The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post Reply
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Siege »

I thought I ought to try my hand at this as well.

Suzougu-Go Illuminate

The Suzougu-Go Illuminate (pronounced Sue-zo-go), officially the Sphere Of Light of Suzougu-Go That Illuminates The Seven Vectors Of The Universe, is the name of a xenophobic polity located in the Carina-Sagittarius arm roughly in-between C-WEB and OAS territory.

Species: Ta-su
Capital World: Suzo-ji
Government: Absolute monarchy
Affiliation: None

Biology
Ta-su are a species of impressively powerful four-legged, serpentine creatures. Individuals grow to an average length of 4 to 5 meters and weigh between 140 and 175 kilograms. They normally move on their four legs but can erect themselves on the hind two. All ta-su are covered in scales of varying colors, with a crown of sharp feather-like protrusions immediately behind the head and mustache-like whiskers on the snout.

Having evolved on a volcanic world close to its parent sun ta-su are ectothermic and as a result prefer hot and dry environments. The average lifespan for unmodded individuals is 250 years, for which they have to thank their relatively low metabolic rate and extremely resilient nature. Scales and an extremely thick skin provide protection against blunt and piercing trauma, and they possess a remarkable ability to heal from all but the most grievous of wounds.

Ta-su are omnivores. They have a long tail and a long, deeply forked tongue. They have no particularly acute sense of hearing, despite visible earholes. Ta-su are able to see in color, but have poor night vision, likely due to their home planet’s general lack of true darkness. Ta-su use their tongue to detect taste and smell stimuli. Their ‘whiskers’ in fact contain special sensing organs called electroreceptors which enable them to detect the electromagnetic field emitted by the movement of living animals. Every time a living creature moves it generates an electrical field and ta-su are so sensitive they can detect half a billionth of a volt at vast distances.

Upon exposure to extreme cold ta-su enter a state of hibernation in which most bodily functions shut down. With the scale layer acting as insulation they can survive in this state for prolonged periods of time; individuals are known to have survived exposure to the vacuum of space for up to a month.


History, Culture & Politics
Little is known about ta-su history. Their race has been eddieborne for anywhere between 2500 and 3000 years, a vast span of time during which the ta-su have fought a series of often very violent civil wars, colonial skirmishes and wars with external polities which have resulted in the loss of many records of older times. Combined with a general disinterest for history dating back longer than they themselves are old the ta-su have long forgotten the precise circumstances of how their Illuminate came about.

In the current day the Suzougu-Go Illuminate have laid claim to a vast expanse of space. Surrounding their ancestral home world of Suzo-ji another five hundred and sixty nine systems are considered colonized, meaning they boast populations exceeding one billion individuals. Another fifteen hundred systems are designated respectively Development and Economic Action Zones. Development Zones are marked for colonization; systems appointed as Economic Action Zones are marked for strip-mining and other heavy industrial exploitation activities. Englobing these ~2000 systems is an additional sphere of systems the Illuminate claims as its Exclusive Economic Zone.

The Illuminate jealously guards what it considers its territory to the point where its attitude toward external polities is hostile and bordering on xenophobia. It has no ties to any major power block, nor does it maintain any diplomatic relations with its neighbors. The Mihonagi-Go, or Imperial Throne, has designated several ‘special economic zones’ wherein foreigners may trade with the Illuminate, but they are few and far-between, and as a result trade barely factors into the GDP. The Illuminate is a de facto autarky, driven by a complicated mixed economy with central planning.

The internal system of government and national order of the Illuminate stems from a fanatical worship of the Mihonagi-Go Empress, and a strict code of obedience to the whims of her speakers. The official state doctrines of law and order, idol worship and population movement control have been likened to a religion.


War
The ta-su are an aggressive, warlike species, and through their thousands of years of space travel have perfected what they believe to be the ultimate form of combat. This form is codified in the Hikame-No, a vast compendium of many thousands of pages detailing the myriad complexities of combat between fleets of spaceships. The Hikame-No is never finished, with successive generations of authors editing, revising and adding to it as new insights develop.

