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Transingularity Earth

Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 11:24 pm
by speaker-to-trolls
Siege wrote:Which is unbearably stupid, because if he just ditched the spiky armour of deathdoomskulls, combed his hair a bit, and asked nicely, chances are Quartermass, Andrews or Saint (well maybe not Saint) would simply help him along. Out of the goodness of their heart, because they're altruistic suckers for that sort of thing.
Ah, not related to the character at hand, but this links into a question I've been pondering for some time now.

OK I've been working on a rewriting of Lord Caleb Belle (I know I've been working on rewriting X Y and Z forever, I am like a poor quality creative writing Penelope who no-one wants to sleep with, that aside...) and it occurs to me, why doesn't he do this? It'd be a blow to his Transingularitan pride, as it would to the rest of his people, but when you're facing imminent death by radiation, sentient area denial weapon and Catastrophic Gravitational Gradient Shift then there comes a time when ones pride has to be swallowed.
I can just imagine the resolution to it all:
Quartermass: See, if you folks wanted a new planet you could ha' just asked fer one, my wife has several billion of them spare, ye know.
Caleb: Excuse me, Professor?
Quartermass: Oh, my wife is the ruler of an intergalactic empire two million years into the distant future, it's a long story.
Caleb: *Eyes widen and left eyebrow shoots up over forehead* I see. Well I am doubly glad we were able to resolve this peacefully then.
The only downside is that Saint Blancat probably wouldn't find him sexy anymore if he wasn't trying to conquer the world.

I can see others on TSE being hell bent on conquest not compromise, but I imagine Lord Caleb as a much more pragmatic type, and in my rewriting so far the single driving force in his life is to save Europe so as to reestablish the Singularity. It would be a bitter pill to swallow, but I imagine he would, in the end, be prepared to negotiate with primitives to do that.

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 5:20 am
by Shroom Man 777
You know, with Transingularity tech, why DON'T they just go around and find a fresh new planet or colonize Mars or something? They don't even need to ask anyone - aren't they supposed to be an order of magnitude more advanced than Comix Earth tech, even those sported by Andrews and Saint? Unless the only habitable planet in the TSverse is TS Earth or something... then colonization would be trivially easy for 'em.

One reason why they could be mucking about on Comix Earth is to, I don't know, try to gain resources or something to exploit and give themselves an advantage in that Transingularity War they're waging in Transingularity Earth? (If I'm correct. the TS Earth guys ARE fighting each other, right?)

Caleb Belle could instead be asking Quartermass: "Hey, I'd like one of those time displacement machines so I can send my singularidroid into the past to kill that pesky Transingularity John Connor before he was born, thus giving my side the advantage in the Transingularity War for humanitarian reasons?"

And Quartermass could instead go: "Oh, I know what you really want to use the time displacement machines for even though you used strikethrough you said it's for humanitarian purposes. Get bent."

Would metahumans be a valuable commodity for the Transingularity Earthers? A significant game changer?

Maybe thus the operatives from Transingularity Earth are there in Comix Earth for intelligence purposes, not for a big fuckoff invasion. Maybe they're there to scout out, say, useful Comix Earth knicknacks like Weird Science or Quartermass gizmos, alien shit, or metahuman DOMINANT/RECESSIVE GENES!

Caleb would be out to grab whatever useful things he can get. For all we know, he owns the Crowtalon Orphanage and is secretly adopting metahuman children (and having their DNA studied by Transingularity dudes) and stuff.

Also, Caleb would be trying to make sure the OTHER Transingularity Earth parties are kept in line? If, say, Transingularity Philippines are about to steal some nifty Comix Quartermass tech or have somehow managed to create an Evil Cyborg Archwind Clone or something, Caleb Belle would intervene and ruin Transingularity Philippines' shit. Because if TS Philippines got their hands on Quartermass tech or metahuman DOMINANT GENES, that would give them an advantage (if however so slight) back in TS Earth.

There could be many TS Earth factions in Comix Earth, and they could invest more time in thwarting each other's schemes.

ALSO. The TS Earth factions may also be present on Earth to PREVENT Comix Earth factions from fucking with TS Earth. The last time a Comix Earth resident came to TS Earth was Anthony Saint, and now he stole a hot TS scientist chick, learned the secrets of the Mu Frame, and is manufacturing homing lasers! TS Earth might be very cross with that! A TS Earth company might want Lord Caleb Belle to arrest Anthony Saint for copyright infringement. :P

TS Earth factions would also want to monitor Comix Earth. They might not want, say, SDI psychos or Dreamlanders or other Comix Earth and non-Earth parties with dimensional technology visiting TS Earth unwantedly.

