The Cthulhids of Technobabylon

My brother is running a D&D campaign. He’s borrowing figurines from a game called Kings of War called “Nocturna”:

He foolishly shared this picture with me and is now internet famous across the Edenosphere. The eight of us will never look at him the same again.

I think a cool concept for zombie minions would be to mix this Innsmouth sea demon aesthetic with the common cyberpunk aesthetic where people (usually girls) have so many wires and attachments coming out of them they look like a half-octopus:

The way I figure this makes fictional sense is if people feel driven to get more and more body and mind modifications like this because they’re competing for limited bandwidth (attention/money/status) from the 5G nightmare castle that’s sprouted up nearby, plus it provides some kind of protection from being mauled by the bug/beast-like machine creatures that spawn from it. So if I understand correctly it’s sort of like the Chaos forces in Warhammer 40K, except with cyborg octopus normies.

“Trust the plan”

“Technobabylon” is my working name for a city, most of which I’d steal from John C. Wright’s “Somewhither”, centered around a tower of Babel which is also naturally Ahriman’s tower of terror. It’s also the name of an adventure game on Steam that looks awesome but I haven’t pulled the trigger and bought it yet.

The most cyberpunk expression of Ahriman I’ve run into so far is the big room in Psycho Pass full of the psychopathic brains of society’s ruling class, so that would probably be my pick for the big reveal on the top level. I have a working theory right now that this tower/city occupies a part in the Ur-story comparable to the climax of the Two Towers, where Saruman/Isengard, Shelob/Shelob’s lair, and Wormtongue/Theoden are all facets of the same thing experienced in different flavors.

The biggest problem I face is that whenever Sisyphus gets to the top of the tower in this sort of story looking to reclaim his innocence/love interest/raison d’etre, the story repeats. I’m thinking here of Kuro in Kurozuka and Roland in the Dark Tower (I haven’t read the rest of the Somewhither series yet). I’d rather have a different ending than that. Maybe the Berserk guy will figure one out for Guts but indications aren’t good at the moment, though I did really like the bit where Farnese and Schierke pieced Casca’s soul back together.

Anyway, figured you weirdos would enjoy some associative horizon with a bit of visual flair and fictional world-building has been on the mind a lot lately. Feel free to steal the ideas.