What's an interesting and unethical energy source?

[Bohandas]

Dark Science fan?

Dilbert, SMBC, and Overly Sarcastic Productions

[jqavins]

Produce.

Plants convert air and water into cellulose and sugars, which are good fuels. Now, that's not bad in and of itself, but if you burn and burn, and command growth of fuel crops to the point that the people can't feed themselves on the acreage that that's left, starving people in order to keep the fires burning under the boilers, then you've got something.

This goes nicely with SpoonR's trees suggestion, and vines with them. Not only all the ills of deforestation, but also burning the orchards and vineyards.

(The machines in The Matrix, keeping people alive for the electricity, would have done much better just burning the wheat.)

[Nifft]

Produce.

Plants convert air and water into cellulose and sugars, which are good fuels. Now, that's not bad in and of itself, but if you burn and burn, and command growth of fuel crops to the point that the people can't feed themselves on the acreage that that's left, starving people in order to keep the fires burning under the boilers, then you've got something.

This goes nicely with SpoonR's trees suggestion, and vines with them. Not only all the ills of deforestation, but also burning the orchards and vineyards.

Workers are starving on a farm which grows feed for the Ethenol plants, which produce the fuel used by the warden's helicopter flamethrower drones which keep the starving workers working.

Why not just use the Ethenol to create farm-worker drones? That's a much harder problem -- anti-personnel drones were already a solved problem at the time when the fuel crisis hit.

(The machines in The Matrix, keeping people alive for the electricity, would have done much better just burning the wheat.)

The Matrix would have been better if there were some better narrative justifications for keeping a vast number of sleeping humans around.

Something like... the AIs use psychic dream energy as fuel, or they parasitically farm subconscious human creativity (since obviously a calculator can't be creative), or hell even something about emotional energy (either that emotions are anti-entropy in some magical way, or that AIs literally feed on human anger through the magic of spambots which is how Russian internet trolls saved the world).

None of those are better physics, of course, but at least they're not perniciously pretending to be hard-scifi.

[Rater202]

Didn't the City Built 'round the Tarrasque setting use the blood flow from the creature's constant torture to both power water wheels and the water and fertilize crops?

[Bohandas]

Dilbert, SMBC, and Overly Sarcastic Productions

Specifically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYAF8JB2y2Y
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2429
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nOE7tBnYaU#t=18m25s

[Lockwolfe]

Specifically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYAF8JB2y2Y
https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2429
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nOE7tBnYaU#t=18m25s

I should have remembered that SMBC one.

[Frozen_Feet]

Oh, you're right. I'm sorry.

But corpses taken from incredibly dry graves could be interesting too. Mummy-looting, anyone?

Egyptians really used to burn mummies in place of firewood and dismantled ancient tombs and buildings for building materials.

[Bohandas]

I believe that there was also a crazy random rumor that flesh from mummies could be used to make the elixir of life, which resulted in many mummies being hacked up in vain pursuits toward that end

[Max_Killjoy]

I believe that there was also a crazy random rumor that flesh from mummies could be used to make the elixir of life, which resulted in many mummies being hacked up in vain pursuits toward that end

Reportedly/supposedly, at one point mummies were considered so valueless and so common by European explorers that they were used for campfire fuel.

[sktarq]

well if you want to up the obviousness of the unethical/evil nature of the fuel source...make it Devils....preferably ones producing an aura of flame or just infinite running inside wheels like a spit dog....so they would need to be bound...which could be aided via sacrifices of souls etc. or they like the access it gives them to mortals....

[Bohandas]

*Forgotten memories
*Angry stares
*Dissatisfaction with the government
*burning bodies
*blood magic (again, with utility pipes piping it places)
*Broken dreams
*Orphans
*Hearts. Hearts repurposed for pumping other things.
*The wrath of the gods, harnessed with a combination of lightning rods and heavy-duty voltage transformers
*Nationalism
*Obesity. People oil.
*Hatred
*Ground up pixies
*Geothermal energy generated by deliberately angering the volcano god. Possibly wih insulting sacrifices of aging unattractive male prostitutes; whatever the opposite of sacrificing a young female virgin is.
*Brain juice
*The life-force of the planet, siphoned out and bottled
*The stolen atmosphere of another planet
*Stolen sacred stones.
*Anger
*Enslaved spirits

[noob]

Malthusianism as a power source?

[Nifft]

Perverse incentives.

A wizard once created a mechanism that would detect and incinerate child pornography with supernatural efficacy, generating more energy than the incinerated material could have possibly contained.


(Less grim version: it's willing to accept photocopies and doesn't demand originality.)