Ta-su warfleets are formed by two principal classes of ships: Destroyer Escorts are smaller warships, anywhere between 600 and 1000 meters long, whose main task is to perform screening and escort duties to Fleet Carriers, warships designed with a primary mission of deploying swarms of missiles against enemy targets. Over time these ships have evolved from simple intra-system gunboats into immense fusion-powered vessels that carry hundreds of heavy missiles.

The average ta-su Fleet Carrier is a 1300m long behemoth driven through space by a fusion torch drive capable of producing very high exhaust velocities. Fully a third of the ship is occupied by the drive system. The front of the ship is a heavily armored ‘hammerhead’ capable of absorbing tremendous amounts of punishment. The crew will number in the dozens at best, stowed away in armored command sections deep within the hull. Almost all other space inside the ship is taken up by weapons: mainly ordinance bays carrying dozens of missiles each, but also anti-missile rocket pods, laser cannons and gauss guns for point defense.

Latched to the outside of the ship are numerous parasite warships: deployable drones carrying sensors, electronic warfare suites, and missiles of their own. When deployed these form a network that together with its escort ships will allow the Fleet Carrier not only to detect enemy targets but also to direct its missiles onto those targets.

Each ta-su missile is equipped with a datalink and a computer core that upon activation forms one node in a seed AI network: the more ships there are, and the more missiles they fire, the smarter the AI missile guidance network becomes. Capital-class anti-ship missiles are small warships in their own right: one hundred meters long and fitted with nuclear thermal rocket propulsion, with an armored prow and capable of independently targeting its dozens of maneuvering submunitions, each of which carries a multi-stage variable-yield h-bomb warhead.

A principal rule of the Hikame-No is to never engage in planetary combat. Instead, once total space superiority has been established over a hostile planet it will be given two standard days (~32 Earth hours) to unconditionally surrender. If the planet does not submit, it will be bombarded. Orbital bombardment can take three forms: the preferred form is to drop a sufficiently large asteroid on the planet, which will usually put an end all significant resistance. If rocks of sufficient size are for some reason not available, the fleet will bombard the wayward world with fusion nukes, taking out cities and other targets of interest until its surrender is a fact.

Finally, if for some reason the planet has brought upon itself the full wrath of the Empress, one of the mainline warships will move into a lower orbit, point its back at the planet, and light its fusion torch at full burn. This strategy, aptly called ‘putting a world to the torch’, is the equivalent of a major extinction-level event and will render the planet lifeless for prolonged periods of time. The Illuminate, however, possesses excellent terraforming technology and an abundance of patience, so all things being even that is hardly considered a problem.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
User avatar
Artemis
Global Mod
Posts: 392
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Savannah, Georgia
Contact:

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Artemis »

That's all well and good Siege, but I know the real question on everyone's mind - do they have shields? :P

In all honesty, that's a pretty scary race you got there. I love that you put them right in between OAS and C-WEB - they're probably one of the main reasons a major shooting war hasn't happened. No one wants to awaken that particular sleeping dragon.

At first I was pretty suspicious about the number of systems they control, but then if they've had as long as we have to go from the Roman Empire to today, it's a little more believable. Still, that's THOUSANDS of systems out there - how many Ta-su are there in the galaxy? They've gotta be breaking the trillion mark by now.
A principal rule of the Hikame-No is to never engage in planetary combat.
I really like the subtle arrogance this suggests on the part of the ta-su military - that their own worlds would never be invaded by the barbarians.
With the scale layer acting as insulation they can survive in this state for prolonged periods of time; individuals are known to have survived exposure to the vacuum of space for up to a month.
How do they deal with the other hazards of vacuum, though? What if they're in direct sunlight rather than shadow, and what about the pressure of deep space?
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
User avatar
Booted Vulture
Posts: 965
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 9:33 pm

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Booted Vulture »

I like it apart from those tendrils: for one thing the units of electric fields are not technically volts but volts per metre (or newtons per coloumb) and second sensation down to a level of 10^-9 seems rather too sensitive. Modern electrical devices are surely going to output field strengths much higher than that and cause them sensory overload and pain.