Like, TS Earth guys would not want Damask the Destroyer to open up an interdimensional hole and start invading them. :P

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 6:36 am
by Magister Militum
Shroom Man 777 wrote:You know, with Transingularity tech, why DON'T they just go around and find a fresh new planet or colonize Mars or something? They don't even need to ask anyone - aren't they supposed to be an order of magnitude more advanced than Comix Earth tech, even those sported by Andrews and Saint? Unless the only habitable planet in the TSverse is TS Earth or something... then colonization would be trivially easy for 'em.
That was my original concern with the concept when Ford first introduced it. They're supposed to be unimaginably more advanced than we are (they use black holes as strategic weapons), yet no one thought of simply moving them into space, be it in the form of a habitat cluster or another planet? I guess with Comix! Earth you could argue it's all there and ready, but it seems like they're ignoring other avenues of evacuation.

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 7:25 am
by speaker-to-trolls
^I was going to rationalise that as being a result of really bad luck regarding the results of their war: e.g. they put a load of area denial weaponry into space to deny their enemies the high ground, so if they try to go upwards they'll get blasted by area denial things. And I was going to say they used some kind of reality-warping weapons on each other which, combined with the black holes, meant that all other universes were closed off to them, and something to do with the confluence of multidimensional strangeness on Comix Earth means that it's the only one they can reach, the walls of reality are thin, or something. Even so, I imagined the day they found it to be a pivotal moment in the Empires history, as in "YES! YES, HALLELUJAH! MAYBE GOD DOESN'T HATE US AFTER ALL!".

Of course TSE as a whole is Fords creation.

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 7:42 am
by Malchus
If it is like that, then that could also be another reason why they want Comix Earth so badly. I'd think that enough time-space altering area denial weaponry lofted into orbit to the point that they can't leave wouldn't just mean that the walls of reality are thin, it would entail that said walls are steadily being torn asunder. If so, they've likely realized that the patch of space-time around their Earth is going to collapse eventually. Since they also can't safely force their way through said reality-fucked, the only way out would be Comix Earth.

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 7:51 am
by Shroom Man 777
It'd make some more sense if there were Transingularity illegals who fenced cheap unimportant Transingularity tech to Comix Earth in exchange for valuable goods Comix Earth might provide... like, who knows, chocolate (or some other random item)? Chocolate might be more expensive than gold in Transingularityland, and thus would be a valuable commodity. Then guys like Caleb Belle would be out to stop these Transingularity smugglers?

Of course, if Transingularity Earth is Transingularity, then they'd have EVERYTHING they'd need and wouldn't need chocolate or any random trinket from Comix Earth.

Maybe not chocolate, but metahumans? Orphans with meta-genes?

OR maybe the Transingularity Earth guys like to hide people in Comix Earth? Lord Caleb Belle might be in charge of the witness protection program! Or he might be a man with a bounty on his head, and might be living incognito on Earth! Like an exiled mafia don!

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:27 am
by Shroom Man 777
I didn't see speaker and Malchus' posts when I made my reply.

Now that I read them, man. It makes me wonder if the Transingularity Earth's leader is Timothy Dalton, and he wants to break the Time Lock on Transingularity Earth, bring TSE right above Earth, and begin THE END OF TIME ITSELF!

Lord Caleb Belle: Do you hear it? The drums! The sound of drums!

:lol:

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:36 am
by Ford Prefect
Hey guys. I know it's been like a BILLION YEARS since I last posted here, but you're all talking about Singularity, and Shrom told me, so I thought I'd pitch in. The first thing to note is that Singularity is a ruined world. I mean, yes, they once used black holes as weapons and did not require Super Science to bridge the gap between universes. But that was before they had a war which almost turned the entire planet into a piece of airless Swiss cheese. Their level of technology is still Quartermass-grade even after this, but the problem is not one of technology, it is one of logistics and culture.

None of the surviving factions are willing to cooperate. This might seem crazy considering that they live on a planet barely capable of supporting human life, but you have to keep in mind that they all blame each other for the state of the world, on top of being fundamentally ideologically opposed in way which make Capitalism v Communism look like a couple of six year olds shoving each other around. They cling to thep ast, and hate each other. This makes them kind of stupid, of coruse, but they're only human. Even if they did cooperate (which is in itself extremely difficult), they do not have the resources left to mount much of an effort to get into space - not that it matters because there isn't anything there for them, because they wrecked that too. Even after the Twilight there are billions of people left spread amongst the remaining powers, and they could perhaps save a few million through space lift. On top of this, the people are important*: a large population is proof that you're winning. They don't even have the resources to upload the population.