[SorenKnight]

Undead labor is always a good fit. Add in the hygienic hazards of having rotting corpses walking around everywhere and it gives you a good pollution analogue too.

Also, any creature with an at will or d6 recharge ability. Difficult to do with the really powerful ones, but breath weapon spam can easily be used to power anything that runs on steam.

Of course, imprisoning an adult dragon is all but impossible, so you'll have to go for the young ones. Sure, mama dragon will come to wreak bloody vengeance, but what's gonna burn first, your stone castle, or the packed wooden slums?

[Rater202]

Combining previous suggestions, the animated skeletons of enemies slain in battle corpses stolen from the cemeteries, the poor, homeless, and sick being taken to facilities to get help and then being murdered for their skeletons, and the like running on treadmills, pulling levels, yanking chains, spinning wheels, andso on which are in turn connected to turbines and generators.

I' not sure how cost effective it would be--it depends on how exactly one reanimates a corpse, but it's clean, endlessly renewable, and while the cranks and wheels would need maintainace the undead themselves tend to be far more resistanct to wear and tear than living bodies and mindless skeletons don't get tired and don't get hungryso they could just keep running all night--I don't know how long, but barring accidents and as long as you throw in occasional maintainace every skeletons will eventually fully pay back it's cost of prooduction in terms of energy value.

[Bohandas]

The weignt of the soul. There's an urban legend that the soul weighs somewhere between 1-8 ounces. There's got to be a way to extract energy from something that weighs one thing one moment and is suddenly 8 ounces lighter the next without anything needing to be physically removed or vented

[Mith]

To go with the idea of "soul" fuel: The Egyptians believe that the soul was composed of different parts. Converting the idea to TTRPG, these parts split upon death, with violent deaths splitting the soul in jagged pieces, releasing large amounts of negative energy and leading to the creation of undead (ghosts usually). Stronger willed creatures that die violently create a larger reaction and create stronger undead (shadows, wraiths, revenants). Necromatic ingenuity has developed a means to harness the undead spirits and wear them down to the smallest essence of undead anima, which is usually used in the creation of skeletons and zombies (lets say 1 UDA = 1/4 CR mindless undead). The process usually ends up sealing this essence in lead caskets, as the rituals to lay these spirits to rest has to be done out of genuine desire to do so, and just trying to clean up your byproducts with no desire to change is not sufficient. So the only people who can clean up this mess are those that want nothing to do with this process.

So you have a society that needs to fuel their power plants and decide to take a page out of Amodeus' book (let's say the founder of this process found a mysterious book in his travels, and he literally took this from Big A's book). The ritual corrupts everyone who uses it, they start coercing souls from those less fortunate, and the ritual channels power directly to the Lord of Nessus' account.

Long story short: apply the atomic model to the soul and go from there.

[jqavins]

The weignt of the soul. There's an urban legend that the soul weighs somewhere between 1-8 ounces. There's got to be a way to extract energy from something that weighs one thing one moment and is suddenly 8 ounces lighter the next without anything needing to be physically removed or vented

In theory, of course, but a very small change in mass would make it pretty much impossible to get energy in a useful quantity. Even with lots of people dying at once, it'd still be a tiny relative change, and the process would be poor at best.

On the other hand, if the weight of the soul were captured and converted to energy itself, one ounce times c² is a hell of a lot of energy. I've heard the same "weight of the soul" thing as seven grams; even that would be plenty.

[Knaight]

The weignt of the soul. There's an urban legend that the soul weighs somewhere between 1-8 ounces. There's got to be a way to extract energy from something that weighs one thing one moment and is suddenly 8 ounces lighter the next without anything needing to be physically removed or vented

Considering how evaporating water is only used to power things using the energy of the moving water (usually steam, sometimes also condensate later) and not the weight loss in the water I doubt that there's anything particularly useful here. It's at least theoretically possible, sure, but the water case is far better than the soul case, and there's a reason we don't do this.

[jqavins]

Water evaporation is slow. When the mass drops suddenly it would be easier to take advantage of. A little easier. A very little bit easier.

[TheGrimPeddler]

All children are tested for magical potential. Those who have any are divided into two categories: those whose parents have influence and those whose parents do not. Those whose parents do not care about them fall into the latter category.

Those who have influential and loving parents are sent to wizard school. Dropouts and misfits get bumped into the second catebory.

Those who do not go to wizard school are taken to another 'school' where they are used as raw material by powerful mages. Their bodies are inconsequential, and only receive enough maintenance to prevent their premature deaths. Their spirits are bound in various ways to magic items, altars, or locations, to provide a renewable supply of energy. Of course, in time such spirits wear out and must be replaced.

