of the United States Navy, as well as the observations of other Arctic explorers, confirm the truth of our revolutionary theory about the structure of the Earth. The Real Admiral is supposedly the first to enter the polar openings, which he did for a total distance of 6,420 kilometers, in the Arctic and Antarctica.

3. That the exploration of the unknown New World, which exists inside the Earth, is much more important than the exploration of outer space. And Admiral Byrd's aerial explorations show how such explorations can be conducted.

4. That the nation, whose explorers are the first to reach this New World, in the hollow interior of the Earth - whose land area is larger than that of the Earth's surface - will become the largest nation in the world. Such exploration can be done by repeating Admiral Byrd's flights, in addition to the hypothetical North and South Poles, in the Arctic and Antarctic polar openings.

5. That there is no reason for the hollow interior of the Earth, which has a warmer climate than that of the surface, to not be home to plants, animals and human life; and, therefore, it is very possible that the mysterious flying saucers come from an advanced civilization, from the hollow interior of the Earth.

6. That, in the event of a world nuclear war, the hollow interior of the Earth will allow the continuation of human life, after the precipitation of the radioactive material exterminates all the life of the Earth's surface; and it will provide an ideal refuge for the evacuation of the survivors of the catastrophe, so that the human race is not completely destroyed, but allowed to continue.

WOW! With all due respect to the author and people that believe in these theories, that is an awesome RPG setting plot. It has it all: Mega dungeons, ancient powerful beings, ancient civilizations and structures, underground beasts, unknown technology and paranoia.

That's all awesome, and it fits perfectly with any sci-fi, illuminati-esque, urban fantasy systems. But, as many are aware, I really prefer creating or writing medieval fantasy settings, and I’m also on the way of doing a dungeoneer/FF hack. 

In the last post (https://dispatchesnowhere.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-energy-flux-as-magic.html), I talked about magic and its cost, which made me think: How about magic, using that perspective, taking the place of the atomic threat? Yes, that is a cliffhanger for the next post.

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate any comments and thoughts!!

See y’all!

I have to thank Carlos Berlitz so much for the editions: Please follow him on social medias:

Twitter: @caberlitz

Itch store: http://caberlitz.itch.io

YouTube: http://youtube.com/caberlitz

Ko-Fi: http://ko-fi.com/caberlitz

Twitch: http://twitch.tv/caberlitz


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hollow Earth Magic: mechanical changes in MiniBx Core

  I’m working on a hollow earth setting for MiniBX, and started thinking about some mechanical changes to fit. In others blog posts when I beginning to work with the setting, I have wrote about the setting magic flavor, how the flux of it was energy and how this energy is drowned by the environment and it depletes the very world, the posts here explain a bit how this was being structured: energy flux, as magic , hollow earth first idea , corrupted magic . To synthetize all posts ideas:  magic is draining users and the world itself vital energy,  the ancient society in the depths knows and started to (and almost completely) leave/left  this world. Monsters, strange tech were left behind. The surface society is not aware about all of this, just some “sages” or apocalypse prophets. The original Minibx magic rule does not take this in consideration, originally it reads:  Archetypes like Wizard, Cleric, and Elf allow players to cast spells. At first level, Elf and Wizard PCs can record one
Game Design Choices fo MiniBX Hello friends, as you people probably noticed, I’m running an itch funding for my new game MiniBX here . It is an attempt to make this game, already released in Portuguese, a real thing in English as well. I ran the playtest, or the first play of it, with my kids, and also in a Neverland mini campaign with close friends. It ran well and, of course, some adjustments were made during the sessions, so the English version is a bit different from the Portuguese one. I can’t lie that it has been some time since I engaged in a big campaign of this game, or played several sessions, so I kinda forgot what my design choices were. But, the recent reviews of the game made me remember that it is kind of a cool game with some interesting design choices. So I will try to write about the most important design choices here. Of course this is an attempt to get this game funded and all its awesome stretch goals, so if you like this idea back it, it w

The Lock and Key Dungeons

I was recently trying to make a dungeon for a module I was writing, but I wasn't happy with the initial dungeon at all. From the suggestion of one of the editors I decided to redo it, which brought me this thought about how to make a dungeon with puzzles related to the narrative/exploration and having it be tied to the story in a meaningful way.  Initially the idea is very simple, we would have a key that would open a door or a location in a dungeon. But in fact, both the key and the lock would be metaphors. The meaning of these metaphors could reframe this simple concept. There would then be some categories, which I will try to explore below. Some examples of keys: Lore, Power, Exploration, Interaction/Alliances , but they are vast. All these "keys" would then open "locks" of places in the dungeon to be explored, in the broadest sense of the word, and all of them would also be attached to the meaning of it’s key. The Lore Key Lore itself can open hidden or loc