Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

For 'verse proposals, random ideas, musings, and brainwaves.

Moderators: Invictus, speaker-to-trolls

User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Th Isopterids probably work better here than in the collaborative universe currently taking shape, considering the latter's pathological non-focus on the actual biology of its constituent species. :D Whereas the aliens in SOTSS all seem to be built ground-up in an "evopsych-y" kind of way, with their society and such extrapolated out of fundamental characteristics.

Though I do see something in Shroom's final point, in that I find Isopterid-style colonization more interesting if it was less of the defining modus operandi of one bug species, but as just another way people of the galaxy in general settle new planets.
"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
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Did I mention that I got ideas from watching Interstellar and the dynamics and responsibilities and duties of space colonization that Space Matthew McConnaughey and Space Anne Hathaway have to deal with?
I find Isopterid-style colonization more interesting if it was less of the defining modus operandi of one bug species, but as just another way people of the galaxy in general settle new planets.
We could have both!

Once upon a time, it was the biggest fad for Isopterid space pioneers. But maybe at this point in time since SOTS' interstellar civilizations have been established for a few centuries, the golden age of Isopterid biotech mutagenic terraformation has cooled down and their wicked sick terraformation-tech has proliferated to lots of rugged individualistic DIY terraformationists and aspiring space colonists who eschew fleets of settlement ships and want to rough it out on some distant planetoid with a small bunch of folks.

Or more recent Isopterid ventures could include members of other species who, in donning the terraformation gear, end up (temporarily) turning into grotesque insectoid-looking armored symbiote-sprouting forms. So it's like the Isopterids are now selling their tech and it's like in manga how random schmoes can come into the possession of Guyver symbiotes. :P

I'm also thinking that this doesn't have to be the only shape and form of Isopterid society in existence. After all, the whole conformist caste society is only the result of the pressures of space-colonization and the Isopterid biotech. There could be entirely different Isopterid societies dwelling in massive space habitats, termite mounds in space, who regard the terraforming-Isopterids as lunatics.

These Spacenoid Bug Zeons might have some disagreements with the planetbound Earthnoid Bugs! Gasp! The Isopterids in giant space habitats might regard the body-modification as impurities that offend their BUG ZEON purity!
with their society and such extrapolated out of fundamental characteristics
Because of this, it is hard not to fall into the one-note species thing.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Now I'm thinking the Isopterids would be a great blue collar expat workforce, like Filipinos, for space societies. In the Samtic Nexus, in the USS, with the Zigonians, even Isopterid agriworld workers in the fringes of the Bragsphere. Their social utility all because of their biopunk terraformer ancestors and the legacy they left behind.


I'm thinking the evo-psych thing is because I'm trying to see societies as results of the efforts, successes and fuckups of their forbears - partly because I'm trying to get why the Philippines is so fucked up, and why Asian families are fucked up, and trying to figure out a unified theory of the psychosexual-social dysfunctions of people in small and large scopes.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Invictus wrote:From one perspective, all that expanse of space monarchies and space republics and other retro space polities formed in the aftermath of the psychic cataclysm are crystallized remnants that never managed to pull themselves back together, and that the heart of parahumanity's old civilization is basically irrelevant while all the happening is out at the edges of historic human expansion, where the USS grapple with vast and deadly alien threats.

From another perspective who cares about how one hybridized hyper-accelerated civ at the edges is doing, and the psychic Sith cults and magical girl institutes are fighting to reclaim the soul of mankind...
With this setup of human nations, with the core worlds with highest human population density being the nostalgic dudes whereas the bleeding edge society of the USS is at the literal astrocartographic edge of the human-sphere, we've created a really cool and really dynamic and thematic cosmopolitical cosmosociocultural... layout for our array of human worlds. Somehow, someway, by throwing all these ideas in the blender, these extrapolated and en-awesomed weird renditions and versions of SDNW4 factions we poo-poohed. And we've avoided one not societies... for the humans.


Which makes me wonder about the alienoids. Sure they are aliens and utterly inhuman, but they're still societies filled with people. I wonder if their histories also reflect a similar... "continental drift" of culture interplaying with interstellar distances, the realities of space colonization and stuff. The alien nations of the Samtics (this is hard since this is a nation of MANY alien nations), the Myranni, the Khelerene, the Zigonians, the Isopterids, the space-barbarians (what did we call them again?), and even the Bragulans, would they have... something similar? Would the core of their territories also be filled with stratified reflections of their older traditions, while their peripheries bear the more experimental, evolved, advanced, radical societies reflecting the continental drift, the tectonic shift?

Could the Khelerene core worlds, the nest systems, with their Revered Ancestor shrines, be more Confucian and isolationist while the distant Talonworlds have more brazen enterprising free flying folks who mingle with Trucial Star caravaners while skirmishing with predatory Myranni raiders?

Anyway, then we'd have to make up the various different iterations and variants of these alien races, their sub-nations and their unique traits, avoiding the one-note species trait.



I had a horrible idea, that after the Psychic Cataclysm that destroyed the totalitarian xenophobic Earth Empire, but before the full formation of the Fracture States (the Shen-Rhap, the Pacificans, the Aurigan Grandeur, NEUROM, etc.), the Samtics and other enterprising space alienoids ended up intermingling and even immigrating in the human core worlds in considerable numbers, as trade and cultural exchanges flourished for a brief time. Then the cultural echoes of the Fracture took effect and as the Fracture States formed, along with the anti-psykerism (which led to the progenitors of the Ministry of Fate and the Magi), there could have been a lot of anti-alien sentiment, conflicts, even full scale wars and pogroms that drove the aliens out of lots of nations (perhaps they flee back to the Samtic Nexus, or to the USS, enriching its culture). This would be a very sad thing, but a pivotal point in the formation of many of these human nations.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:the space-barbarians (what did we call them again?)
The Posleen expies? The Pyrrhons/Pyrrhans.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Anyway, then we'd have to make up the various different iterations and variants of these alien races, their sub-nations and their unique traits, avoiding the one-note species trait.
Well there have been lots of diversity generated in this thread and other places for the various aliens, but apparently we just keep forgetting about them. Before the whole development of the Fracture, the humans were practically the race with the least variety. I'll try to touch on everything I can remember and identify places that might need work:

We had loads of thought on the Myrran diversity earlier on, albeit all based on possible EVOPSYCH responses to their natural instincts. They have the Sunsmiths in their mirrored halls, always trying to subsume their individuality into the sheer grandeur of the stellar objects they revere and becoming famed for their craft in the process - though earlier depictions emphasize them living in self-contained spheres of perfect environmental control like the Solarians in Asimov's The Naked Sun, taking nothing but anonymous servants, socializing through layers of proxies and private memes and waging wars like playing chess. They have the feudal worlders where nobles occupy unreasonable amounts of real estate and commoners are all forced into the edge cities. They have those pirate moons which are theoretically neutral and open to other Myrrani factions. There are exiles, criminal and ronin who cannot hack it in the intense social hierarchies and live outside Myrran space with the rest of us. The Myrrans are barely united in their reverence for the perfect solitude of the Empress With No Soul, though it's doubtful whether she actually exists.

If there's anything lacking in portraying Myrran diversity, it's in how they don't seem to interact with the rest of the universe. I mean, for all their brutal militant disregard of everything they aren't so tough compared to even the Samtics, let alone real heavyweights like the Bragulans. How can that be reconciled? How do they react to getting fucked up by people who want their territory and are perfectly capable of taking it? Other than adding a little footnote that the whole species is soon going the way of the Apexai.

The Samtic Nexus and its constituents I suppose come off better because they have the diversity built in. The Samtics themselves come in any combination of shape and form and I remember from half-forgotten fluff that I came up with myself that the current style of "every post-organ has the right to pursue its squishy aspirations" are *Third* Founding Samtics who also are the ones currently driving the dynamism of the Nexus; "older" paradigms of Samtics do indeed live in the core worlds, politically represented by undersized vestigial polities. Almost all other species in the Nexus can have variety that is automatically generated by tweaking their level of Samtic influence - how symbiotic are their individual organisms, how much fuck-off armor do they have on, how addicted are they to oversized bureaucracies and mega-engineering? And that's not even counting the nifty add-ons contributed by other species to the galactic techbase, like Isopterid-style biotools or Cryst headmates.

The Zigonians might need to be defined with something that's not from their relationship with humanity, but hey, maybe they count as one of humanity's client species by now. The Samtics would nod their head-bits in approval. The Bragulans actively work against diversity, but then they have their own Orwellian weltsystem of carefully managed cycles of class conflict and designated foes going on. The interior of the BSE is probably a surprisingly rich place, albeit all at the service of something abominable. And even then you have the White Bragulans of Wild Space who are largely outside the Imperator's control.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:I had a horrible idea, that after the Psychic Cataclysm that destroyed the totalitarian xenophobic Earth Empire, but before the full formation of the Fracture States (the Shen-Rhap, the Pacificans, the Aurigan Grandeur, NEUROM, etc.), the Samtics and other enterprising space alienoids ended up intermingling and even immigrating in the human core worlds in considerable numbers, as trade and cultural exchanges flourished for a brief time. Then the cultural echoes of the Fracture took effect and as the Fracture States formed, along with the anti-psykerism (which led to the progenitors of the Ministry of Fate and the Magi), there could have been a lot of anti-alien sentiment, conflicts, even full scale wars and pogroms that drove the aliens out of lots of nations (perhaps they flee back to the Samtic Nexus, or to the USS, enriching its culture). This would be a very sad thing, but a pivotal point in the formation of many of these human nations.
Sure.

Also it's funny how the Samtic Nexus becomes the only alien bloc to matter all throughout humanity's history in the galaxy, out of the lack of any apparent alternatives. Given what the original concept of the Nexus was: Halo's Covenant as hapless Space UN, a multispecies hierarchy that wasn't an expansionist hegemon, the kind of waning galactic power being choked by its own sophistication and multiculturalism that generally shows up in science fiction settings to make the humans look better - except in SOTSS they're more to illustrate how much of a freakish outlier the USS is in terms of power. But somewhere along the way the Samtics gained all this respectability!
"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
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Invictus wrote: Well there have been lots of diversity generated in this thread and other places for the various aliens, but apparently we just keep forgetting about them.
I'm really gonna have to apologize to everyone for my scatter-brained ADHD approach to this, characterized by bouts of manic over-excitement and binge-postings in a totally disorganized manner. I'm a super-senior member yet I'm less organized than Herrytick and adr/destructionator. :p

I'm sorry if its frustrating guise. But I'm thinking that whereas an organized definitive article-based clearly-canonized approach is all well and good, with this laissez faire amaglamation of multi-people musings with everyone from Fin and Langley to Siege, Speaker, Moby, Ford, Vic, me et al, serves as a healthy collection of ideas from which stories can draw materials from, rather than a definitive list, since I am thinking at some point or another in SOTS chronology, ALL of these things you've mentioned have happened and are materials for stories! They're all true!

In an entire freaking galaxy, a comicbook continuity-like mishmash of sometimes... or frequently contradictory details can actually work! Because civilizations are like that, societies are like that, histories are like that.

(And I guess that's the lazy way. :P)

Remembering things, though, that's gonna be a feat. I recently had to skim through the pages of the thread and endure my own hyper-manic disorganized musings (jesus how do you guys put up with that :P )

Let's call this Buffet Table Worldbuilding
We had loads of thought on the Myrran diversity earlier on, albeit all based on possible EVOPSYCH responses to their natural instincts. They have the Sunsmiths in their mirrored halls, always trying to subsume their individuality into the sheer grandeur of the stellar objects they revere and becoming famed for their craft in the process - though earlier depictions emphasize them living in self-contained spheres of perfect environmental control like the Solarians in Asimov's The Naked Sun, taking nothing but anonymous servants, socializing through layers of proxies and private memes and waging wars like playing chess. They have the feudal worlders where nobles occupy unreasonable amounts of real estate and commoners are all forced into the edge cities. They have those pirate moons which are theoretically neutral and open to other Myrrani factions. There are exiles, criminal and ronin who cannot hack it in the intense social hierarchies and live outside Myrran space with the rest of us. The Myrrans are barely united in their reverence for the perfect solitude of the Empress With No Soul, though it's doubtful whether she actually exists.
I am thinking the Sunsmiths in their mirrored halls and solar atriums are actually the original Myranni, the progenitors. Perhaps also with the System Lords in their satellite-spheres who are beneath them in "rank," these are the guys who are like Asimov's Solarians. Whereas the "rabble" of mundane Myranni inhabiting the worlds are actually creations, made by the ancient and ascended Myranni who wished to populate adjacent sectors with replicas of their earlier societies. (Imagine the Apexai replicating earlier-stage Apexai populaces for the hell of it)

The Celestial Myrann and the System Lords are on top. The System Lords are not as "ascended" so they like to hold court and watch groveling feudal lords and planetary populaces abase themselves before them. The System Lords play like cats with interstellar populaces and also use the harvested resources in their own bids to become ascended Solar Myran and join the celestials. It is still a soulless antisocial act since to become an uncaring sun-dweller these system lords have to ruthlessly exploit their subjects! (Maybe when they become sun-gods, they do one last dastardly deed and their space stations turn into miniature suns and melt the inhabited worlds nearest to 'em! "BEAR WITNESS TO MY RADIANCE!" or something)

The world-bound Dukes and Barons, or Duchesses and Baronesses and Contessas, likewise strive to attain orbital ascendancy. The common folk? Tough luck.

