Loaded Dice (Verse Description)

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Blackwing
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Loaded Dice (Verse Description)

Post by Blackwing »

Loaded Dice:

Loaded Dice is a world where science, both hard and 'soft', get together and bow at the altar of chance. Metaphorically, it is a Space Opera where the orchestra is playing Mozart's Musikalisches Würfelspiel, the choir is armed to the teeth and ready to 'nuke it from orbit'* and the Fat Lady is having a nervous breakdown because, really, she isn't sure whether her time to sing is still long off or whether she's been singing all along.

The story of Loaded Dice centres around a cold war between two species: The Aleatori whose 'godlings', exceptionally rare mutants, are literally omnipotent and the Regulators, whose godlings are omni-cognisant in the strictest sense of the word.
Their conflict hinges on these godlings and their roles in their respective societies.
For ages the Regulator godlings have used their absolute knowledge of all that is now and all that will be to lead their people to prosperity and eventually to a state of complete harmony with the universe.
For equal aeons the Aleatori godlings have used their immense power and seemingly inexhaustible capacity to change the very essence of existence to basically play around a bit and have fun.
The Regulators call their godlings 'Legislators', the Aleatori call their godlings 'annoying'.
From this point on, unless otherwise specified, Godlings will be used for Aleatori godlings and Legislators will be used for their Regulator counterparts.

For you see: The Legislators are creatures of extreme order and strict routine. Not because they are tyrants, but rather because they don't want to become tyrants. They have a very strict code which dictates that they must use their knowledge to ensure that all life, Regulator or alien, in the universe, will be as happy and prosperous as possible.
But the Godlings, for all their power, on the other hand are as dangerous to themselves as they are to others. While they are ultimately omnipotent, they are not all-knowing like the Legislators and this is a problem, because this means that while they can technically do anything they want, this does not mean that they actually know how to do it.
So while a Godling might, in essence, be able to turn a pool of water into hydrogen and oxygen, his attempts to find out how to do it may also turn it into nitrogen or a glass of water or, and this is where it becomes obvious why the Godlings are a danger, they may turn all the water on a planet into hydrogen and oxygen and then accidentally turn it into water again in the fastest way naturally possible. (For reference: the fastest way possible to turn hydrogen and oxygen into water naturally is by setting the hydrogen on fire.)
For this reason Aleatori society encourages Godlings to aspire to nothing and never be ambitious, since it's better that Godlings do not do anything constructive with their abilities than that they destroy their entire world or worse yet the entire universe in an attempt to be helpful.

In both cases, Legislator and Godling, the only thing keeping the godlings from using their respective abilities to make life a living hell for all other sentient life, a hell ruled by them, is the watchful eye of the other godlings of their species. In both species, the most important rule to which the godlings are held is that they may never cause harm to others.

Then why the conflict? Because in truth, the Legislators are not completely omni-cognisant and the Godlings are not utterly omnipotent.
The Legislators can not predict, or even perceive, anything a Godling does until they've actually done it and a Godling can not do anything at all so long as a Legislator is directly aware of their presence without using their abilities (by seeing them with their regular eyesight or by hearing, smelling or feeling them by touch or even by seeing them on a scanner).
This means that as long as there are Godlings, Legislator foresight is not completely reliable as even the slightest change in a distant part of the universe may change the eventual future of all existence, while the constant expansion of the Legislator sphere of influence means that there is an ever-growing restriction on the freedom of the Godlings.
Moreover godlings on both sides are somewhat jealous of each other: if the Legislators were omnipotent, they could use their foresight to help the many who are suffering even now, beyond where the Legislators are able to aid them, while if the Godlings were omni-cognisant the inherent danger to their powers would not exist and they would be truly free to do anything they want.

The only reason why the conflict, at the moment, is still a cold war, rather than a fully raging and bloody fight,is that both sides are sworn not to harm to others.

And so the godlings of both sides have turned to alien species far more special than their own:
The truly ancient Hemiola, who, as a species, are so old that not long ago (from an astronomical perspective at least) they had seen all there was to see and had grown bored with existence,
the expansive Bhat, who have have built an empire spanning thousands of worlds and containing hundreds of cultures,
the enigmatic Vel, two related races of the same species, who are of otherworldly origin and are locked in constant conflict over their shared heritage,
the easy going humans, who took their time getting into space and take a 'live and let' live attitude,
and the unique Colenar, stronger, faster and more intelligent than most other species, but 'cursed' with having a biology based on right-handed amino acids in a universe dominated by left-handed amino acids.

Now, the readers will of course be looking at the world and the conflict mostly over the shoulders of the humans (since, the readers are largely presumed to be human themselves) and rest assured that the other species each have their own troubles to deal with outside this whole cold war.
So Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. ~ Stephen Hawking
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