A cordless phone for example emits a field of about six volts per metre (from a random website admittedly not sure about the reliability of it) which is a full nine orders of magnitude higher than they can pick up. That's seriously going to fuck them over.
Ah Brother! It's been too long!
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Siege »

Artemis wrote:At first I was pretty suspicious about the number of systems they control, but then if they've had as long as we have to go from the Roman Empire to today, it's a little more believable.
To be honest I think a lot of people don't understand how immensely huge the Milky Way actually is. There's between 200 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, so claiming ~2000 of them really amounts to a pathetically small number in the grand scheme of things. In fact I was originally going to go with an order of magnitude greater numbers, but then I decided that'd just be showing off.

(And of course, "it's really not that many" is a really lousy thing to hear when these guys are next door and claiming a world you happen to have colonized as their own.)
Still, that's THOUSANDS of systems out there - how many Ta-su are there in the galaxy? They've gotta be breaking the trillion mark by now.
Oh, there's easily over a trillion of them. Their core worlds are ecumenopolises, each requiring twenty agricultural planets to sustain. I'd estimate there ought to be at least two trillion of them, maybe more.
I really like the subtle arrogance this suggests on the part of the ta-su military - that their own worlds would never be invaded by the barbarians.
Oh, I doubt they'd have any serious qualms about bombarding their own worlds if there was a significant occupying force present. They simply don't fight on the ground with anything heavier than their equivalent of paramilitary police forces. If there's anything those ground forces can't handle, it's nuclear bombing time. The fun thing with nukes is that they come in all shapes and sizes, from handy sub-kiloton tactical devices to whopping five-stage 100mt (or thereabout) city-killers.
How do they deal with the other hazards of vacuum, though? What if they're in direct sunlight rather than shadow, and what about the pressure of deep space?
Pressure wouldn't really be a problem since it's not for humans either. I'm not sure about sunlight; I wager though that if they somehow end up in space and in direct sunlight they'd be screwed. Of course that still means they're vastly more survivable in open vacuum than the typical lifeform.
Booted Vulture wrote:I like it apart from those tendrils: for one thing the units of electric fields are not technically volts but volts per metre (or newtons per coloumb) and second sensation down to a level of 10^-9 seems rather too sensitive.
Well, great white sharks have a similar sensitivity going on (that's where I got the idea), and they don't seem to be ending up dead from sensory overload all over the place. And they handle it in water, which is a whole lot more conductive than air too. At any rate it's the thought that counts: they sense electromagnetic fields, the specific strength and distance I don't care so much about.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
User avatar
Artemis
Global Mod
Posts: 392
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Savannah, Georgia
Contact:

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Artemis »

To be honest I think a lot of people don't understand how immensely huge the Milky Way actually is. There's between 200 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, so claiming ~2000 of them really amounts to a pathetically small number in the grand scheme of things.
Mostly I meant in comparison to the other polities, just to clarify.
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
User avatar
Destructionator
Posts: 836
Joined: Tue May 20, 2008 4:33 pm
Location: Watertown, New York
Contact:

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Destructionator »

Artemis wrote:At first I was pretty suspicious about the number of systems they control, but then if they've had as long as we have to go from the Roman Empire to today, it's a little more believable. Still, that's THOUSANDS of systems out there - how many Ta-su are there in the galaxy? They've gotta be breaking the trillion mark by now.
The equation for constant population growth is:

starting population * e ^ (growth rate * number of years)
where e ~= 2.7...
And the growth rate is annual percentage / 100. So 1% would be 0.01.

Assume they have a constant growth rate of 0.5% (which the US has right now) and a starting population of six billion. After 2500 years of growth, they'd have a population of about 1,500 trillion.

0.5% may be an overestimate for their growth rate given their large size. Larger animals of course need more food which can put a hard limit on growth. While technology can help remove this limit, evolution's work is already done, so it might still be in their genes.

The growth rate has a huge change on the result; if it is 0.1%, the pop is closer to 70 billion instead, so there is a lot of out of universe flexibility on what number you want.