So this forms the basis of the Myrranni Ascendancy. The Empress With No Soul, the Hollow Throne is at the very center (if it exists at all!) in the nigh mythical emptiness at the core of Myrran space, plus the Celestial Courts, consisting a near-literal pantheon of revered progenitor deities with everything else orbiting around them. Their societies and nations with hierarchies resembling the cosmic arrangement of celestial bodies!
If there's anything lacking in portraying Myrran diversity, it's in how they don't seem to interact with the rest of the universe. I mean, for all their brutal militant disregard of everything they aren't so tough compared to even the Samtics, let alone real heavyweights like the Bragulans. How can that be reconciled? How do they react to getting fucked up by people who want their territory and are perfectly capable of taking it? Other than adding a little footnote that the whole species is soon going the way of the Apexai.
If it gets drastic, even the sundwellers of the Celestial Courts can unleash GOLDEN ARMADAS of sunships, vessels clad in solar flares, to melt fools who dare infringe upon their glory! Though the basic Myrran nations are too disorganized to become a true overreaching imperial power that can go toe to toe with the big boys.

Also, maybe while the Myrran are neighbors of the Samtics, they are also relatively closer to the Fracture than they are to the USS and Bragspace, or something. I am thinking they are like feudal Japan before prolonged interaction with the European powers. With the occasional Phyrron incursions akin to Mongol invasions.

Perhaps an ambitious System Lord, or someone lower, can decree that s/he is acting on behalf of the Celestial Courts and the System Lords to consolidate the Myrrani nations, going all TOKUGAWA on their asses and beginning their transformation into an imperial power!
The Samtic Nexus and its constituents I suppose come off better because they have the diversity built in.
That's not fair, they're already a coalition/EU of many alien species. The challenge would be to diversify each individual alien species under the Samtic Nexus flag! :shock: :?
Almost all other species in the Nexus can have variety that is automatically generated by tweaking their level of Samtic influence - how symbiotic are their individual organisms, how much fuck-off armor do they have on, how addicted are they to oversized bureaucracies and mega-engineering? And that's not even counting the nifty add-ons contributed by other species to the galactic techbase, like Isopterid-style biotools or Cryst headmates.
I think the Khelerene can easily be diversified according to differing sub-nations within the Samtic flag. Their Ancestor Cores could form the basis of these differences, creating nationalistic/ideological/pseudo-religious lines between the nests or something. So even the Kheler nations are in a UN kind of thing while under the greater umbrella of the Samtics. Man.

Also - for your consideration - the Hadepodes, who operate in the Nexus as the living liquid serpentine networks in the industrial subsystems of world-grids and huge spaceships might even have their own divisions. How? Through specializations. Hadepod colleagues who each inhabit ships in a Samtic flotilla would have commonalities, but would differ from Hadepodes who run the geothermic terraformation apparatuses of volcano worlds, or those in the tibanna mining cloud cities on gas giants, etcetera. The Hadepodes could be considered as craftsman working in Unions or Guilds!

And you forgot the HYPERPACIFICANS who are like... super-chill guys who rebelled from the Dual Monarchy (Grandeur of Auriga?) to form a super-chill space-surfing nation allied with the Samtics and thus creating Samtic-Fracture tensions.
The Zigonians might need to be defined with something that's not from their relationship with humanity, but hey, maybe they count as one of humanity's client species by now. The Samtics would nod their head-bits in approval.
The only reason the Ziggies are characterized as best-buds with the USS is because they're "batchmates" when old SOTS was invented and were originally allies. There's no reason that sizeable Ziggie populations don't exist and interact kookily with other friendly space nations, those Zigonian tree ship caravans and literal political parties could grace Samtic space for much fun.

You guys were mentioning pages ago on how Ziggies are prone to succumbing to peer pressure due to their sensitivities and communal behaviors, necessitating detached zen monastic regulators to ensure sanity in the population, so orgying Ziggies don't become rape-mobs, so partying raving groups don't become riots, and for the memes pervading the Zigonian zeitgeist don't become toxic (ZIGONAZIS anyone?) So we have Space Pope Crocodylus Pontifex being the ruler of cool. A latter day reptilian Haille Sallessee. Haille Salizze! hur hur geddit.

In this case, this means there could also be all sorts of less ideal, less utopian, or just different versions of Ziggie groupthink societies. Zigonian gangbangers busting caps on people's asses would be a menace in the seedier parts of Solarian megapolises. There could be legitimately scary Zigonian lizard space pirates ruining people's days in the space lanes, fucking up heighliners. Various Zigonian nomadic and non-nomadic cultures roaming the space-steppes and space badlands, in space yurts and space teepees, from nice Space Pochahontases to Space Geronimos to fucking Space Tamerlanes!

Timur was also a synecritistic chill dude. He managed to combine his purported bloodline to Genghis Khan with his Islamic religious role as the Wrath of Allah!

So maybe there are... meaner Zigonians who actually use force to... compel people to join their parties. Talk about peer pressure. :mrgreen:
Sure.

Also it's funny how the Samtic Nexus becomes the only alien bloc to matter all throughout humanity's history in the galaxy, out of the lack of any apparent alternatives. Given what the original concept of the Nexus was: Halo's Covenant as hapless Space UN, a multispecies hierarchy that wasn't an expansionist hegemon, the kind of waning galactic power being choked by its own sophistication and multiculturalism that generally shows up in science fiction settings to make the humans look better - except in SOTSS they're more to illustrate how much of a freakish outlier the USS is in terms of power. But somewhere along the way the Samtics gained all this respectability!
Hmmm... the Isopterids give us the unique opportunity to have racist Fracture nations treat a dejected insectile subclass population as FOOKIN PRAWNS! Becoming a sore point between the Samtics and said Fracture powers.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Vic and I had a breakthrough. It gets insane at the part where Vic offers a brilliant suggestion in red. I have not partaken in an ideastorm like this in forever. And also, Facebook chat has replaced MSN.

Anyway, lo, dizzying hard to read chat stream of consciousness conversation. For those unfamiliar with the old MSN bull sessions, this is how they look like:


Shroom: I am wondering if the Isopterids lost their home worlds to the PHYRRON, so the descendants of the great intrepid Isopterid terraformers must go on an epic quest to reclaim their homeworlds. THORMITE OAKENBUG versus wave after wave of Phyrron not-orks

Vic: But what is Gandalf.

Shroom: A Samtic something. Something super that the Samtic have, the ace up their sleeves, their version of a CEID psion, a metal gear cybrag, a Ministry of Fate FATER, DARTH FATER, a Myrran solar knight. A benevolent Samtic CTHULHU! A Gandalfthu!

Vic: But Bilbo is the Samtic. A settled down squishy post-organ. Who is kind of sneaky?

Shroom: Hmmm. [Still mulling Gandalf] A fracture Magic Girl? (hey, we've forgotten about HYPERPACIFICANS) A magic girl...Empress Haruhi in disguise! Yes, a wizened council of robed magic girls!

Vic: The White Council. But that's the Meridianites. Oh wait. We forgot about the ROBOTS. The MACHINE RACE. Wizard Optimus Prime

Shroom: Yes. An ode to PeZook's excellently weird Collectors. The machiens can be a TOM MECHADIL. TOM BOMBAMECH. Or true, Wizard Optimus Prime. But we have no fucking clue what the robots are. So that might be more in line with Tom Bombadil who Tolkien had no idea of!

Vic: heh indeed

Shroom: The gandalf is CROCODYLUS PONTIFEX. Wait no, the original Zigonian Space King whose disappearance caused the Ziggie nations to split up though they maintain themselves nonetheless. Galadriel is totally a Magi.

Vic: Raptor Jesus

Shroom: So the creator of the universe was actually... A LIZARD!!! And his Maiar are parts of himself or something, thus divine lizards sent to shape the course of SOTSverse history. Hmmm... Smaug. Some renegade CyBrag spewing radiation and acid at cities or some KARLACK out to hoard and assimilate and mutagenify Isopterid gene-vaults.


Vic: Or a cyborg Pyrrhon God king. A PYRRHAX.

Shroom: !!!! That's Azog.

Vic: True. Space Smaug is something truly horrible.

Shroom: A Karlack MEGAFORM. A huge space kaiju that has cerebrate/broodmind-level intelligence but operates without a horde.

Vic: Or just the galaxy's tendency to label any sufficiently nasty gribbly a Karlack

Shroom: Maybe the Karlacks are actually a pervasive eldritch ecology so the space kaiju is still of "Karlack".... origin. (labeling things "Karlack" is the same as labeling creatures "Amazonian")

Vic: The Lonely Mountain being its shell-lair.

Shroom: Yes, a shell lair, a grotesque hermit crab-slug, a true wyrm.

Vic: Hey. What about those planet-eating Shen thingies.

Shroom: True. A Rhapsodite! A genuine honest to goodness giant space man with a fistful of cosmic stones, why it wants to stomp on Isopterid stuff, who knows. The Isopterid homeworld had enough food material for the Rhapsodite to consume for cosmic energies? Cause the Shen Rhapsody Orgone Accumulation Corporation folks are pretty much like using a (dead) Galactus' bowels for nuclear power plants.
Holy shit, realization.

THE SPACE ROBOTS MURDERED THE GIANT SPACE MEN! The space robots were meant to be inorganic inedible heralds to serve the space men! The robots had a ROBOT UPRISING... TO SAVE ORGANIC LIFEIN THE COSMOS!

Fuck that's like if Skynet killed mankind to save the Amazon Rainforest. But some robots are still in original loyal programming and want to resurrect the GIANT SPACEMEN.
Vic: Like the Reapers saving us from Galactis

Shroom: But they (the loyalist robots) are also selfish evil robots so they only resurrect the giant space men to fulfil their programming of literally serving the giants, but the robots lobotomize them and use them for giant space man-vehicles... a piloted UNICRON!
The Shen Rhapsody is gonna be super-fucked.

Vic: Wait but I thought the Shen's giant space men were engineered weapons of the EARTH EMPIRE.

Shroom: the Earth Empire found the corpses too?
Vic: Or now we know what the Earth Empire fought. The robots.
Shroom: The robot keepers of the giant space man graveyards? The autobots guard vaults of giant corpses to prevent people from weaponizing them (which the Earth Empire presumably did).

Vic: Hmm!

Shroom: DecepticoNecrons want to collect body parts and turn them into doomsday devices to fulfill their own literal programing of "serving" the giants. Resurrect a brainless space man, use it as a weapon, maintain it and feed it, they're still technically "serving" it!
Makes you wonder what the Apexai thought of all this. Maybe the apexai helped reprogram the robots! The good robots! So the Apexai can obnoxiously say "the victory was because of us! we saved you all!"

Vic: They were around in the Earth Empire times weren't they?

Shroom: The Earth Empire would be termites compared to the Apexai, but then again so were Brags. People might have suspected the Apexai helped break the Neuromancer control (maybe some USS conspiracy theorists think that the Apexai-created psions and Silver Shield were the secret societies that helped bring about the downfall of the Earth Empire... but this theory is probably anachronistic and since Earthfall is so ancient, the specifics are irrelevant). But people also believe the Samtucs did it, the undermining of Earth Empire mentallics sparking revolution and psychic wars. The Samtics were nearer to the Earthsphere than the Apexai

Maybe the Samtics went to the Apexai and wondered what to do about these murderous fucks. Samtic-Apexai interactions are something to consider, the Samtics are the most stable and most solid currently existing non-human non-psychoBragulan power, whereas the Apexai have been around forever. (Maybe the Apexai hate them now because they're jealous that the Samtics are still a viable nation? Maybe sheer pride stopped Apexai from seeking refuge with the Samtics, same as why the Dwarven refugees from Moria and Erebor can hang out with human communities but you never see dwarf refugees going to the Elven nations.)

