What do you think of Ahriman’s design from SMT 3?
Watatsumi
I have to preface this by saying my only actual exposure to Steiner was a compare/contrast table from a defunct Google site. That and my 100% accurate connection with the True Source via an oversized cerebellum, the antenna of the soul according to Swedenborg, who was a trustworthy fellow and not a fucking crackhead.
First off, my favorite Ahriman character is Hazanko from Outlaw Star:
(Please note archetypal dark posse.)
What we immediately see in common is the unnervingly broad head, usually forming a wide inverted triangle. There’s also the cape which, when combined with the high collar of doom, hopefully produces a rectangular character silhouette.
The tentacles will have to stand in for the telekinetic “spider-like powers”, although it’s preferred if the medium is inorganic:
Spider-like powers (e.g. Pinhead’s fish hooks, Void’s “threads of causality”, Legato’s metal strings)
https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2021/01/09/ahriman-character-design/
I’m not a fan of the color scheme, which would be more appropriate for a Lucifer type of character. Ahriman should be dressed more like a court magician than like Conan: cold, commanding, and implacable rather than hot. He shouldn’t be intimidating because of his beast-like physique, but rather because he is the head inquisitor and torturer and has the full power of the state at his fingertips. And magic, of course.
Also missing, AFAICT: that anime horror trope with the bubbling faces of trapped, miserable souls, or alternatively a mountain of skulls.
Aeoli Pera 
(Yes, that’s a tranny)
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In SMT 3 the modern day world gets destroyed and put into a state of liminality called the vortex world, where the world inverts into itself like an egg and is overseen by an ominous “disco ball” in the center of the hollow sphere called Kagutsuchi. A few chosen survivors of this event get to remake the world with their own personal truth. You as the player get to pick a philosophy to align with. A megalomaniac cult-leader who was a director of a tech company gets sponsored by Ahriman to create a world of stillness:
“It is a world of perfect harmony, without self, without passion, without conflict, without destruction. Individuality is eradicated and there is simply a collective inner peace in which everyone is equal to God. ” He gives off Megamind vibes himself:
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/f/f8/SMT3Hikawa.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20201118034836
“that anime horror trope with the bubbling faces of trapped, miserable souls, or alternatively a mountain of skulls.”
Hikawa actually uses computer terminals that trap human souls for his power, and in his ideal world the souls of humanity are stuck in these terminals forever, living in their own bubble.
That’s also The Matrix.
> the vortex world, where the world inverts into itself like an egg and is overseen by an ominous “disco ball” in the center of the hollow sphere called Kagutsuchi. A few chosen survivors of this event get to remake the world with their own personal truth
Associations that come to mind:
– The Gantz ball (and a few random “survivors”)
– The Eclipse in Berserk (obviously)
– Leviathan and the labyrinth in Hellraiser 2
– The very ending of Evangelion the series, just before everybody claps (also the spherical cavern below Central Dogma, see wiki)
Here’s a picture of Kagutsuchi for reference:
Also, Lucifer is in the game and appears either as a young boy or an old man in a wheelchair.
He injects the player character with a demonic parasite worm prior to the destruction of the world, rendering the player half-demon.
The parasite injection reminds me of MK Ultra rape and trauma stuff.
That reading of the forced injection tvtrope probably generalizes (e.g. Resident Evil 4).
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FaceFullOfAlienWingWong
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FaceFullOfAlienWingWong