On top of this, incidental singularity gating has a massive energy cost. I imagine that sending even one person from their universe to ours results in thousands of people freezing, or something equally hyperbolic. It's carefully rationed, only used for maximum gain - they'll launch raids using singularity gates which will kill tens of thousands of people, but only if it kills millions of the enemy or gains extremely important resources. But you might recall that each superpower has a migration project, in which they intend to transplant their entire remaining populations into Comix! Earth, and you're wondering how that could possibly be done if they can't even afford to send one person without a whole city block freezing, but suffice to say they have a way, but it will not be nice for either the people in Comix! or in Transingularity.

The scale of the problem is enormous. It is not something that one man, no matter how brilliant, could possibly solve (well, actually Quartermass could, by asking his wife for help, but to be honest I find the Andromeda Infinite Imperium to be such an easy out that it's thematically unsatisfactory).

*In the case of the Caliph AIs, they are literally required to maximise the survival of their wards. They are programmed to love their people, and will never willingly abandon the majority of the population to a slow death.

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 9:09 am
by Shroom Man 777
Well... damn. That sucks. At least the sociocultural circumstances that lead to their scheming to destroy Comix Earth is more intriguing and interesting than, you know, bannerspikedeathskullnecrokillmurdermongerlordgodkingbaronqueens.

Re: [General]The Return of CHARACTER CONCEPTS

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 9:12 am
by Ford Prefect
Well, keep in mind they're not planning to destroy the Comix! Earth. I mean, they probably would end up destroying the place, but only as a side-effect.

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 11:18 am
by Shroom Man 777
Ha-HAAAA! I split this topic from the Character Concepts thread because it's become a discussion on Transingularity Earth itself! Or something!

I accidentally left FROD's long post in the Character Concepts thread, but through my mighty system of organs I managed to move his post to this thread! Haha!

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 4:42 pm
by speaker-to-trolls
Wow, that's even more grim than I remember it, perfect :D
This is an interesting thing to consider when thinking up Transingularity characters, each of them knows they're killing thousands of their own people in the course of their job, wonder what that will do to their perspective. OK, Caleb will take it in his stride, all sacrifices are worthwhile if it means the three S's, Survival, Safety and Singularity, can be attained, but I'm planning on writing up his minions as well.
Well, keep in mind they're not planning to destroy the Comix! Earth. I mean, they probably would end up destroying the place, but only as a side-effect.
So does that mean their plan is still to colonise Earth, but they might end up blowing it up accidentally, or that their plan involves going to Comix Earth just to get out of their current predicament? So maybe they plan on moving to Comix Earth in such a way as to kill all the inhabitants, then move on to Mars, or to another universe altogether?

Of course even if moving carries a high risk of accidentally destroying ones new home, it's still better than staying on ones old home, which will definitely be destroyed.
Ford wrote: None of the surviving factions are willing to cooperate. This might seem crazy considering that they live on a planet barely capable of supporting human life, but you have to keep in mind that they all blame each other for the state of the world, on top of being fundamentally ideologically opposed in way which make Capitalism v Communism look like a couple of six year olds shoving each other around. They cling to the past, and hate each other.
This is something I'd like to ask you about as well; how closely do the Transingularitans current politics and ideas reflect the way they were before the war? I was going to write it up so that the Empire was at best a bastardisation of some aspects of Singularitan European culture, and at worst a big costume party to help the survivors to cope with their situation by playing knights and princesses and what have you. The real culture and ideology from before the war would have been lost and in any case might now be incomprehensible to the survivors since during the Singularity they may all have had access to information networks which could increase their processing power and explain weird concepts to them. So they haven't just lost knowledge of what their ancestors believed, they wouldn't be capable of understanding it.

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 6:10 pm
by Shroom Man 777
speaker-to-trolls wrote:Wow, that's even more grim than I remember it, perfect :D
This is an interesting thing to consider when thinking up Transingularity characters, each of them knows they're killing thousands of their own people in the course of their job, wonder what that will do to their perspective. OK, Caleb will take it in his stride, all sacrifices are worthwhile if it means the three S's, Survival, Safety and Singularity, can be attained, but I'm planning on writing up his minions as well.
Considering that each side will try to interdimensionally send a person to (Comix) Earth by killing thousands of people belonging to the enemy, then I guess managing to send a single person to Comix Earth will be a great victory for whichever Transingularity faction did the sending (at the expense of the lives of another faction's citizens). :twisted:

Besides, maybe Caleb will have brought his comrades and confederates with him in the form of uploads? Like, compressed people files stored in his transhuman memory banks!

