Companion Cube/Tabletop Games

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Companion Cubes in Tabletop Games include:

Board Games

  • The Adeptus Mechanicus "Machine Cult" of Warhammer 40,000 treat all machines as if they contain sentient "machine spirits". Interestingly, actual artificial intelligences are considered anathema by the Cult Mechanicus, as it's believed that "thinking machines" nearly destroyed humanity at one point.
    • Though, it is notable that Titans, The Giant Mecha of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle universe, are Semi-sentient, with each having its own mind. On one occasion, the mind of a Titan commander is also resident inside the machine, after he dies while still linked up to it.
    • It should also be noted that Machine Spirits seem to be real, particularly in more advanced machines; Land Raider tanks in particular have a reputation for continuing fighting long after their crew has been killed. Either the vehicles genuinely are possessed, quite possible in the demon and god filled setting, or the Techpriests are building AIs into their machines without realising it, since many machines are made by creating exact copies of ancient designs that nobody really understands anymore.
      • Some 40k media state that instead of AIs the Adeptus uses the brains of large, predatory animals as organic computers, which explains why a tank can go "feral".
    • The closest things to being "cute" in a non-ugly way in that world are the drones the Tau use.

Tabletop RPG

  • In GURPS handbooks, the example given for Delusion is "all purple things are alive." How big the Delusion is (how many points it's worth) depends not on the nature of the Delusion, but on how much it affects your character's behavior. In practical terms, this Delusion could range from saying hello to purple objects and patting them (Quirk or Minor Delusion) all the way up to attacking purple things on sight (Major Delusion) and refusing to talk until all of them are taken from the room.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has a feat named Familiar Item. The Item actually can be alive and have personality and ego only for the owner... and just because the owner likes it so much.
    • The Prestige Class Kensai forms a bond with a specific weapon strong enough to imbue it with magical powers. There are also ceremonies that most any character can undergo to magically/spiritually bond with the weapon of their choice. Not to mention Intelligent Items, which, being sentient, can actually form friendships with characters.
    • Occasionally subverted in that the owners find the intelligent items so annoying, given that they do not need to sleep, eat or take breath to continue talking, that they tend to be found in unfortunate places like sewers or active volcanoes.
  • Promethean: The Created has a power that allows the Promethean to create an intelligence in any inanimate object. It's mentioned that the intelligence can survive indefinitely as long as the Promethean keeps funneling a single point of Pyros into it, and that Prometheans will sometimes do this so that they don't have to be alone. Only rarely does any of their kind deride this. (In situations where loneliness isn't a concern, Prometheans sometimes use the power to create subtle spies.)

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