But anyway, I'm thinking the giant space men were dead before the Earth Empire, but their corpses were still useful and the Earth Empire could totally have found diabolical functions for them.

Vic: Sure. Hearkening to some past galactic age of titans. Like whatever the deal was with the Samtics' former Gou'ald Overlords.

Shroom: So the Apexai cowered, perpetually going "fuck these guys," maybe became the bitch servant eunuchs of the titans!

Vic: Their worldships a symptom of that

Shroom: There were Apexai resistances, AND Apexai collaborators. Apexai secretaries. Man, the goauld were... who knows what. footsoldiers? Karlacks would have fought against the giants Maybe the giants were extra-galactic, hence there could be more out there! Extra-universal! Their arrival depopulated the Karlacks and bitched the Apexai, ruined the Karlack-rich galactic ecology.

Vic: Well, whatever manages to displace the Karlacks basically become the new Karlacks. But okay, the giants actually made the galaxy a safe place for future civs! But mist sleep now. Rant ons.

Shroom: Or the Goa’uld and the Phyrron came after the giants and their demise. Hmmm... unlike the Tyrannids, I don't think the Karlacks need to eat everything. They're not all-consuming, they're an embodiment of nature and darwinian evolution – though tough luck if your entire civilization happens to be stuck in a solar system that a Karlack swarm or splinter-cell is passing through. But ecologies are limited and when balanced, Karlack bioforms balance each other out... like how a body’s growth cells and killer cells and the homeostasis means that human bodies don’t turn into gargantuan Akira-like abominations filled with tumors.

Maybe the giant space men's decimation of the native stable but abundant Karlacks resulted in a domino effect, so the post-giant environment had these hyper-aggressive Karlack trying to return to their old balanced but huge numbers and old territorial scope which was huge. But this would threaten a lot of the emerging post-giant nations, like the Goauld and the Phyrrons. Though pre-giant, the Karlack ecosphere wasn't a huge threat to ancient populaces, like the old Apexai and who knows who else, guys who could deal with them

The apexai are probably the only clear continuous line to those guys, the giants. But even to living Apexai, for them the giants are like... bible stories, irrelevant ancient history in archives that got nuked by Byzon!

Or even Byzon got a copy and is secretly also using giant corpses and robotech! The giant/robotech explains how he gets dimension/time-hopping technology to pursue the JOHN BAYLORS.

OOOOH! This is why the ancient Myrrani hide in suns! Though they forgot! Or maybe the Myrrani are not that ancient, the Queen With No Soul is a last Myrrani survivor, her worlds got eaten, she tried to recreate her race but was unable to teach it culture and it resulted in selfish ultra-tech fucks, so she disappeared while the ultra-tech fucks decided to live in suns and create other pre-postmyrran to demonstrate their hubris. Perhaps with some Karlack and Phyrron incursions here and there in the post-giant chaos.

Earth-life is spared, maybe dinosaurs died when a giant spaceman's corpse or a giant robot's corpse crash landed in the Yucataan. Maybe FTL-tech is discovered when the Mexican government uncovers robot-parts in Yucatan, so in SOTS Earth history, MEXICO becomes the first interstellar nation! Mexico plants a flag in Alpha Centauri, with them becoming Mexispacenoids! MEXICOIDS

When the giants arrived, the apexai must have fought... AND LOST, but their awesome ultratech was decent enough so the survivors were deemed worthy to become the mechanics and grease monkeys of the giants, and in exchange the Apexai would help the giants and their robots consume whatever they needed. Maybe the Apexai’s space-folding hyperspace methods were superior to travelling within a universe’s confines, while the giants are more masterful in inter-dimensional travel.

So, the more recent supernova seen by modern NASA are probably some after effects of the giant wars, burning a Karlack hivecluster the size of a nebula.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

This is a war crime, I've committed another brainstorm bull session... this time with Siege. An unprecedented combo!

Which picks off from exactly where my brainstorm with Vic left off!

I'm just gonna summarize it since editing a meandering chat convo is too tiring at this hour of the day.

The gist is, okay, there were Apexai witnesses and collaborators and resistance fighters during the Space Giant war, the Titanomachy. They know there were apocalyptic GalactoThanoseids in the past, that there were good robots who murdered them and bad robots who want to resurrect their body parts for cosmic weapons or necrogiant vessels. Sure, the robots dwindled, millions of years passed by, and the Titanomachy became regarded as a mere myth... but still! They're a hyperspatial society, their record keeping can't be that crap.

Sure, the most complete records on Apexaia were lost (or were they? dun dun dun) when the Bragulans dropped a moon on it. Sure, the ancient rememberers of the Apexai, akin to the Hebrew haredim sects, perished (or were processed by the IBGV? dun dun dun). But certainly, memories of narrowly averted galactic genocide can't be erased that easily?

Siege offered a solution. After the demise of the Giants came the Golden Age of the Apexai, a power vacuum resulting from the murder and burial of the Titans and the shattered state of the robots - noble rebels and insidious loyalists alike. But the Apexai are proud creatures and the memory of having been defeated and subjugated by another power, much less reduced to kowtowing vassals, was too much to bear and the most arrogant Apexai chauvinists and supremacists created a thought-virus that would lead to the fading of those painful memories.

SIEGE: There could be all kinds of infowar psionics going on inside Apexai society. Like, parts of their collective identity might just be the equivalent of viruses battling each other for dominance.

This is awesome cyberpunk and NEUROCRYPTOGRAPHY and psionicspunk... but wait, there's more!

The viruses are actually... collective soul-thoughts of militarist historical revisionists, since the few remaining Apexai somehow carry the memetic soulstone legacies of their forebears, like intangible holocrons permeating the Apexai zeitgeist, their collective unconscious. A strange schizophrenia going on in their subconscious souls, between the mind-spirits of the historical revisionists and the decent folks who want truth, though it may be humbling and painful. So even they, the mighty Apexai, are subject to Jodorowsky family legacy psychotraumas. They must choose which Ancestral Reality to inherit, and how to get over the shit of the past and find closure!

However, Siege says, if you dive too deeply into the Apexai mind-storm to look for truth you may find yourself communing with the dead souls of all the Apexai burned by Byzon, millions of angry souls whose psionic echoes will drive even the most powerful Apexai slightly bonkers. And every now and then a poor sod who listens too long to that abyss of souls might find himself possessed by a particularly powerful dead Apexai.So generally Apexai try not to listen to their version of sith holocrons too long. Because it will fuck you up.

And even deeper, I realized, it turns out that the historical revisionists might actually be the humiliated ex-collaborators of the giants! The forgetfulness of the Titanomachy was part of their ploy, or perhaps it wasn't but the memory loss serves their clandestine purposes well, for the collaborators are part of an occult group that seeks to resurrect a necrogiant! To devour ALL of the primitive mongrel societies and species that have surpassed them now! Maybe the forgetfulness-virus was engineered by genocidal Apexais out to reclaim their birthright and reshape the cosmos!

In the middle of this, Siege suggested, are a group of conspiracy theorist Apexai who know that the forgotten memories are a sham and who want to find out the truth! So they cut off their psionic nodes like Dark Templar, and this diminishing of psychic power prevents them from using modern and Golden Age Apexai tech, so they must use pre-golden technologies, crude by Apexai standards but still bitchin' by normal galactic levels. So you get renegade and deranged by Apexai standards... conspiracy theorist grey aliens! Who are on the run from the betrayals and deceit of their fellow greys AND suspicious blacksuited mirrorshades-wearing human agents!

They're the only ones who can stop the undying Apexai sorcerers, or the curse-haunted memories of Apexai sorcerers, from ushering forth a new galactic genocide!

Perhaps the thought-virii are one method the slightly later Apexai devised to get rid of the annoying old Apexai who kept popping up again and again and again with their crazy sorcerous plans. But the evil sorcerers also used throught-viri to conceal their schemes by erasing historical truths, leaving the general populace ignorant of their designs. The golden age Apexai regarded them as the annoying drunk uncle who'd show up at Christmas to embarass everyone. They were not a threat to the golden age guys... but now they are! Since Byzon murdered the proper Apexai authorities, those who could regulate the parapsychic zeitgeists! Thanks O'Byzonbama!

Now you have ancient sorcerers LAUGHING at the HUBRIS of the golden age. While planning to SMITE THE GALAXY. To usher forth a new diamond age of Apexaia!

And so we've made a Tom Clancy technothriller superweapon chase out of weirdo cognomemetic psychomagic shit.

Siege: I NEVER KNELT TO SPACE GIANTS, TWENNYSEX. WHERE ARE YOUR GODS NOW?

The ancient Apexai sorcerers might even sort of respect half-Apexai dudes like the Silver Shield, because they remind them of their own alchemical psi-golem experiments. Unlike the exodite Apexai whose snobbery knows no bounds, and who treat the Shield like mongrel inferiors.

I can totally see John Baylor working with some old ghost-possessed Apexai having a dynamic like O'Neill did with Ba'al in SG-1.


Shroom: An evil ghost-possessed one? Or one possessed by good... AND EVIL!

Siege: Good and evil are in the eye of the beholder, Baylor.

Judgement is so... human.

I was the serpent in your garden of Eden once!

I CAN BE SO AGAIN.


[At this point I speculated that the Apexais have literature courses on how to use other species' creation myths to fuck with them by implying that they, the Apexai, are their primordial progenitors.]

Siege: I really like the idea of some crazy clearly power-mad ghost grumbling about the DEGENERACY of his modern Apexai body.

Shroom: The ancient Apexai had muscular greyoid bodies, lean but muscular, and perhaps even Protoss-like nerve tendrils, that make them look like kung fu master pony tails, so ancient Apexai grandmasters could telekinetically duel each other and then resort to mountain-smashing fists of psionic fury.

Siege: You'd have to somehow feel that this guy is really out of place in a galaxy a few million years older than when he was first around. But that he could do a pretty good job fucking it all up if he really wanted to.

And then he could become weirdly wistful at times when beholding like a Myrran palace, and lamenting how more beautiful they are in his memories or something.


At this point we talk about how Apexai psionic magic could be not that well explained, the Apexai are like maiar and valar and gandalfs, meta-narrative devices, their psionics transcended and became... plot devices, like how gandalf's most powerful magics are things like narratively convenient entrances and plotline navigation. Something beyond brute force precognition. Subtler.

Anyway, that's the gist of that. Apexai cognomemetic psychomagical conspiracy thrillers!
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

To elaborate slightly, I imagined the Apexai share some kind of joint consciousness. A 'psionic internet', not a hivemind but equal parts library and incorporeal essence. There's collective memories in there, but also shared nightmares, the echoes of dead and forgotten Apexai, subconscious racial insanity and other unpleasant things.

Being a very, very ancient race that consciousness has grown very expansive and much bigger than the actual existing Apexai. It requires maintenance to prevent it from falling into ruination. It also is nowhere near as objectively truthful as most Apexai pretend it is. It can't be, because if it was the Apexai would've gone collectively insane a long time ago.

In the age of titans the Apexai were servant slaves, cowering in the shadows of the gods that strode the galaxy. They convinced themselves that this was the normal state of things: these creatures were after all gods, and the Apexai were their first-chosen, their favored servants. Having thus successfully conjugated their serf status with their arrogant ideas of preeminence, the Apexai happily toiled away.

Then, the Titanomachy. The giants fell, firmly proving that they were not all-powerful gods after all, just creatures. But that did not compute. The Apexai couldn't have been slaves for aeons, suffered such unimaginable hardships and cruelties, abased themselves so utterly, for anything less than true deities. The deprivations had been too great, the humiliation too complete, to accept the truth. It couldn't have happened. It couldn't have just ended like this. Collective anger and grief boiled over within the oversoul, a psionic pressure that threatened to utterly crush the sanity of the Apexai race.

The Apexai saved themselves by forgetting. A cognetic virus, shared through the collective consciousness, that rewrote their history as they remembered it. They had never been slaves. They had never suffered. There were no gods. They were Apexai, and above such things. It was highly succesful, because the Apexai wanted to believe the lie. They saw a devastated galaxy, and believed themselves its rightful inheritors. The golden age of Apexaia dawned.