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:11 pm
by Invictus
speaker-to-trolls wrote:
Ford wrote: None of the surviving factions are willing to cooperate. This might seem crazy considering that they live on a planet barely capable of supporting human life, but you have to keep in mind that they all blame each other for the state of the world, on top of being fundamentally ideologically opposed in way which make Capitalism v Communism look like a couple of six year olds shoving each other around. They cling to the past, and hate each other.
This is something I'd like to ask you about as well; how closely do the Transingularitans current politics and ideas reflect the way they were before the war? I was going to write it up so that the Empire was at best a bastardisation of some aspects of Singularitan European culture, and at worst a big costume party to help the survivors to cope with their situation by playing knights and princesses and what have you. The real culture and ideology from before the war would have been lost and in any case might now be incomprehensible to the survivors since during the Singularity they may all have had access to information networks which could increase their processing power and explain weird concepts to them. So they haven't just lost knowledge of what their ancestors believed, they wouldn't be capable of understanding it.
I'm guessing weaponized ideologies, perfected by the Transingularitan polities during the last War so their populations could more effectively oppose each other. Of course, each side expected either to win or go down fighting, not wind down into a guttering stalemate. And the survivors are maladapted; I don't think they would literally find their pre-war culture incomprehensible, simply alien and superfluous - or at least the bits of it that the social planners didn't incorporate into their wartime ideologies in the first place. It seems to me that the very fact Lord Caleb Belle and his minions are playing knights and barons, going that far back and trying that hard to recreate the past, means that they have gone off the reservation a bit.

I have this wild idea that Caleb Belle is the "Old Earth Hand" of the invading faction, gone native a bit by necessity and therefore partially deprogrammed from his Empire's hyper-competitive ideology through distance and adaptation. The fact that his bosses on the other side don't do much with him is because they have grown to distrust him (either out of paranoia or perfectly justified reasons - see the story of Xu Fu and Qin Shihuangdi; if he and he alone was offered a chance out of the squalor of his homeworld, why wouldn't he slam the door shut behind him?), even though Lord Belle is their only foot in the door leading to the bounty of Comix Earth.

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:18 pm
by Shroom Man 777
So Caleb Belle is actually telling his TS Earth masters that he's facilitating their invasion of Comix Earth, but in actuality he's either converting any Transingularity immigrant to his side or killing them off before they squeal to the TS Earth masters that Caleb Belle has gone native and has no intentions of dealing with TS Earth at all? :D

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 8:26 pm
by Invictus
Shroom Man 777 wrote:So Caleb Belle is actually telling his TS Earth masters that he's facilitating their invasion of Comix Earth, but in actuality he's either converting any Transingularity immigrant to his side or killing them off before they squeal to the TS Earth masters that Caleb Belle has gone native and has no intentions of dealing with TS Earth at all? :D
For maximum character complexity, he's doing all that and is *still* planning to conquer the planet.

(cue Outer Heaven etc etc)

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 9:07 pm
by Shroom Man 777
Loyalty to his mission, or loyalty to himself? His country, or his beliefs? CALEEEEB! BELLE!!!!! NOT OVER YET! NOT BY A LONGSHOT! :lol:

Well, he's certainly not mucking about scheming on Earth just to get a suntan. But what that ultimate goal can be, who knows?