Anyway, the point is simply that the given size isn't unreasonable considering their age.
Artemis wrote:Mostly I meant in comparison to the other polities, just to clarify.
The other polities may be smaller, but don't necessarily have to deal with the whole of anyone else thanks to graveddie choke points. I think we'll be ok.... I hope. :)
His Certifiable Geniusness, Adam D. Ruppe (My 'verse)
Marle: Lucca! You're amazing!
Lucca: Ain't it the truth! ... Oh, um...I mean...
Marle: Enough with the false modesty! You have a real gift! I would trade my royal ancestry for your genius in a heartbeat!

"I still really hate those pompous assholes who quote themselves in their sigs." -- Me
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Invictus »

Artemis wrote:Mostly I meant in comparison to the other polities, just to clarify.
If we accept Artemis' standard that each polity has an average of five developed worlds and equate each of these to a Suzougu-Go core world, then the Illuminate is about one hundred times larger than your average interstellar polity. And unless each major alliance is made up of fifty polities or more (which I don't really see), then the Illuminate is likely to be larger and more powerful than the OAS and C-WEB combined. Just sayin'.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
Artemis
Global Mod
Posts: 392
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Savannah, Georgia
Contact:

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Artemis »

Well, Concord is, as I've said, a middle-of-the-road nation, the equivalent of, say, South Korea in today's world. So there's a little more wiggle room than what I've established.
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
User avatar
speaker-to-trolls
Posts: 766
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 12:34 am
Location: The World of Men

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

[quot="Siegetank"]To be honest I think a lot of people don't understand how immensely huge the Milky Way actually is. There's between 200 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, so claiming ~2000 of them really amounts to a pathetically small number in the grand scheme of things. In fact I was originally going to go with an order of magnitude greater numbers, but then I decided that'd just be showing off.[/quote]
There might be 40 billion stars in the galaxy, but how many of them are accesible by known graveddies? I assumed that the small number of stars that an average nation controls was more of a function of not being able to find many graveddies leading to useful systems.
"Little monuments may be completed by their first architects, but great ones; true ones leave their copestones to posterity. God keep me from completing anything."
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Siege »

speaker-to-trolls wrote:There might be 40 billion stars in the galaxy, but how many of them are accesible by known graveddies? I assumed that the small number of stars that an average nation controls was more of a function of not being able to find many graveddies leading to useful systems.
This really shouldn't matter. These guys have 250-year lifespans and a natural hibernating state. Even assuming they're not into genetic tinkering or advanced suspended animation that's plenty of time to set out on a relativistic course toward systems not connected to eddies. Let's say it takes them ten years to get there. Then the ship seeds the system with self-replicating drones and heads back home. Wait X amount of time whilst the drones build up the infrastructure, then contract a crew to handle the equipment in said system for Y years. They take ten years to get there, and ten years after that the first relativistic cargo pods stacked full of valuable resources begin arriving in orbit around stars in systems sporting eddies.

It would take some time and a fairly steep up-front investment, but after that you've basically got a whole system full of resources to exploit so the effort should easily pay itself back. (And of course with more advanced A.I. technology you could automate the whole mining process, eliminating the need to bring in 'live' crews of squishy organics.)
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
Blackwing
Posts: 160
Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2008 1:05 am

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Blackwing »

Yeah, see, the problem I see with this is that the last Solidarity Wars, apparently, went down to a 'super/soft science super weapon' arms race.

This race is going to set off a 'systems control/semi-hard science way of subverting the need for Grav-eddies' arms race.
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
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Siege »

I'm a bit confused- I honestly can't tell if you meant that as an issue or a compliment. Personally I don't think I'm subverting much of anything, really; obviously systems with eddies are more valuable than systems without (militarily, economically, and politically), but even then 'unconnected' systems represent a huge wealth in resources. It would be positively odd if no-one were to attempt to exploit them.

Thought experiment: Let's assume there's a human polity that controls five systems interconnected by eddies, roughly englobing a fairly large volume of space. Each of the five systems represents an abundance of resources, but the worlds within them are either lifeless barren rocks, gas giants, and other environments hostile to human life, thus forcing the humans to live underground, in pressure domes, in orbital habitats, etc.