But the oversoul is a very large place indeed, and not all of it is so easily overwritten. The ghosts of the past linger in its dusty corners for the unwary to stumble upon. During the golden age the Apexai enforced a strict psicognetic harmony, and deviation from the official mind-truth was harshly punished. Exploration of the collective mind-palace was undertaken solely by Apexaia's official hagiographers, trained to dive into the oversoul and take multiple truths into their minds at the same time, and resolve them with the 'party line' as it were. The Ministry of Truth, but rewriting minds instead of books. It suppressed the echoes of the past, and did a very good job of it too.

Then Byzon came and destroyed Apexaia. Since the destruction of their planets the disfunction and dementia in the Apexai oversoul have increased hundredfold. The old truths, etched into the consensus memory over thousands of years, still hold. But the ghosts of long-gone Apexai are beginning to stir. Long-dead proponents of forbidden teachings who questioned their place in the cosmos even before the Titanomachy, free thinkers with minds so powerful they were indelibly etched into the collective Apexai mind-space a million years ago, now sense that there is no longer an authority to banish them back to the abyss of collective forgetfulness. They long for corporeality, for they know that no longer are there space gods to sear their minds with starfire.

So yeah Apexai sorcerer ghosts.
"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
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:I am thinking the Sunsmiths in their mirrored halls and solar atriums are actually the original Myranni, the progenitors. Perhaps also with the System Lords in their satellite-spheres who are beneath them in "rank," these are the guys who are like Asimov's Solarians. Whereas the "rabble" of mundane Myranni inhabiting the worlds are actually creations, made by the ancient and ascended Myranni who wished to populate adjacent sectors with replicas of their earlier societies. (Imagine the Apexai replicating earlier-stage Apexai populaces for the hell of it)

The Celestial Myrann and the System Lords are on top. The System Lords are not as "ascended" so they like to hold court and watch groveling feudal lords and planetary populaces abase themselves before them. The System Lords play like cats with interstellar populaces and also use the harvested resources in their own bids to become ascended Solar Myran and join the celestials. It is still a soulless antisocial act since to become an uncaring sun-dweller these system lords have to ruthlessly exploit their subjects! (Maybe when they become sun-gods, they do one last dastardly deed and their space stations turn into miniature suns and melt the inhabited worlds nearest to 'em! "BEAR WITNESS TO MY RADIANCE!" or something)

The world-bound Dukes and Barons, or Duchesses and Baronesses and Contessas, likewise strive to attain orbital ascendancy. The common folk? Tough luck.
Like I mentioned in facebook, there is a natural logic to this. Moons orbit worlds just as the lesser nobility who hold the moons orbit planetary duchesses with their verdant feudal dominions. And the planet-nobles are in turn beholden to the System Ladies in their great sun-grazing manses, just as planets orbit stars. And even then, the System Ladies must depend on to the unapproachable brilliance of the sun and the Olympian God-Queens who actually live within. It's not a straightforward hierarchy, especially as the closer a Myrran approaches the sun the more religious and mythic dimensions accrue onto their relationships with their betters. But if we're still going for the "the really upper-class Myrrans seek to subsume their titanic egos into the sheer grandeur of the universe" thing, it makes sense that they would dictate that all their hangers-on follow such RULES OF NATURE.

(And this is indeed what the RULES OF NATURE would entail to the Myrrani who cleave to Soulessness. Forget about human notions of nature as a Hobbesian cat-eat-cat world; their vision is of the dance of blind celestial objects, bound together by inexorable laws.)

Their also some metaphor in how a Myrran frees herself of nature-imposed limitations and dependencies as she ascends. To rise from serfdom is to remove herself from the bucolic landscape of the chessboard continents that have been very deliberately imposed upon her by her betters and enjoy all the technology and infrastructure like a civilized citizen of the galaxy for once. To leap from moon to planet is to jump up one level in the set of orbits; to live in a space station is to liberate herself from the embrace of terrestrial gravity. And when she gets to the whole Solarian System Lord level, she is totally self-sufficient in her machine sphere, subject only to the tyranny of the sun. And the true Myrrans are even freer, freed even from sun's gravitational influence by being at the dead center of it.

But I also feel that organizing the Feudal worlds and the Sunsmiths in one overarching hierarchy is taking away from the overall diversity. Again as mentioned on facebook, the Sunsmiths should just be one divine archetype among others that Myrrans pursue and emulate, and we've raised other things such as the DARKLORDS in their negative space. There should be other, less cosmos-shaking bigwigs for Myrrans that we should touch upon.
I think the Khelerene can easily be diversified according to differing sub-nations within the Samtic flag. Their Ancestor Cores could form the basis of these differences, creating nationalistic/ideological/pseudo-religious lines between the nests or something. So even the Kheler nations are in a UN kind of thing while under the greater umbrella of the Samtics. Man.

Also - for your consideration - the Hadepodes, who operate in the Nexus as the living liquid serpentine networks in the industrial subsystems of world-grids and huge spaceships might even have their own divisions. How? Through specializations. Hadepod colleagues who each inhabit ships in a Samtic flotilla would have commonalities, but would differ from Hadepodes who run the geothermic terraformation apparatuses of volcano worlds, or those in the tibanna mining cloud cities on gas giants, etcetera. The Hadepodes could be considered as craftsman working in Unions or Guilds!

And you forgot the HYPERPACIFICANS who are like... super-chill guys who rebelled from the Dual Monarchy (Grandeur of Auriga?) to form a super-chill space-surfing nation allied with the Samtics and thus creating Samtic-Fracture tensions.
I'm a bit dry on the Kheler at the moment. All I've worked out is that even the Ancestor Cores aren't really unchanging monoliths. Sometimes two fleet-clans decide to unite and so will their cores and collective memories. Sometimes a Talonworld does go under and its clan scatters, fragment, and eventually start over as new clans with new traditions to be written and ancestors to be made. (And there are the fleet-clans that just went "Whatever" at the time of Samtic assimilation and stayed as nomadic fleets of bounty hunters without any effort to establish Cores or anything. These guys are your more competent mercenary race.)

Agreed on the Hadepodes. Their chemistry is pretty easy to alter and you definitely don't want something with a body temperature most comfortable in the semi-molten crust of worlds on your spaceships. Heck, there can even be Hadepodes made of room-temperature superconductors who don't need any insulation and can practically swim through air with electromagnetic manipulation. Living power networks!

The Hyperpacifica could have fled to the Nexus during that period you suggested in the last post when the Fracture grew xenophobic and there was no place for dudes who have taken to stuffing their body cavities with post-jellyfish.
In this case, this means there could also be all sorts of less ideal, less utopian, or just different versions of Ziggie groupthink societies. Zigonian gangbangers busting caps on people's asses would be a menace in the seedier parts of Solarian megapolises. There could be legitimately scary Zigonian lizard space pirates ruining people's days in the space lanes, fucking up heighliners. Various Zigonian nomadic and non-nomadic cultures roaming the space-steppes and space badlands, in space yurts and space teepees, from nice Space Pochahontases to Space Geronimos to fucking Space Tamerlanes!
I guess I just want a very general sense of where the Zigonians stand in the general galactic totem pole.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:OOOOH! This is why the ancient Myrrani hide in suns! Though they forgot! Or maybe the Myrrani are not that ancient, the Queen With No Soul is a last Myrrani survivor, her worlds got eaten, she tried to recreate her race but was unable to teach it culture and it resulted in selfish ultra-tech fucks, so she disappeared while the ultra-tech fucks decided to live in suns and create other pre-postmyrran to demonstrate their hubris. Perhaps with some Karlack and Phyrron incursions here and there in the post-giant chaos.
Well this would completely contradict the existing Myrrani myth of the Tyrant King who held the entire Myrrani race in a grip of steel, until the Queen With No Soul shattered his Throne of Souls and also destroyed the soul of every single Myrran, as to free them from domination forevermore.

I mean, unless we interpret that the Queen literally killed every single Myrran to save them from something worse than death, and then repopulated the species a tweaked form afterwards. (Cripes, maybe the Queen is actually the Myrrani Durandal/Cortana or something) This does put the petty hierarchies of the System Ladies into focus: maybe the circumstances are meant to be horrible as to make ordinary Myrrans seek to rise above it, a twisted lesson on the value of freedom and power; or maybe they genuinely are trying to oppress the masses but can only manage it in cartoonishly broad strokes because of their inherent soullessness. Or maybe the entire species really is cannibalizing itself in the race to vanish up its own asshole.

And of course, compared to the Fracture of humanity's psyche or the self-censoring of the Apexai Oversoul, this response to collective trauma is even more fucked up. It could be why no Myrrans are ever born psychic, or why every one of them seem to have a slight anti-psychic aura: the species committed spiritual suicide a long time ago.

I also start to understand why the Samtics are so popular: they're the only sane people in the whole galaxy! :o
snip the Apexai Identity Trilogy
I think this works, and provides a narrative weight to the Apexai that isn't "They were random victims to the Bragulans once", which really didn't do much but grant the Brags some cheap heat. It might also explain the sympathy some of these Apexai have for Humanity - it's not like humanity hasn't undergone a similar process. (It's luckier that humans hadn't moved everything onto Xenosurf-style psionic internet yet)

Speaking of which, I can see the Apexai's fall illustrating the risks of based all their technology on really advanced and complex infrastructure - one knock to the substrate and everything comes crashing down with no hope for recovery. They're the opposite of humans in that we can still have memories of things even if the physical is lost to us, while the Apexai can only use physical relics to mark the past since their memories are so subject to retcons, which makes them surprisingly vulnerable by having their stuff blown up. Granted I am making the assumption that the Apexai basically pioneered psionics and based their entire paradigm on it, but maybe I can use this to make the point that individual species might have been unrivalled in their own fields and paradigms, but in the end all they will manage is to enrich the galaxy with yet more cool stuff, like with the Isopterids' schtick.
"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
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

Looking back over the last couple of pages the mind boggles at the craziness we've managed to come up with. Perhaps it is time to, in the interest of expediency and keeping-this-shit-straight, compile a brief overview of things like the history of the galaxy and major players in it? It doesn't have to be fully comprehensive and it can always be altered, but it'd be nice to have a general sense of 'oh right that bit fits right there'.
"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
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

I missed addressing the question regarding the progenitors of the Samtics and the Titanomachy in my multi-post reply kata. Shameful display!

A brief rebriefing on the origins of the Samtics: barely sapient colony lifeforms who accidentally disturbed a XENOTOMB in their homeworld's sea bottom, awakening the remnants of a Goa'uld-like mindworm species that proceeded to go I'LL FORM THE HEAD, becoming the brains of the proto-Samtics. After a period of forced development where the mindworms combined their antediluvian knowledge and their slaved bodies to build a starfaring civilization again, they one day woke up and realized that they were basically a whole new species now and maybe should break with the past. And before the mindworms/first-generation Samtics all died of natural causes, they worked out a true-breeding Samtic organism and wrote down what they remembered in the SHADOW OF THE OVERLORDS, Samtic civilization's most revered document.

I added dire legend-rumors that the mindworms were once mighty giants who bestrode the galaxy but were struck down for their hubris, withering into pathetic worms that needed to hijack bodies just to act, and that said worms sealed themselves into stasis-tombs all over the galaxy to forestall their final decline. (HINT HINT) I also intended for the XENOTOMBS to be millions of years old. So if the fallen titans who became the mindworms are supposed to be one and the same with the Giant Space Men, the Titanomachy must have been going on for a very long time.

But if that was the case, that makes the Samtics the other living thread from those ancient times, however debased and second-hand those memories might be. (It would also make the Pyrrhons the third living thread as they were also uplifted by the mindworms, although they retained far, far less) To the Apexai, it would have been as though their terrifying boss left a small sliver of his brain in the freezer which woke up, squirmed away, built a body for itself Frankenstein-style out of garden slugs and random crap, and then carried on as though nothing ever happened. If they remembered the Giants at all, of course. Though the psychocognitive dissonance generated might mean that they avoided interacting with the Samtics whenever possible, explaining the lack of history between them.

And on their part the Samtics are left with...running a pretty successful civilization? I dunno, I kind of feel bad about making the Samtics sound so well-adjusted, in light of the recent posts.
"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
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I for one think that it's cool that these menagerie of biopunk alienoids are actually the most sanely diverse and adaptable dudes, somehow assuming the roles plucky humans generally have in mainstream sci-fi. The main human players we end up with are the stagnant nostalgic reflections of Earth past and the USS' bleeding edge post-real madness.
Vic wrote:I added dire legend-rumors that the mindworms were once mighty giants who bestrode the galaxy but were struck down for their hubris, withering into pathetic worms that needed to hijack bodies just to act, and that said worms sealed themselves into stasis-tombs all over the galaxy to forestall their final decline. (HINT HINT) I also intended for the XENOTOMBS to be millions of years old. So if the fallen titans who became the mindworms are supposed to be one and the same with the Giant Space Men, the Titanomachy must have been going on for a very long time.
If this is the case, this means evil mindworms and maybe even the Samtics themselves would have interest in the Rhapsodite cadavers. Or explains why they keep a distance.