*Swiped!*

No but seriously, this was the logical conclusion I was going to eventually reach for my homebrew mana system. Every living thing generates mana, the potential to be a mage is tied to having larger internal batteries and being able to call upon the external mana of the area. Well, the external mana can get used up so much it takes weeks to recover, and one can only do so much with the natural energies within oneself. Therefore, the more unscrupulous societies would consider prisoners of war, slaves, and other such as potential mana batteries. Of course, they have to have a certain amount of internal mana potential (high con score), with a low capability of using the ambient mana (low or no casting ability modifier) in order for the effort to be worth it.

Naturally such batteries will eventually be 'used up'. Then it's time to go get more.


.... I like the cut of your jib.

[Bohandas]

Reverse healing cryatals that remove the lifeforce from creatures, alloeing it to be applied eksewhere

[jqavins]

[T]he more unscrupulous societies would consider prisoners of war, slaves, and other such as potential mana batteries. Of course, they have to have a certain amount of internal mana potential (high con score), with a low capability of using the ambient mana (low or no casting ability modifier) in order for the effort to be worth it.

Naturally such batteries will eventually be 'used up'. Then it's time to go get more.

Or, everyone's battery recharges over time, even those who can't use use there's, so prisoners etc. can be used over and over, as long as you have enough to always have a supply of fully charged ones while others are recharging.

Leaving aside the unethical part for just a moment, this could also be done with volunteers, such as with the high Con martials in a party donating their mana to the mages.

[sktarq]

*Swiped!*

No but seriously, this was the logical conclusion ....

Naturally such batteries will eventually be 'used up'. Then it's time to go get more.


.... I like the cut of your jib.

also look at the Rifts system for magic....where children have more magic mana...volunteers can give some...and at the moment of of death the available magic doubles (thus making sacrificing a living being well incentivized)

[Fire Tarrasque]

The Matrix would have been better if there were some better narrative justifications for keeping a vast number of sleeping humans around.

Bit unrelated to the topic, but in the original draft, the humans were used as processing power. It was changed because the bigwigs at the company thought no on would know what that was.

[noob]

Workers are starving on a farm which grows feed for the Ethenol plants, which produce the fuel used by the warden's helicopter flamethrower drones which keep the starving workers working.

Why not just use the Ethenol to create farm-worker drones? That's a much harder problem -- anti-personnel drones were already a solved problem at the time when the fuel crisis hit.

The Matrix would have been better if there were some better narrative justifications for keeping a vast number of sleeping humans around.

Something like... the AIs use psychic dream energy as fuel, or they parasitically farm subconscious human creativity (since obviously a calculator can't be creative), or hell even something about emotional energy (either that emotions are anti-entropy in some magical way, or that AIs literally feed on human anger through the magic of spambots which is how Russian internet trolls saved the world).

None of those are better physics, of course, but at least they're not perniciously pretending to be hard-scifi.

Well of course there is a justification: creating energy.
You might think "but conservation of energy makes that impossible"
But where did you learn about the conservation of energy?
In the matrix and it is an invention so that people thinks that it is impossible to make energy by trapping humans.

[jqavins]

Well of course there is a justification: creating energy.
You might think "but conservation of energy makes that impossible"
But where did you learn about the conservation of energy?
In the matrix and it is an invention so that people thinks that it is impossible to make energy by trapping humans.

Oh, that makes no... Wait, no, I mean... I mean, the world doesn't work that... Oh s***.

[Max_Killjoy]

Bit unrelated to the topic, but in the original draft, the humans were used as processing power. It was changed because the bigwigs at the company thought no on would know what that was.

That would have made more sense.

Not that this is a high bar for anything in those movies, but it would have made more sense than the "energy source" garbage.

[Nifft]

Bit unrelated to the topic, but in the original draft, the humans were used as processing power. It was changed because the bigwigs at the company thought no on would know what that was.

Respect for writers ++;

Respect for executives --;

Well of course there is a justification: creating energy.
You might think "but conservation of energy makes that impossible"
But where did you learn about the conservation of energy?
In the matrix and it is an invention so that people thinks that it is impossible to make energy by trapping humans.

That makes so mu-- wait, why did my cat just frame-skip?

[Bohandas]

Well of course there is a justification: creating energy.
You might think "but conservation of energy makes that impossible"
But where did you learn about the conservation of energy?
In the matrix and it is an invention so that people thinks that it is impossible to make energy by trapping humans.

Also apparently possible outside of the matrix are telepathy (Neo logging in without a computer in part 2) and sympathetic magic (dying in the matrix kills you, like pins stuck in a doll)