Then within the aforementioned englobed volume of space, astronomers of this unnamed polity discover an Earth-like planet. It's got blue oceans, white clouds, it's sitting right in the goldilocks zone... It's perfectly suited for human habitation. The only downside: the system it's in doesn't have a single eddie. I would expect that sooner or later (and probably sooner) someone is still going to set out on an expedition to claim and settle this planet, eddie or no eddie.

The point of this thought experiment, obviously, is that given sufficient motivation to do so, humans and aliens alike in all likelihood won't be deterred by a lack of eddies.

I'm not saying that every single system should be exploited. Some polities might think it's too much bother to exploit unconnected systems. Some might simply be content with the connected systems they have. Some might have issues with the problems inherent in relativistic flight, etc. Fact is that a lot of people probably don't have to bother: after all the resources of even a single solar system are pretty overwhelming. Still there would also be people who do see the value in unconnected systems, and exploit them quite profitably (in fact, some polities might prefer the relative quiet afforded by such systems!)
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
Mobius 1
Global Mod
Posts: 1099
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:40 pm
Location: Orlando, FL

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Mobius 1 »

Yeah, see, the problem I see with this is that the last Solidarity Wars, apparently, went down to a 'super/soft science super weapon' arms race.

This race is going to set off a 'systems control/semi-hard science way of subverting the need for Grav-eddies' arms race.
Er, do you have any idea what you're talking about? Since Siege dealt with the second half of the statement, I'll take a go at the first, as it's kinda silly. OZWorld died partially because of an arms race, TSW died because it had been established and then left to the wayside as OZ Comix! exploded.
SHADOW TEMPEST BLACK || STB2: MIDNIGHT PARADOX
The day our skys fe||, the heavens split to create new skies.
Blackwing
Posts: 160
Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2008 1:05 am

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Blackwing »

Well, Siege, my point wasn't that the race is impossible or, in and of itself, too vast or powerful.

It's more that when the reboot for TSW was discussed, Arty took great lengths to explain to us that the whole conflict of TSW revolves around the Grav-eddies and the idea that they're they only viable method of interstellar travel.

Since this is a collaborative effort and we're working from a theme.

My question, or thought experiment to you is:

What is the added value of a race that spans over two thousand systems, has a population past a trillion and can completely ignore the reliance on grav-eddies for maintaining contact with their main resource worlds add to a setting that's supposed to revolve around a struggle for the control of, or at least access to, such grav-eddies?

What if they simply decide, at one point, that all other races are inferior and would be better for being ruled by them or destroyed?
Who'll stop them if everyone else writes a race with the idea of 'Grav-eddies are the only real method of interstellar travel' in the back of their minds and therefore don't have the numbers and resources to fight them off?

So essentially: They're Xenophobic and don't have any relations with any of the major or minor blocs in the universe, they don't seem to do anything besides defend their territory, expand their territory and 'just exist'.
They don't trade, they don't politic and the only interaction they show is blowing apart trespassers.

So the biggest question of all is: Why are they in this setting, what do they add?

My answer would have to be: They're too powerful to get involved without making it 'unfair' for whoever they're involved against, but if they don't get involved they have no purpose at all to the story. The only purpose they serve is to be the occasional target for an attempt by one Polity to convince them that another Polity is a threat to them, in order to get them out of the way.

The only two other meta-purposes (that's purposes outside the setting) they serve is: To be a proof of concept that Grav-eddies aren't really all the important (thus completely making the entire conflict irrelevant) and as an example to the next person who wants to make an uber-powerful 'super empire'.

You just know that someone's going to use this race as a precedent. They'll make a species who's natural lifespan is five hundred years, unmodded, rather than 250 and use this as a justification for why their species' territory is almost twice as large as that of the Ta-Su. Then when someone says 'dude they're to powerful' they'll point at this thread and say 'Siege's math doesn't lie, it's possible'.
Then someone will make a species that's been Space/Eddie-capable twice as long as the Ta-Su and use that as a justification for why their population is 5 Trillion.

Eventually, someone's going to make their super-massive race part of one of the Blocs and then all the other Blocs will have to have their own super-massive in order for the conflict to be viable.

Your own thought experiment makes this clear, Siege: even in a Hard Science setting, with realistic technology, FTL travel isn't all that important and in a realistic setting, Grav-Eddies would be a short-cut or a method of expanding one's zone of influence faster, not further.