Or if they're not the Giant Space Men, they could have been a post-Titanomachy power that throwed it down with the Apexai as survivors jockeyed for position over the galactic rubble heap? (Which led to the Apexai Golden Age)

OR! We can combine both! Maybe a post-Titanomachy species that worshipped the giants wanted to... become godlike and thus they found a dead giant and had a blasphemous dark communion, consuming and incorporating the giant genetic DNA, turning them into grotesque Jenovas and Final Fantasy final bosses, not-quite-as-huge-but-still-gigantic monstrosities that proved to be quite a threat in the post-Titanomachy order. They lose, and then the genetic interactions of their black communion unravels and their TRUE FORMS start withering into worms.
I guess I just want a very general sense of where the Zigonians stand in the general galactic totem pole.
This is difficult since the various Ziggie tribes travel a lot and make government non-binding resolutions through rave parties. If they get united by a Toruk Makto and decide to break shit if they're truly offended, then they'd be more than anything a Fracture state can handle, but below the behemoths.
Well this would completely contradict the existing Myrrani myth of the Tyrant King who held the entire Myrrani race in a grip of steel, until the Queen With No Soul shattered his Throne of Souls and also destroyed the soul of every single Myrran, as to free them from domination forevermore.
True. Damn, I'll keep the Tyrant King I think. Or I dunno, this has to be mulled over. They are such a fucked up sadomasochistic species!

We could have various Myrranni have differing stories on the Queen With No Soul. Those who do not follow the Celestial Court could espouse beliefs that make her out to be the eldritch abomination you suggest.
But I also feel that organizing the Feudal worlds and the Sunsmiths in one overarching hierarchy is taking away from the overall diversity. Again as mentioned on facebook, the Sunsmiths should just be one divine archetype among others that Myrrans pursue and emulate, and we've raised other things such as the DARKLORDS in their negative space. There should be other, less cosmos-shaking bigwigs for Myrrans that we should touch upon.
The other divine archetypes and other douchebag Myrrani could be results of clashes between the Celestial Court and other aspirants. Histories, societies, civilizations shaped by interstellar catfights!
I can use this to make the point that individual species might have been unrivalled in their own fields and paradigms, but in the end all they will manage is to enrich the galaxy with yet more cool stuff, like with the Isopterids' schtick
And this is strangely a good commentary for worldbuilding... writing... and life in general.
Siege wrote:Looking back over the last couple of pages the mind boggles at the craziness we've managed to come up with. Perhaps it is time to, in the interest of expediency and keeping-this-shit-straight, compile a brief overview of things like the history of the galaxy and major players in it? It doesn't have to be fully comprehensive and it can always be altered, but it'd be nice to have a general sense of 'oh right that bit fits right there'.
Lets over the weekend google doc a cast of character's list and give outlines? And then I can edit the Opening Post and put it there for reference?
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

We had a brief talk about the discovery of the K-Zone and what its name actually is (Karnage-Zone, Kornukopia-Zone, Kaos-Zone, Kay-Zone), and I threw out Krieg Zone. After Viktoria Germania Krieg, the famous explorer, see.

A brief hashing of thoughts later we arrived at the White Children, a post-Fracture group that arose after the fall of the Earth Empire. They regarded the genetic tinkering that the Empire had done with great suspicion and advocated a more pure, baseline, innocent humanity (hence their name). Unfortunately what started as a pretty decent movement warning against the dangers of runaway augmetics turned increasingly more radical until it ended up in a kind of species-compliant purity religion. After an ultimate attempt to purge the galaxy of degenerate genetic templates the White Children got their collective heads caved in by other post-Fracture states and by now they are nothing but a distant memory, a footnote in history books.

But for a while they were actually intrepid explorers and great thinkers, fearlessly and perhaps foolishly throwing their frail baseline human bodies into the cosmos to discover what's out there waiting. And maybe somewhere in Wild Space still waits the tomb of Germania Krieg, and a map that leads to the Black Sun.
"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
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The rough outline, for public perusal. Editing rights (bestowed via google doc URL) only for interested parties and longtime contributors, if I missed any one of you guys, please shout here! And for honor's sake I also showed this to the SDNW4 folks whose materials I homaged/shamelessly bootlegged.

Also, I don't know if this rough outline should call for the start of a new thread (for easy reference in the OP), or if I should just edit this into the current thread's OP. Anyway, here goes:





Important Players

A

Apexai - An ancient and extremely advanced race of diminutive grey aliens noted for their psionic power and insufferable arrogance. For this crime, their glorious but isolated civilization was destroyed by the Bragulan warmachine when they slighted the Imperator Byzon, who dropped a moon on their homeworld. Apexai refugees took shelter in the nascent United Solarian Sovereignty, providing their ultratech and contributing to the USS’ meteoric rise as a galactic power.

B

Bragulans - A species of ursine strength and appearance, the vast majority of their population resides in the Bragulan Star Empire - an extremely militarized ultimate totalitarian state led by its Imperator Darvyl Sagatantron Byzon I and his all-encompassing ideology of Byzonism. The B.S.E. is an extremely formidable, belligerent and aggressive expansionist superpower held in check by the United Solarian Sovereignty and her allies. Refugee, exile populaces and renegade mercenary units exist around Wild Space and the K-Zone, most notably the enclaves of pre-Byzonic White Bragulans.

C

Cevaucia - A laissez faire conglomeration of states in the K-Zone, neighboring the United Solarian Sovereignty, considered an anarchic haven for war criminals and traitors from the Sovereignty and Bragule alike. Ruled by crime syndicates, pirate lords and militaristic strongmen (whose turfs are arranged in “rings), while the commoners “enjoy” wild you-only-live-once lifestyles that would give even Solarians pause. This is possibly from their society’s sudden advancement that occurred differently and less symmetrically compared to the USS’ own self-made evolution.

Crysts - A race of space-faring crystal arachnids that initially drifted and orbited suns and other energetic cosmic bodies, basking in the energy, listening and communicating in stellar frequencies. Eventually, perhaps by hearing the music of the spheres, some became sentient and scoured the galaxy to uplift fellow Crysts. First contact with the Samtic Nexus, which was also uplifting feral Crysts in an act anathemic to them, led to a terrible conflict. The unequal conflict and the imbalanced specialization of the uplifters forced them to inflict increasingly radical transformations onto themselves, developing dread weapons that gave even the Samtics pause: gigantic scalar relay swarms that could shatter worlds; space yggdrasil motherships that fed on entropy; great vampire engines that drain life from interplanetary distances. This war machine grew so fearsome that the uplifters lost control of it, and were forced to ally with the Samtics to drive it into Wild Space where it even now hunts and breeds among the Karlacks. The Samtic-uplifted strain of Crysts survived the conflict and is a full member of the Nexus today, living an estranged existence from the greater body of Crysts whose relations with the Nexus as a whole is chilly at best.

D

Daur - Aquatic dirigible sunfish who enjoy the dubious honour of being the first uplift subject of the Samtics. Though taken beyond their lightless waterworld and granted a variety of new bodies up to and including cybernetic spacecraft, their inherent dependence on technology and their more advanced patrons did not suit their temperaments. This rocky relationship was once bad enough to jeopardize the Daur’s very sapience, but today they have settled into being one of the elder statesmen of the Samtic Nexus, passive but culturally influential. Their spacefaring cousins have remained more active, hauling cargo with their bodies in the Nexus and beyond.

E

Earth Empire - An ancient empire from the mythical human homeworld of Earth. They subjugated most of the human population, using mentallic means (neuromancers). The emergence of espers and contra-psionic technology broke their control, led to a revolution, a psionic war and a Psychic Cataclysm that erased much of humanity’s recorded histories and balkanized humanity (see Fracture). Memories of the Earth Empire and Earth itself has now been lost to antiquity.

Espers - Individuals gifted with extrasensory perceptions and other meta-being abilities. Known also as psychics, psykers, and psions. This phenomena has also been documented, with varying prevalence, amongst many species: Apexai are born with potent psionic abilities, Crysts’ fractal physiologies are naturally psionically resonant, gifted humans and Zigonians can cultivate psionic abilities, whereas Bragulans and Myrranni rarely - if ever - exhibit psychic traits and have minds insulated from psychic interaction. Specialized technologies can combat and negate these extranormal abilities with varying degrees of success.



F

Fracture - The term used to describe the balkanization of humanity that ensued after the Psychic Cataclysm that ended the Earth Empire. Culturally, the trauma of the Cataclysm has caused a common disdain for espers and a social nostalgia leading the Fracture states to replicate half-remembered and idealized trappings of ancient Earth societies, serving as a haven from the strangeness of the alien races around them, the radical transhumanism of other societies and the uncertainty of the times. Ironically, thanks to sheer distance, former fringe colonies such as the United Solarian Sovereignty have escaped the most debilitating psychotraumatic effects of the Fracture and have overshot the older Fracture states, forging ahead to create brave new worlds beyond the wildest dreams… and nightmares of their forebears.

G

Grandeur of Auriga - A great power in the Fracture area ruled by a dual monarchy and an aristocracy. Perhaps the oldest Fracture state, with noble houses tracing their bloodline the Earth Empire. High fashion is marked by post-animal familiars (ranging from enhanced canids to larger creatures like dragons) used as personal assistants. Its military is perhaps the most formidable in the Fracture, with NEUROM attaining rough parity.

Green Sea - a region betwixt the Fracture and the K-Zone, filled with Phyrron barbarian “states” (the name is derived from the greenish phyrran complexion).

H

Hadepodes - living veins of hydrocarbons with "skeletons" of silicone supermolecules and "blood" of pressurized sulfuric acid. They evolved in the deep parts of the crusts of rocky worlds, squeezing through cracks in the rocks to form vast distributed webs of life. They merged and warred with and consumed each other, forging metals by burrowing into volcano vents and building palaces in hollow geodes. By the time of first contact with the Samtics, the Hadepodes already possessed advanced nanotechnology and hardtech augmemtics incorporated into their own bodies. Being curious, industrious creatures of constant circulation that already took well to self-modification, they are one of the happier cases of uplift and integration into the Samtic Nexus. However, their fairly extensive bulk and relatively extreme living conditions have limited their population spread, undergoing extensive technological cladistic divergence to fill all permutations of their original niche. The Hadepodes are largely preoccupied within and without the Nexus as engineers and terraformers. A single Hadepod can become an entire planetary infrastructural network by burrowing into the crust, using nanotech to construct and lay out pipes, cables and tunnels as it grows and expands, forming connections and outlets on the surface as required, and use its own neural network to monitor and regular the system which is essentially a part of its body.

Humans - A race of bipedal organic lifeforms exhibiting a conventional morphology. Their homeworld has been lost to antiquity, but healthy populations exist across known space, though most concentrated in an area known as the Fracture. They exhibit above average psionic potential. Amidst alien species and rapid transhumanization, the concept of ‘humanity’ has become nigh sacred to some, while to others it has been reduced to a vestigial word merely denoting the obsolescent origins of a transforming species.

Hybrids - Apexai-Human Hybrids, the result of covert Solarian-Apexai collaboration to produce more stable psions. Currently their existence is no longer secret though their origin is still subject to speculation. They are still rare in the Solarian populace, making them the subject of conspiracy theories and tabloid alarmism. The Solarian intelligence agency, CEID, makes extensive use of them. The secretive Silver Shield society serves as an authority for Hybrids in the USS, part masonic lodge and part NGO.

Hyperpacificans - A nation that rebelled and seceded from Grand Auriga, embracing the Samtic Nexus and its extensive waterworlds as the calcifying Fracture rejected their extravagant divergences from the human norm. Their minimal materialism and carefree lifestyle cloaks a deceptively resilient biology capable of traversing oceans and surviving astounding pressures. The Hyperpacifica shares its parent nation’s use of post-animal familiars, though in more mutable and gelatinous forms.

I

Isopterids - An insectoid race prevalent throughout known space. Diverse as any species, they are know most as intrepid terraformers owing to the comprehensive biotech augmentations integrated into the anatomy of Isopterid colonists. Isopterid anatomical-equipment has proliferated to other civilizations, but remain a forte of the Isopterids, making them respected workers and craftsmen who literally bring their own tools.