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 8:50 am
by Ford Prefect
speaker-to-trolls wrote:So does that mean their plan is still to colonise Earth, but they might end up blowing it up accidentally, or that their plan involves going to Comix Earth just to get out of their current predicament? So maybe they plan on moving to Comix Earth in such a way as to kill all the inhabitants, then move on to Mars, or to another universe altogether?
They just want out of their own world, and 'our' world is that stepping stone to this. They almost certainly expect to recreate their previous civillisation again, which requires the entire solar system. They're wrong, mind you, but only because I'm a dick. :)
This is something I'd like to ask you about as well; how closely do the Transingularitans current politics and ideas reflect the way they were before the war? I was going to write it up so that the Empire was at best a bastardisation of some aspects of Singularitan European culture, and at worst a big costume party to help the survivors to cope with their situation by playing knights and princesses and what have you. The real culture and ideology from before the war would have been lost and in any case might now be incomprehensible to the survivors since during the Singularity they may all have had access to information networks which could increase their processing power and explain weird concepts to them. So they haven't just lost knowledge of what their ancestors believed, they wouldn't be capable of understanding it.
Invictus wrote:I'm guessing weaponized ideologies, perfected by the Transingularitan polities during the last War so their populations could more effectively oppose each other. Of course, each side expected either to win or go down fighting, not wind down into a guttering stalemate. And the survivors are maladapted; I don't think they would literally find their pre-war culture incomprehensible, simply alien and superfluous - or at least the bits of it that the social planners didn't incorporate into their wartime ideologies in the first place. It seems to me that the very fact Lord Caleb Belle and his minions are playing knights and barons, going that far back and trying that hard to recreate the past, means that they have gone off the reservation a bit.
Invictus has the right sort of idea. Prior to the Twilight, while their were likely clearly delineated 'nations', those nations probably did not have cultures in the traditional sense, and instead a sort of fluid soup that comes with billions of people all experimenting. This doesn't really lend itself to warfare, so the upper echelons constructed states for the people to believe in through the Twilight. In the aftermath, including the data-collapse, you're left with shattered husks of these fake nations which are trying to rebuild, and they grow into something else from that base - calling the 'maladapted' is quite appropriate. Almost everyone alive would probably have memories of what it was like previously, but they'd be so shell-shocked, burnt-out and meme-bombarded that they'd have trouble believing they lived in that time. Quite a few would probably write it off as some kind of hallucination.
I have this wild idea that Caleb Belle is the "Old Earth Hand" of the invading faction, gone native a bit by necessity and therefore partially deprogrammed from his Empire's hyper-competitive ideology through distance and adaptation. The fact that his bosses on the other side don't do much with him is because they have grown to distrust him (either out of paranoia or perfectly justified reasons - see the story of Xu Fu and Qin Shihuangdi; if he and he alone was offered a chance out of the squalor of his homeworld, why wouldn't he slam the door shut behind him?), even though Lord Belle is their only foot in the door leading to the bounty of Comix Earth.
I really rather like that, though Belle is Speaker's character. I think that fits quite well with the thematic setting of Transingularity Earth, where even the administrators and leaders are actually super-PTSD afflicted crazy persons with the most effective masks. Even the Caliphs are broken in some way. Some border on senile, and it is a rather flimsy lie that they operate to the same level of efficiency possessed pre-Twilight. The caliphs themselves are wracked by the knowledge that they consume a lot of resources, but are so patchwork that only by operating together can they be effective.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Considering that each side will try to interdimensionally send a person to (Comix) Earth by killing thousands of people belonging to the enemy, then I guess managing to send a single person to Comix Earth will be a great victory for whichever Transingularity faction did the sending (at the expense of the lives of another faction's citizens).
You miss understand: in order to form a singularity bridge, a nation must sacrifice its own people.

Re: Transingularity Earth

Posted: Fri May 07, 2010 12:39 pm
by speaker-to-trolls
Invictus wrote:
Shroom Man 777 wrote:So Caleb Belle is actually telling his TS Earth masters that he's facilitating their invasion of Comix Earth, but in actuality he's either converting any Transingularity immigrant to his side or killing them off before they squeal to the TS Earth masters that Caleb Belle has gone native and has no intentions of dealing with TS Earth at all? :D
For maximum character complexity, he's doing all that and is *still* planning to conquer the planet.

(cue Outer Heaven etc etc)
That would actually make a certain amount of sense given what I'd intended for the character; his goal is bringing back the Singularity, which he's been taught to regard basically as heaven. He believes in the PanEuropean Empires ideology and its system because he's been raised that way, but only because he thinks it's the best system for doing what he wants.

That probably wouldn't be how it started, though, to start with he probably believed wholeheartedly in the Empires ideology and bringing about its glorious rebirth, and now perhaps he's wondering if the Empire is really the best possible system and whether some other means of recreating the Singularity might have more success.

This world is moving so swiftly forward, they have so much potential for advancement. If they would only put aside their differences they might achieve their potential.
They need a ruler, someone to steer them towards the right path.
Someone with discipline, with vision, with the will to realise the splendour that could come out of this squalor, someone like...
Lord Belle

Or maybe not. Even if that was what he'd decided on he'd want to milk TS Earth for all it was worth until he had the resources to take Comix! Earth himself.