The problem with that, though, is that TSW revolves around a conflict over the Grav-Eddies, remove their importance, and thus the need for Polities to fight, politic, trade, negotiate and generally come into conflict over the possession of and access to Grav-Eddies and you destroy the very point of the setting.

Essenially, the Suzougu-Go Illuminate's existence makes the entire setting a dud.
Yes, they're scientifically possible and altogether an awesome race showing just how much is possible with Hard Science and Realistic Technology, but the indisputable fact remains: they don't fit the theme of the setting.
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
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Siege »

Blackwing wrote:It's more that when the reboot for TSW was discussed, Arty took great lengths to explain to us that the whole conflict of TSW revolves around the Grav-eddies and the idea that they're they only viable method of interstellar travel.
As I understood it eddies were supposed to be the only viable method of faster-than-light interstellar travel. Which makes sense: even if your torchship travels at say 25 percent of the speed of light it'll still take 40 years to travel 10 light years (I think), whereas an eddie will take you that same distance in an instant. It's readily apparent what the preferred method of travel will be in most situations.

What is the added value of a race that spans over two thousand systems, has a population past a trillion and can completely ignore the reliance on grav-eddies for maintaining contact with their main resource worlds add to a setting that's supposed to revolve around a struggle for the control of, or at least access to, such grav-eddies?
First off, no-one can "completely ignore" eddies. Eddies and systems connected by them are (or should be) of immense strategic importance, both militarily, economically and politically. I think I pointed this out in my previous reply too.

As for the "added value"-- what is the added value of anything? I think they're a good addition to this universe. They're a fun antagonist, plus they inject a bit of scale and sense into the setting. Do I really need more justification than that?
What if they simply decide, at one point, that all other races are inferior and would be better for being ruled by them or destroyed?
What if one day they collectively decide to commit seppuku because the Empress is having a bad day? What if one day a ruler takes the throne who aligns the Illuminate one of the major alliances? What if they suddenly open up to foreign trade?

Well, then we have interesting stories to tell, don't we? Isn't that sort of the point of a setting like this?
Who'll stop them if everyone else writes a race with the idea of 'Grav-eddies are the only real method of interstellar travel' in the back of their minds and therefore don't have the numbers and resources to fight them off?
Let me think about that for a moment-- err, perhaps one of the four massive alliances capable of operating on a galactic scale? A resource base of 2,000 systems shouldn't make you more than a regional power at best.
So the biggest question of all is: Why are they in this setting, what do they add?
See all the reasons provided above; moreover, I've already got an idea or three for stories set entirely within the Illuminate. There's plenty interesting things to be told about the political intrigue at the Imperial court, where traditionalists, monarchists, reformists and hawks struggle for influence with an Empress who has long-term plans of her own.
My answer would have to be: They're too powerful to get involved without making it 'unfair' for whoever they're involved against, but if they don't get involved they have no purpose at all to the story. The only purpose they serve is to be the occasional target for an attempt by one Polity to convince them that another Polity is a threat to them, in order to get them out of the way.
I vehemently disagree, for reasons outlined above.
The only two other meta-purposes (that's purposes outside the setting) they serve is: To be a proof of concept that Grav-eddies aren't really all the important (thus completely making the entire conflict irrelevant)...
This is preposterous. Whoever said that eddies "aren't really all that important"? I certainly did not, and it makes no logical sense either. What also doesn't make sense, however, is leaving unconnected systems unconsidered and unexploited entirely. Sheesh, I can come up with half a dozen reasons why polities would be exploiting unconnected systems in the span of minutes. What if their eddies come to a 'dead end' requiring them to move deeper into space conventionally? What if they originate in a system that doesn't have any eddies in the first place? What if the connected systems contain less than the resources they need? What if they like peace and quiet? What if an unconnected system contains a perfectly habitable planet? What if they simply don't have to care as much about the passage of time as we do? And so on, and so forth.
...and as an example to the next person who wants to make an uber-powerful 'super empire'.
I don't consider the ta-su "uber-powerful" myself. Compared to what's up so far, maybe, but compared to what this universe should logically contain? Nah. Also, if people require me to set their examples for them I'd say they're pretty imagination-deficient. There's far better examples in semi-hard sci-fi out there to choose from.
You just know that someone's going to use this race as a precedent. They'll make a species who's natural lifespan is five hundred years, unmodded, rather than 250 and use this as a justification for why their species' territory is almost twice as large as that of the Ta-Su. Then when someone says 'dude they're to powerful' they'll point at this thread and say 'Siege's math doesn't lie, it's possible'.
The exact same argument can be used against any polity in this universe.