J

K

K-Zone - The highly volatile and culturally diverse region of space occupied by Zigonia, the United Solarian Sovereignty, Cevaucia Wild Space, the Bragulan Star Empire, the Karlack Swarm and other powers. Name is possibly derived from: Karnage-Zone, Kornukopia-Zone, Kaos-Zone, Karlack-infested Zone, Kay-Zone, or Krieg Zone (after Viktoria Germania Krieg, the famous explorer).

Karlacks - An extremely diverse and massive interstellar ecology regarded by most civilizations as an all-consuming swarm of biological horrors ruled by a hivemind. The teeming masses of the Karlack Swarm are comprised of highly evolved bioforms great and small governed by unfathomable natural processes that make them utterly incomprehensible for most societies, some (many) of which fall victim to Karlacks that regard them uncaringly as best, and as food sources or reproductive hosts at worst.

Kheler - Plural, Khelerene. Avians. Their dominant societies are known for a form of technological filial piety wherein their forebears are uploaded into enormous AI Cores. These repositories of blended memories and consciousnesses are regarded as a source of wisdom, governance and pseudo-religious reverence. Conflicts with the Myrranni (called the ‘cat and the canary scenario’ by human observers) has led to the Khelerene joining the Samtic Nexus. The Kheler Nests nearest to the conflict zones are known as the Talonworlds whereas the Khelerene core is called the Refuge and the other side of Kheler turf unmarred by war and connected to trade routes are known as the ‘Branch.’ The Kiths are their highest authorities, and their militaries are called ‘Murders.’

L

Laurentian Cascade - A sizeable Fracture nation noted for its relatively progressive government, a representative democracy with an attitude characterized by the desire to escape, or heal from, the cultural scars of the Fracture, which is tempered by the hangups of its constituents, a setback due to the sociocultural makeup of the Fracture environment.

M

Magi - The antithesis of the Ministry of Fate and their principal opponent in psychic conflicts after the Fracture. During the anti-psyker pogroms, the Magi formed to protect, train and nurture gifted individuals while maintaining humanistic, philanthropic idealism as opposed to the Ministry of Fate’s militant radicalism. The Magi are represented by diverse organizations, reflective of the vision of its ascended founder, The Sophia, who believed in the freedom of choice, the goddess of infinite possibilities, rather than the seizure of fate and the creation of destiny embraced by the All-Father.

Mandragorans - The mass-produced and conditioned warrior class of the Earth Empire, proto-replicants nonetheless callously treated by their own masters. The name is derived from the Mandragora root plant, as in ancient times burrowing Mandragora Pods harvested raw materials to grow the shock troopers. The neutralization of the Earth Empire’s neuromantic controls led to Mandragoran rebellions and after the Cataclysm and the Fracture, they formed their own societies. Their descendants are still heavily influenced by their martial conditioning. There is a disproportionate percentage of Mandragorans amongst the bounty hunters, mercenaries and pirates of the galaxy.

Meridian Institute - A foundation dedicated to scientific advancement governing a small but prosperous star nation in the Fracture. The organization was formed to stymie the effects of the Psychic Cataclysm and disintegration of the Earth Empire, and assist recovering Fracture states, by serving as a repository of knowledge, research and development. Part prestigious university, part NGO, part nation-state, Meridia was and remains to be an oasis of stability during the initial balkanization of the Fracture. They are noted for their neutrality in interstellar political affairs and an economy that manufactures and exports advanced technology. Due to their impartiality and rationality, their Space Patrol has semi-reluctantly become the prefered peacekeeper force in the Fracture. What they lack in size and quantity they make up with quality above par in the Fracture.

Ministry of Fate - An occult organization of espers and psykers initially formed to protect their kind during the pogroms of the Fracture. They radicalized under the leadership of their All-Father, who believed in using his and his disciples’ prodigious psychic powers to control their destinies and their fates, in a bid to transcend the psychotrauma of the Fracture and elevate espers to their rightful place above the unremarkable masses of mundane humanity. Eventually they infiltrated the militant states that became NEUROM. The Ministry officially serves as NEUROM’s secret police and intelligence agency, but has actually subverted the regime to its own ends.

Myrran - Plural, Myrranni. A species of antisocial felines, their dominant faction is the Ascendancy, a feudal hierarchy centered on the mythical Queen With No Soul who dwells in the empty void at the core of Myrr space. Beneath her, the Celestial Courts are led by a hermetic ruling pantheon of demi-beings inhabiting palaces within suns and stars, more interested in listening to the whispers and songs of wisps than the plight of their peasantry. Beneath them are the Vicerenes, Contessas, Duchesses and Baronesses, who rule with correspondingly (and begrudgingly) less isolation, commanding worlds and moons populated by peasant Myrran haplessly confined with their kin. The aristocracy is a struggle for ascension to gain the solitude they crave, done through the exploitation of the peasantry and subordinate nobilities, the ultimate achievement being a place at the Solar Courts. The dominant Celestial Court is just one divine hierarchical archetype of the Ascendancy among others that Myrrans pursue and emulate, varying pantheons of near-equivalent or lesser scale. Mainstream Myrran society feature a sexual social dimorphism that turns the males into an exploited underclass within an already stratified, unequal society.

N

Nova Meropia - A Meridian Institute offshoot created by posthuman scientists who isolated themselves for ostensibly objective research and development but ended up developing an eccentric subculture characterized by peculiar idiosyncracies, technological tinkering, and off-putting arrogance at the magnificence of their posthuman superiority. A mostly harmless compact space nation and an exporter of odd, impractical but still impressive technologies with mostly military, security, contra-psionic and neural-control applications...

NEUROM - A great power in the Fracture region, regarded as a rogue nation and a rival to Grand Auriga. Formed by an ultramilitant xenophobic junta, and aligned with other post-Earth Empire dictatorships (Steinreich) that divided and conquered their region of space. Their prejudice and utter rejection of psychics ironically led to their eventual subversion by the radical esper supremacists of the Ministry of Fate, which on paper serves as their secret police/intelligence agency, but in actuality uses NEUROM’s military might for their own ends.



O

Orthii - Felines comprising nascent interstellar societies in Wild Space who got caught in the chaos and the limbo of being relatively young cultures neighboring the post-real singularity states of the K-Zone. Somehow they keep up and are known locally for their pluck and attitude,

Overlords -

P

Phyrran/Phyrron - A scourge species, perhaps a leftover weapon race. Reptilo-insectile hexapod creatures who semi-instinctively form war bands, migrate, wage war and consume their defeated foes to build up for the next conflict. They are have a barbaric hierarchy organized by strength and aggression and ruled by warlord god-kings known as Phyrraxes and the genetic-memory capacity to manufacture and maintain war-technology. Served as the host species of the Xenotomb Overlords before confronted by the Samtics.

Q

R

Replicants - (derogatory terms: "tekk", "skinjob", "bioroid") Bioengineered beings the Sovereignty uses for a variety of dangerous and/or important tasks, mostly in the military, but also specialized labor and other civilian vocations. Replicants are virtually identical to adult humans, but have superior strength, agility, and variable intelligence depending on the model; most possess intellectual capacities that at least match those of their designers. Replicants almost universally have superhuman capabilities, being better, faster and stronger than baseline homo sapiens. Though they are grown with a specific purpose in mind, to avoid charges of slavery all Replicants are free to reject this purpose and make their own way in society; however their designers have made sure to minimize the possibility of this actually happening. Even so, it is impossible to completely root out the possibility of a Replicant objecting to their intended purpose without rendering them into mindless zombies (which would defeat their point) and as such about 1.8% of all Replicants are 'faulty' in that they reject their purpose and have to be let go. By law all Replicants, if they accept their purpose, will serve four-year terms in their intended position. After that they can either sign up for another tour, or retire and live civilian lives.


Rhapsodites - The human name for a mysterious primordial race of titanic god-like beings that once reigned supreme in the prehistoric galaxy, enslaving species and devouring worlds to sustain their cosmic metabolism. Some of their robotic servitors (see Telestrons) and subjugated lackeys (see Apexai) rebelled and brought an end to their tyranny. Presently, their scattered corpses are under Telestron custody, though some are used as powerful artifacts and energy sources by various factions, formerly the Earth Empire and most notably the modern Shen Rhapsody (hence the name). Shen Rhap paleoarcheologists have determined that the titans had hyperspatial bodily morphologies with limbs and appendages that extended to other planes of reality.

S

Samtic Nexus - An old and established power abutting the limits of human influence, composed of many species embracing the ethos of symbiotic codependency, political formalism and megascale infrastructure construction. It was founded by the eponymous Samtic meta-species, who remain the federation’s most powerful and influential members. While long successfully insulating Myrran depredations from the rest of the galaxy, the encroaching influence of the Bragulan Star Empire and the explosive rise of post-Fracture human powers in the K-Zone has seen its fortunes decline. Some blame may be placed on the Nexus’ unhelpful tendencies towards over-complexity and over-redundancy, but perhaps the galaxy is just changing under them.

Samtics - The primary members of the Samtic Nexus, beginning their history as proto-sapient, aquatic colonial organisms who inadvertently opened a Xenotomb situated on their homeworld, allowing its reawakening Overlords to insinuate themselves into their colonial physiology as controllers. However, even as the Overlords boostrapped the proto-Samtics into a starfaring civilization with their half-forgotten yet potent knowledge, they grew to identify with their new bodies, which led to the true founding of the Samtics as a species as the Overlords sought to leave behind true-breeding descendents and an ethos for them to follow. Today the Samtics have diverged into any combination of clade-combinations, but the average Samtic is a collective of post-organs hosted in a cybernetic shell that handles the basic life-support functions that colony members would have once been responsible for, leaving the post-organs free to pursue their vocations - yet with all collective actions of the colony painstakingly negotiated between each other. To the Samtics, integration leads to prosperity and submission leads to purpose, and thus they drive the Nexus ever forward into hybridizing new members and incorporating new perspectives.

Sardicans - Wild Spacers and dune worlders, possibly partly descended from the Mandragorans, explaining their prowess as battle hardened mercenaries with experience in insurgencies and in anti-Phyrron wars in the Green Sea. They form a core mercenary force for the Trucial Stars.

Shen Rhapsody - A corporatocratic post-Fracture state established by space gypsies and Meridian explorers on a constellation of solar systems bearing monolithic monuments with indecipherable inscriptions mistaken as the lyrics of a rhapsody. The true meaning was more sinister, the monuments were epitaphs for beneath the worlds were gigantic headless alien corpses dubbed by the colonists as Rhapsodites. The Meridian scientists reactivated the digestive systems of the cadavers, feeding them exotic matter to generate vast amounts of energies (as the Earth Empire did before them in secret). The Meridian scientists turned orgone tycoons founded the Shen Rhap Orgone Accumulation Corporation, and its fuel exports makes the nation an economic power in the Fracture, which in turn makes the company the de facto government of Shen.

Shepherds - Originally a ragtag and unaligned naval force during the earliest years of the Fracture, the flotilla protected refugees who gradually settled down and established twelve colonies and then expanded into a loose confederation of libertarian isolationist state guarded by a paranoid, preemptive nuclear-happy space navy serving as their Shepherds.

T

Technotheocracy - An even more severe Meridian Institute offshoot… or an offshoot of the Institute’s founders. A darker reflection of the foundation, decrying the subjectivities and imperfection of the pre- and post-human condition, the Technos transmuted their beings into the most perfect scientific instruments they could craft, but still the disdain and hubris that characterized them and their personalities remained, unexpunged. The result is a culture of cold, aloof, detached technological sorcerers with amoral scientific pursuits and experimentations, jealously guarding their secrets and contemptuous of species that could rival their masteries or those channeling superstitious esoterica (espers). The Calibration is their military wing, designed to resolve anything obstructing their scientific pursuits or interfering in theological matters. They fund themselves by supporting client states, authoritarian supplicants, militarists and purity-obsessed humanists willing to concede to the Technopriests’ enlightened “values.”

Telestrons - Once mechanical beings birthed by exotic quantum-thermodynamic miracles (the Signal) which was then harnessed and used by god-like titan devourers, the Rhapsodites, to turn them into servitors of their tyrannical reign. Feeling compassion for galactic life, some Telestrons rebelled and freed the prehistoric galaxy from their masters’ tyranny. The heroic Telestrons kept the headless bodies in great cemeteries, like in the Shen system (where they were repulsed by the Earth Empire) and elsewhere. There are also loyalist Telestrons who are biding their time to resurrect the giants and use their mindless bodies as vessels to complete the giants’ interrupted tasks. In modern times, the heroic Telestrons are all but forgotten, sequestering themselves while observing the affairs of organic life and contemplating higher cosmic mysteries or disguising themselves to observe younger races. The mysterious remnant robots are occasionally sighted and only intervene in galactic affairs during the direst moments.

Trucial Stars - A confederation of minor Wild Space nations in the K-Zone, banding together for mutual trade and protection after one too many unforeseen Karlack migrations. The Stars are led by the Emir of Jairah, and together their space-caravans, mercenaries, refugee labor force and resource mines make them a respected regional economic power and a cultural melting pot in a region prone to conflict and strife.

U

United Solarian Sovereignty - Originally fringe colonies, their distance from the rest of humanity insulated them from the debilitating effects of the Earth Empire’s tyranny, its fall during the Psychic Cataclysm and the ensuing Fracture. First Contact with Bragulan expeditionary forces led to a devastating war that transformed and unified the ragtag colonists into a regional military power that repulsed Byzon’s warmachine. The dynamic post-war period, the ultratech gifts of Apexai exodites, and other factors resulted in the ascension of the Sovereignty into a radical transhuman singularity society and a military superpower holding the Bragulan juggernaut at bay.

V

Verdigrite - A self-replicating and highly radioactive exotic crystal substance that sub-atomically transmutes other matter into more crystals. Most expertly harnessed and farmed by Bragulans to enhance their nucleonic power sources and weaponry. Its lethal effects extend hyperspatially, and Bragulan nucleonic disasters have been known to contaminate entire solar systems and even larger areas. Other nations can harness verdigrite (NEUROM and the Shepherds are the second largest producers), but its toxic nature makes other energy sources preferable. Unknown to most, verdigrite was actually made by Telestron blood spilled during the Titanomachy, the life essence infused with the quantum anomalies animating the machine race having a potent effect on conventional organic and inorganic matter.

W

Wild Space - A notably ultraviolent lawless region in and immediately around the K-Zone, most notably the sectors comprising the de-militarized zone between the United Solarian Sovereignty, the Bragulan Star Empire, Cevaucia and the Karlack Swarm. Proximity to such transhuman powers, ultra-totalitarian regimes and all-consuming chitinous hordes and their conflicts has resulted in a cultural smorgasbord of failed states, struggling enclaves, proxy regimes, protectorates, crime havens, desperate bit players, and the occasional islands of sanity, a unique region of the galaxy constantly on the verge of complete annihilation.

Wisps - Rayes of starlight, hyperstellar frequency beings drifting in the multi-spectral currents emanated by celestial bodies. Known as rayes and data-djinn, frequent subject of poems, revered by the Myrranni, the Sardicans and the Emiratis of the Trucial Stars, who commune with them with solar-orbital minarets.

White Children - A post-Fracture group that regarded the genetic tinkering that the Empire had done with great suspicion and advocated a purer, baseline, innocent humanity (hence their name). What started as a pretty decent movement against the dangers of runaway augmetics turned increasingly more radical until it became a species-compliant purity religion. After an ultimate attempt to purge the galaxy of degenerate genetic templates the White Children got their collective heads caved in by other post-Fracture states and by now they are nothing but a footnote in history books. But for a while they were actually intrepid explorers and great thinkers, fearlessly and perhaps foolishly throwing their frail baseline human bodies into the cosmos to discover what's out there waiting. And maybe somewhere in Wild Space still waits the tomb of Germania Krieg, and a map that leads to the Black Sun.

X

Y

Z

Zedath-Kaleshi - The most prominent of the Apexai exodites taking refuge in the United Solarian Sovereignty. Their worldships were the among the first wave to arrive in Solarian space after the destruction of Apexaia.

Zigonians - Party lizards, in short. Bipedal, feathery reptiloids characterized by their highly sensitive capacities for communication - including not only verbal language, but also non-verbal body language, such as elaborate gesticulations, body heat, shifting skin coloration, pheromones, etc. - that lead them to form very communal societies that can easily adapt foreign cultural traits. Zigonians are the social butterflies of the cosmos, many tribes wander space in tree-ships, interacting with other interstellar civilizations, most notably the United Solarian Sovereignty (due to Zigonia’s location in the K-Zone). Owing to their shamanic traditions, significant Zigonian communal gatherings - from celebrations to political caucuses - are conducted with copious amounts of psychedelic substances that enhance sensation and even further elevate their interpersonal abilities. Their sensitivity to sociocultural “vibes” is both a gift and a curse, and if unchecked, can sway careless Zigonian individuals and groups to behavioral extremes, explaining the highly spiritual, ritualistic and shamanic aspect of their societies.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

I had covered some of this in an earlier post, but the Magi are not organized like conventional polities at all. Anywhere within the Fracture, a young psyker may be touched by the numinous power of The Sophia, the sublime (and sublimed) uberpsyker counterpart of the Ministry of Fate's shadowy founder. While such empowered individuals wouldn't automatically transcend their societies and environments, once they join the greater sorority of Magi across human space they will find that they are quite influential indeed. But unlike with the Ministry of Fate the Magi receive no active guidance from their god-figure, and the agendas that they fall into matter all the more. So here's the primary factions among the Magi in the style of WoD splats, with fancy names and everything:

The League of Weaving are the magical girl ivy league. Their members establish institutions of culture and learning in various Fracture polities, working to preserve the best parts of societies - for each is a fragment of human possibility, and at the absence of any clear idea of how to stitch everything together they will have to work at keeping all avenues open. The network of institutions also foster diplomacy and reconciliation between their host polities, while behind the scenes we have Magi civilly agreeing to disagree on everything. The League is heavily enmeshed in local politics and often derided by other Magi as mere caretakers, but they have the most claim to being a source of pan-Fracture stability.

The Phoenix Princes are the name for those Magi who do see a way forward for humanity and are quite willing to test out their claims. Seizing the cultural tides of societies by taking their Magi powers really far, they excise harmful memes and import ones they like, and propel the resultant experiment in bold new directions to find a way out of the cognometric quagmire of the Fracture. That's not to say they're radicals who only take functional places and drive them into horrible social car accidents - the Princes tend to be quite good at putting shattered societies back together and giving them purpose. Of course, they also have this sense of self-reliance that doesn't lead them to playing well with others.

The Oracles of Indra do not spend much of their time acting physically. They enter psychic trances, plunging into the collective unconscious of humanity to untangle trends, divine the future and quest for signs of the Sophia, such that Her blessings can be brought closer to the benefit of the Magi and all humanity. Even with whatever aid they can obtain from alien sources such as the Zigonians and the repurposing of Earth Empire-era psychic apparatus, it's not an easy job to confront the collective trauma of humanity with your naked mind. Others may fault them for issuing vague warnings and prophecies, but they're probably doing what they can.

The Atheneoi are the organized militant wing of the Magi, something that does not always fit what the Magi think they're about. They actively acquire military resources, empower the masses to support their campaigns but always for its own sake, and focus greatly on seeking out an destroying threats of human well-being in the Fracture, most particularly the Ministry of Fate. They're generally the ones who get accused of mistaking acts of small-scale psychic healing by punching Monsters From the Id in the face with lasers as meaning that any problem can be solved by punching it in the face with lasers.

The Witch-Saints are more of a general category that refers to the Magi who really have fallen into the hedonistic Haruhiist feedback loop thing, becoming nothing more than idols who feed upon their fans like emotional vampires or sorcerer queens, or have otherwise lost themselves to the Fracture. Generally considered as renegades by the body of the Magi, they can nevertheless be found all over the Fracture for all sorts of reasons - protected by the societies they call home; never having been discovered or supported by other Magi; or compromised by more sinister forces.
"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
Lelouch vi Britannia
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri May 18, 2012 10:27 am
Location: Ashford Academy

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Lelouch vi Britannia »

Remarkably appropriate that the name of the Magi's godhead means "wisdom" in Greek. (Going off on a linguistic tangent, Haruhi literally means "spring day," while Madoka can mean "circle," "flower," or "window" depending on the kanji used. There are poetic meanings to be found there, I'm sure.)

Also, Nanoha Takamachi and her buddies would totally be Atheneoi. Nanoha's signature techniques are pretty much variations on the theme of punching problems in the face with lasers.
I ship Eino Ilmari Juutilainen x Lydia V. Litvyak.

Image

"YOU JERK! YOU WOULDN'T KNOW SEXY IF IT BIT YOU!" - Erica Hartmann, Strike Witches
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The Weavers and the Phoenixes are totally Silver Moon girls. See how we amalgamated 'em! :D
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
Simon_Jester
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:26 am

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Simon_Jester »

Coming from the Haruhiist-hedonist cultures might make the non-Silver-Moon half of the Magi more inclined to solve problems by punching them in the face with lasers, because that's part of the cultural mythos that supports turning century-old psychic heroines into the rock stars of their society. People fall in love with the image of the heroic champion winning battles WITH FRIENDSHIP or THE POWER OF LOVE or whatever, and their emotions generate the feedback that sustains the hedonistic loop.

So yeah I agree, the Weavers and Phoenixes are sooooo Space Jedi focused more on contemplation and orderly, peaceful things. And by contrast the Atheneoi (name intended to be derivative from Athena, perhaps?) are in relative terms soooo Space Magical Girl. Not that any of these divides would be strictly one-to-one, there are no doubt Space Jedi types who are focused more on hitting things with beamsabers (Macie Windu?).

Among the Atheneoi itself, in addition to any Order Militant space Jedi type, you have the full range of magical girls from anime, ranging from the more passionate and individualistic types*, to the more regimented types**, with internal rivalry based on profound differences about whether they are soldiers in an army, heroic champions of love and truth, or both at the same time.

*Sailor Moon-ish? I'm not very familiar with magical girl anime. Not compared to, say, the stuff I've actually read/watched from end to end.
**Nanoha-ish? Other settings I have not heard of-ish?
___________________________________

Also, hm. I'm thinking I might try to help develop the Meridian Institute a bit, not to turn them into something more like their original source material but to help them mesh, and potentially seeing if I can use any of my old core ideas in light of this new "Seldon's Foundation in a psychically traumatized galaxy." I'm something of an Asimov fan and a Foundation fan, if that helps.

Borrowing from the Foundation gives the Meridians that "is not good at mentallics/psi powers" tag, which helps explain why they are a relatively weak and less high-profile power than the Magi or NEUROM. It also gives them potential grounds to feel some slight rivalry towards the Magi, even as they concede that the Institute and the Magi are clearly on the same team. With the Institute cast as the Foundation, and the Magi as a very... Shroomified version of the Second Foundation.

[pictures a council of arch-scienticians in lab coats going, as one, "Harumph" over reports of crazed J-pop psychic demigoddesses disrupting and distorting the lives of worlds]

The idea that the Institute is like the Foundation also recapitulates the idea that they think computerized prediction of social trends and of the future is desirable and good. While I don't know if we/I should outright recycle my friendly professorial psychohistorian-AI Geppetto, but he or someone like him might be on their side. Or even picking their leadership. We could make it more interesting by playing with the ambiguity in having a machine that selects these things, something I did not do in SDNW4.

AI was around before the Fracture, right?
User avatar
Fingolfin
Posts: 64
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:10 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Fingolfin »

Man.. I had totally forgotten about the Machine Race Siege and I talked about years ago until Shroom brought them up and resurrected them in the form of the Telestrons.

I personally think the Telestrons could have a more subversive presence in the galaxy. One group would be fighting to stop the other from resurrecting their old masters, while the others would be doing just that. Of course, they could go about having allies in various places etc.
There is only war.
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Simon_Jester wrote:Borrowing from the Foundation gives the Meridians that "is not good at mentallics/psi powers" tag, which helps explain why they are a relatively weak and less high-profile power than the Magi or NEUROM. It also gives them potential grounds to feel some slight rivalry towards the Magi, even as they concede that the Institute and the Magi are clearly on the same team. With the Institute cast as the Foundation, and the Magi as a very... Shroomified version of the Second Foundation.
The Meridian's relative inexperience with mentallics and psionics might stem from early-Fracture traumas. Aside from the pogroms, there might have been unethical scientific experimentations done on espers by various factions, the Meridians may or may not have been involved (I remember the Umerians did have... darker incarnations in their history). The Sophia and the All-Father, amongst others, may have been victimized by them before they went Akira.

The more recent Institute... iterations? versions? also lack the willingness to commit unethical activities, unlike some Solarian megacorporations and secret societies.