Besides, the people here are far more creative than that. We don't see this one-upping based on precedent in Comix either, so why would it happen here? In Comix powerhouse characters like Archwind, Wayward Son, Tellurian, etc. are a benchmark, not something to be outdone through petty wanking. I think that like with Comix pretty much everyone involved in TSW is in it to create an interesting setting. Not to write the most powerful character/polity. So really, I'm not at all afraid of anything like what you're describing coming to pass.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
User avatar
Booted Vulture
Posts: 965
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 9:33 pm

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Booted Vulture »

Just a thought; how can colonies that are only connected to the empire via STL methods really function as a viable part of the community? After all take your example of a star 10 lightyears away. By your own admission any resources they have than you want to use in the empire as a whole. It'll take forty years for them to be shipped to you. If you take into account 10 years just to send a message, that means your material will take at least fifty year arrives after you send a simple "Hey send us your X" message.

Furthor more the same applies for communications like "We are at war" Say the Illuminate gets attacked sends a message to its colonies and then fights a five year war with one of its neighbours through the grav eddies. Why by the time the colonies even knew they were at war, the war would ended. of they'd get little to no use out of them.

It's like the age of sail only on scales orders of magnitude greater. They may lay claim to a lot of space but surely the practical reality is that it an empire run on the grav eddies with a shit load of independent colonies in none grav eddy systems.
Ah Brother! It's been too long!
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Siege »

Booted Vulture wrote:It's like the age of sail only on scales orders of magnitude greater. They may lay claim to a lot of space but surely the practical reality is that it an empire run on the grav eddies with a shit load of independent colonies in none grav eddy systems.
Hence why, as per the OP, the Illuminate is broken up into three distinct classes of systems: "colonized zones" (core worlds) and "development zones" (Imperial rim) are connected through eddies; "economic action zones" are unconnected worlds marked for strip-mining and other heavy industrial exploitation.

EAZs are primarily a source of resources and industry. Economic exploitation on this scale would be a matter of extreme long term planning; indeed you don't ask someone to send X on a whim, because it'll take Y years for the message to arrive, and an even longer period of Z years for the resources to actually get back to you. This is one of the reasons why I indicated the Illuminate has a centrally planned economy.

When EAZs are concerned the planners of the Illuminate think in centuries, not decades. But then you can afford that if you live 250+ years and run an empire that's been going for 3,000 years.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
Mobius 1
Global Mod
Posts: 1099
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:40 pm
Location: Orlando, FL

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Mobius 1 »

SiegeTank wrote:When EAZs are concerned the planners of the Illuminate think in centuries, not decades. But then you can afford that if you live 250+ years and run an empire that's been going for 3,000 years.
This brings up an interesting conclusion- as 'thinking long term in big scale' is not neccessarily a good thing if they aren't able to adapt well to the short term. Not that anybody attacks these guys, but I think you get the point.

I'm a bit puzzled about the EAZs- these guys sound like a bit enough of an asshole to lay claim to areas where other people have already settled. Which, of course, makes them even more of total dicks.
SHADOW TEMPEST BLACK || STB2: MIDNIGHT PARADOX
The day our skys fe||, the heavens split to create new skies.
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Siege »

Mobius 1 wrote:This brings up an interesting conclusion- as 'thinking long term in big scale' is not neccessarily a good thing if they aren't able to adapt well to the short term. Not that anybody attacks these guys, but I think you get the point.
I would suspect so, yeah. They're not exactly a subtle people either, and they love codifying everything down to minute details, so I wouldn't imagine them to be very adaptable, really.
I'm a bit puzzled about the EAZs- these guys sound like a bit enough of an asshole to lay claim to areas where other people have already settled. Which, of course, makes them even more of total dicks.
I wouldn't put it past them at all. (I was originally going to go with them claiming everything within the core worlds' radio shell, but that would mean their sphere of influence would expand at the speed of light. It would have been pretty epic on the dick scale, too.)
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
User avatar
speaker-to-trolls
Posts: 766
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 12:34 am
Location: The World of Men

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Siegetank wrote:Hence why, as per the OP, the Illuminate is broken up into three distinct classes of systems: "colonized zones" (core worlds) and "development zones" (Imperial rim) are connected through eddies; "economic action zones" are unconnected worlds marked for strip-mining and other heavy industrial exploitation
.

What exactly is in these star systems that is valuable enough to transport by interstellar slowship? Considering how much energy one would need to expend to get any of the matter or the things one could make from that matter across interstellar space would it not be more efficient just to construct things in your own system? I mean you are looking at many centuries, at least, before you get a return on your investment for these places, and it's arguable whether that amount of time would allow for them to yield more material than you could have got from the solar systems you can get to by graveddy. To be sure of that you'd need to be looking at, again at least, thousands of years.
"Little monuments may be completed by their first architects, but great ones; true ones leave their copestones to posterity. God keep me from completing anything."
User avatar
Somes J
Posts: 377
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2009 4:04 am
Location: Berkeley, California

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Somes J »

speaker-to-trolls wrote:What exactly is in these star systems that is valuable enough to transport by interstellar slowship? Considering how much energy one would need to expend to get any of the matter or the things one could make from that matter across interstellar space would it not be more efficient just to construct things in your own system? I mean you are looking at many centuries, at least, before you get a return on your investment for these places, and it's arguable whether that amount of time would allow for them to yield more material than you could have got from the solar systems you can get to by graveddy. To be sure of that you'd need to be looking at, again at least, thousands of years.
Realistically, getting resources from other star systems implies you're building Dyson Sphere level megaconstruction. The only reason it'd ever be profitable to import stuff from other solar systems via STL ships (with the very high energy costs relativistic speeds imply), barring MacGuffinite, is that you've built up so much stuff in your own system you're literally running out of material. Considering the amount of material available in a typical solar system, this implies truly absurdonormous population levels and industry.

Or, as I said, we can assume some sort of MacGuffinite that's so incredibly valuable it's worth spending absurd amounts of energy to get.
Participate in my hard SF worldbuilding project: The Known Galaxy. Come to our message board and experience my unique brand of terribleness!

"One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience."
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness.

"Open your mind and hear what your heart wants to deny."
Samuel Anders, nBSG, Daybreak, Part 2.
User avatar
speaker-to-trolls
Posts: 766
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 12:34 am
Location: The World of Men

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Now see with The Solidarity Wars I had always been under the impression that the graveddies were the Macguffinite, i.e the thing that made interstellar war worthwhile, and the things they led to which were worth fighting over were fairly mundane. E.g you have plenty of material in your own solar system, but most is a long way away out in the comet halo and that which isn't could already be colonised and part of what people consider their patch, if you find a graveddy that takes you to a place with more material close to a star, or even a planet in the habitable zone, then, well: Score!
"Little monuments may be completed by their first architects, but great ones; true ones leave their copestones to posterity. God keep me from completing anything."
User avatar
Artemis
Global Mod
Posts: 392
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 3:31 am
Location: Savannah, Georgia
Contact:

Re: The Suzougu-Go Illuminate

Post by Artemis »

The thing I think we keep running into here is that the ta-su are extremely long-ranged thinkers. They are concerned about what will affect their Illuminate in a thousand years, not ten, and they're going to want to control all of the resources that they can. It's even possible that they see the recent fortification of graveddies by OAS and C-WEB as a sign that graveddies are very quickly going to become iffy prospects, and they want a readily-available source of materials and habitation space ready for when that happens. You can cut off a graveddy - you can't cut normal space-time.

Looked at another way, if you have an insatiable appetite, you're not just going to eat what's in the pantry - you'll walk to the store twenty miles away to get more because you're still hungry.
"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."

-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
Post Reply