The modern Meridian Institute could be a more welcome place for espers, and definitely does have esper members (didn't Umerians have 'em? like the Mayabird expy?), but a combination of the esper subculture's cultural distrust towards "secular authorities" and the Institute's hyper-rationalist approach to the very irrational nature of the psychic phenomena makes espers generally prefer the Magi. The Magi's irrational rituals and pseudo-shamanic leanings are... more welcoming for espers. The Magi's preferences makes their approach similar to the Zigonians and there could be team-ups between them.

Nonetheless, it's unfair to classify the Meridian Institute as weaker than the Magi or NEUROM. While the Institute does not have the sheer military might, power projection and hegemony of the Neurom axis of evil, the Meridian's scienticians are probably the most proficient in things like the hyperfield sciences in the Fracture - the Solarians have Apexai cheatcodes so they don't count! - and this makes their smaller peacekeeing Space Patrol force nonetheless respected.

Comparing them to the Magi... well, it's like comparing a Japano-Switzer-Swedenland to a bunch of multi-billion dollar psychic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation NGOs running Charles Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters ( :P ). The Magi might have gnarly psionics, but the Umer... Meridians have SCIENCE! and an industrial base. They're practically the Fracture's Space CERN. I am sure the premier establishments of higher learning of the Grand Aurigans, Cascadians, etc. have open channels with the Meridian Institute.

As Vic said, " individual species might have been unrivalled in their own fields and paradigms, but in the end all they will manage is to enrich the galaxy with yet more cool stuff..."

SOTS transcends SDN method of one-track power level measurements!
[pictures a council of arch-scienticians in lab coats going, as one, "Harumph" over reports of crazed J-pop psychic demigoddesses disrupting and distorting the lives of worlds]
This definitely happens though! I am sure Meridian Institute professors have their conceits. :D
The idea that the Institute is like the Foundation also recapitulates the idea that they think computerized prediction of social trends and of the future is desirable and good. While I don't know if we/I should outright recycle my friendly professorial psychohistorian-AI Geppetto, but he or someone like him might be on their side. Or even picking their leadership. We could make it more interesting by playing with the ambiguity in having a machine that selects these things, something I did not do in SDNW4.

AI was around before the Fracture, right?
This can work. The esteemed professors of the Institute can definitely have computronic assistance in their scientific pursuits, which includes governance.

AI was around before the Fracture, but before the Fracture it was controlled by the Earth Empire. The Empire's infosphere was... facilitated by the Neuromancers, bloated and mindless Astropathic slugmen (controlled by the Empire leadership) who filled the communications arrays with memetic and subliminal suggestive stuff to keep the populations subjugated. They also used these slugmen for FTL navigators.

But the demise of the Empire and its Neuromancers saw the use of alternative, less mind-controlley, measures like AI for interstellar comms. and FTL navigation and everything else.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Fingolfin
Posts: 64
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2012 8:10 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Fingolfin »

Actually, given what the Telestrons are, they could in theory infiltrate any kind of Quantum network throughout the galaxy and exist as beings in bodies or beings within the Network.

Hmmmmmm
There is only war.
Simon_Jester
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2015 6:26 am

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Simon_Jester »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:The Meridian's relative inexperience with mentallics and psionics might stem from early-Fracture traumas. Aside from the pogroms, there might have been unethical scientific experimentations done on espers by various factions, the Meridians may or may not have been involved (I remember the Umerians did have... darker incarnations in their history). The Sophia and the All-Father, amongst others, may have been victimized by them before they went Akira.
Given the Institute's purpose I doubt they were directly involved in the origins of the two grandmaster psychics.

Umeria maybe, and Dark!Umeria is certainly something I might want to explore one day, a nation very likely to do bizarre and sadistic experiments on psychics (among others). But the Institute is not Umeria. It was created for a purpose and that purpose would have, at the time, been best served by distancing themselves from the cognition-warping and potentially very political role of psionics in the pre-Fracture Earth Empire.

They might not have been able to get out from under that mind-intruding hand entirely before the Fracture of course, but afterwards they would probably want to get the hell away from any ongoing psychic wars, OR pogroms, and just try to recuperate and get their own minds (and SCIENCE!) right before any essential knowledge was lost to the ravages of time.
The modern Meridian Institute could be a more welcome place for espers, and definitely does have esper members (didn't Umerians have 'em? like the Mayabird expy?), but a combination of the esper subculture's cultural distrust towards "secular authorities" and the Institute's hyper-rationalist approach to the very irrational nature of the psychic phenomena makes espers generally prefer the Magi. The Magi's irrational rituals and pseudo-shamanic leanings are... more welcoming for espers. The Magi's preferences makes their approach similar to the Zigonians and there could be team-ups between them.
Yeah, that's about what I figured. I wasn't so much saying the Institute is totally nonpsychic (the Umerians sure aren't), as that the character of their psionics is different and less... impressive.

For example, they might be engaged in all sorts of research into the nature of thought itself (dun-dun-DUN) and disciplining your mind to become transcendently intelligent or aware, instead of projecting your thoughts outward to control other beings or juggle rocks with your mind. And what psychics they do have might operate on entirely different bands of thought, like the monastic space Jedi only even more so, perhaps chilling out in big heavily shielded suits and no-chambers like from Dune, isolating themselves from the ordinary vibes of the collective unconscious in psychic Faraday cages and becoming all memetic-hermetic and stuff.
Nonetheless, it's unfair to classify the Meridian Institute as weaker than the Magi or NEUROM. While the Institute does not have the sheer military might, power projection and hegemony of the Neurom axis of evil, the Meridian's scienticians are probably the most proficient in things like the hyperfield sciences in the Fracture - the Solarians have Apexai cheatcodes so they don't count! - and this makes their smaller peacekeeing Space Patrol force nonetheless respected.
Fair point.
As Vic said, " individual species might have been unrivalled in their own fields and paradigms, but in the end all they will manage is to enrich the galaxy with yet more cool stuff..."

SOTS transcends SDN method of one-track power level measurements!
Well, I felt like SDNW4 wasn't THAT much of just being a dick-measuring thing, it sure wasn't for me, but I had simply thought of the Magi as a Great Power while the Institute is, like, a bunch of scientists, but this is not so accurate.
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

All this about the patriarchal disdain of Meridian Institute professors led me to briefly speculate if the Institute itself had fallen victim to the Fracture's psychohistorical memes: in their case, emulating the square-jawed, pipe-puffing, slide rule-slinging Men of Science of the 50s. Of course, this would mean that they are actually no more elevated or objective than the rest of the Fracture, which doesn't seem appropriate if the Institute is supposed to be one of the three extraordinary factions with the potential to rise above their condition. While I'm sure the Institute has its own foibles, it would be cheap to decide that their laboriously cultivated clarity of reason doesn't in fact work because lol postmodernist worldbuilding.

Then I thought hey, maybe like the Foundation their general image is a front. The Meridian Institute merely acts like a bunch of Professor Utoniums in front of other people to maintain their credibility, because everyone in the Fracture knows that's how scientists are supposed to act. The calcified psychohistorical archetypes floating around in humanity's damaged unconscious don't simply influence how its polities see themselves, but how they see each other. In the Institute's case, they wear a particular memetic disguise so others would treat them as impartial observers without triggering unintended reactions. Considering how psycho-perceptual friction contribute to the inherent conflict in the Fracture as well as the manifestation of Monsters From the Id, minimalizing this factor would be something the Institute has grown really good at.

And maybe the agents of the Meridian Institute have the ability to put up other disguises too, assuming the cultural identity of other Fracture polities (and the attendant headful of psychohistorical memes that comes with it) while maintaining their inner objectivity. They can evaluate while they experience and armor their minds with mentat techniques against more overt intrusions. They would be PSYCHONAUTS. Watchers who are sometimes SWORN NOT TO INTERFERE, not just because their duty is only to observe and study, but also because they know they can exploit their memetic mastery to play large groups like fiddles.
"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
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Fingolfin wrote: I personally think the Telestrons could have a more subversive presence in the galaxy. One group would be fighting to stop the other from resurrecting their old masters, while the others would be doing just that. Of course, they could go about having allies in various places etc.
Fingolfin wrote:Actually, given what the Telestrons are, they could in theory infiltrate any kind of Quantum network throughout the galaxy and exist as beings in bodies or beings within the Network.
The Hero Telestrons could lay dormant in meditation, projecting their quantum brains to listen to the digital raindrops and cybberspace windchimes of Dataspheres across the ether. To satisfy their curiosities of the universe, add to their ponderings, AND serve as early warning listening posts for the Rhapsodite Loyalist Telestrons and their villainous, villainous schemes.

These villainous, villainous schemes may in fact be attempts to use the Rhapsodite cadavers and cosmic metabolic processes to replicate the otherwise rare quantum miracles needed to create more Telestrons, as the "rogue" Telestrons are merely attempting to save their dwindling population!
Simon_Jester wrote:]Given the Institute's purpose I doubt they were directly involved in the origins of the two grandmaster psychics... Umeria maybe, and Dark!Umeria is certainly something I might want to explore one day, a nation very likely to do bizarre and sadistic experiments on psychics (among others). But the Institute is not Umeria. It was created for a purpose and that purpose would have, at the time, been best served by distancing themselves from the cognition-warping and potentially very political role of psionics in the pre-Fracture Earth Empire...
Yeah, but who's to say that the Meridian Institute's predecessors were as innocent. :twisted:

Ethical conflicts in the past may have forced the great slide ruler-wielding Meridianites to object to gross moral indiscretions, and these conscientious objectors may have been the daring founding fathers of the Institute! They founded the Meridian Institute, yes, to save the Fracture all Asimov/Foundation-esque, but they also did an act of scientific secession to save their science, separating themselves from things dark, sinister, corruptive. Their acts would prove to be in the right as their unethical predecessors are now consigned to the dust bin of history while they continue to fight the good fight, untainted!

So, in short, the Meridian Institute was founded because of... "actually its about ethics in video game SCIENCE! journalism!"

(This might mean the Technotheocracy could be made out of more than just the loopier offshoots of the Meridian Institute... some of them may have roots from the pre-Meridian ethical violators. The Anti-Hippocratics!)
Yeah, that's about what I figured. I wasn't so much saying the Institute is totally nonpsychic (the Umerians sure aren't), as that the character of their psionics is different and less... impressive... For example, they might be engaged in all sorts of research into the nature of thought itself (dun-dun-DUN) and disciplining your mind to become transcendently intelligent or aware, instead of projecting your thoughts outward to control other beings or juggle rocks with your mind. And what psychics they do have might operate on entirely different bands of thought, like the monastic space Jedi only even more so, perhaps chilling out in big heavily shielded suits and no-chambers like from Dune, isolating themselves from the ordinary vibes of the collective unconscious in psychic Faraday cages and becoming all memetic-hermetic and stuff.
Actually, in the previous page we had a similar idea! The theory was that Apexai-Human Hybrids, the psions fashioned by the CEID and the Silver Shield, were made because they wanted next-generation "psions" as opposed to "espers" and "psykers" because the Apexai psionics operate at differing... "colder"... "dispassionate" more objective and "alien" frequencies than the human form of psionics, making them less susceptible to the ebb and flow of the emotional undercurrents of the psychosphere.

So maybe the Apexai, CEID and Silver Shield and the Meridian Institute researchers had similar findings, but different implementations because some people might have ethical compunctions against radical psychogenetic hybridization experiments. ;)

[Sure, NOW we have the Apexai having their own traumatized Oversoul... but I think this is something different from the humans' psychosphere. I think ancient Apexai actually somehow consciously engineered and architected their Oversoul.]
]Well, I felt like SDNW4 wasn't THAT much of just being a dick-measuring thing, it sure wasn't for me, but I had simply thought of the Magi as a Great Power while the Institute is, like, a bunch of scientists, but this is not so accurate.
Sorry. It's just that SDN itself, not SDNW4, and SF fan culture in general emphasize firepower and military-industrial techno-capacities as metrics for measurement... or at least that's what my biased perspective sees... since my SF culture exposure was hugely from SDN, which started out as a friggin versus site, one of the most bitterly, viciously embattled ones at that. Even in OmniverseZero/OmniverseOne the worldbuilding was highly focused on "this phased plasma rifle was manufactured by ArmsCorp, arming ten legions of urghs, primarily ferried aboard drop-cruisers with an FTL range of XYZ-parsecs, units primarily used by the Republics of Confederated Dominions, a military power spanning one-tenths of the galactic frontlines..."

I too am trying to deal with psychotraumas. Forgive me. :P
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
Post Reply