Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

The DRAGON SCIENCE practiced by the Unyielding Mandragoran Principalities in NEUROM is partly a systemized study of the optimal conditions to gestate Mandragorans in, and what hosts out of the spectrum of hume-kind can impart what desirable traits onto the newborn. It is also partly ideological woo wrapped up in their own warrior mystique and prejudices against non-Mandragorans, because after all it is NEUROM.

In any case THE DRAGON SCIENCE isn't quite a match in sophistication for Aurigan talent-splicing or even the biological sciences of their Anethganae neighbors, but it's enough to ensure that as with much of the setting, technology is advanced enough that culture shapes the methods of reproduction other than the other way round.

All of this (and Shroom's post above) applies mostly to the Mandragorans of the Unyielding Principalities, which is probably the most powerful bunch of Mandragorans in the Fracture and can afford to try out whatever reproduction method with their plentiful resources, both technological and human. Less fortunate bands of surviving Mandragorans elsewhere in the Fracture can well be reduced to warboys/chavs hatching their stunted offspring out of warm garbage bags.

Speaking of which, despite being designed as universal infantrymen Mandragorans do come in a variety of sizes and shapes. According to Shroom ogre-sized Mandragorans toting ogre-sized space M16s are a thing.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

I really dig how Mandragore replication is kind of like JAFFA KREE incubation pouches but with a side heaping of antediluvian forbidden science BODY HORRER. It's also somewhat remeniscent of the Sontarans, although oddly the Mandragoran society might actually be not nearly as bleak as the Sontaran Empire (which is rather more Bragulan, at least from what I recall).

Wouldn't NEUROM at least try to canalize Mandragoran methods of reproduction though? I mean, if I were them I'd like my warrior clades obedient and wholly dependent, either by controlling their best means of reproduction or by addicting them to Ketracel White or something. You know, just in case they get ideas above their standing.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Siege wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2017 8:39 pm I really dig how Mandragore replication is kind of like JAFFA KREE incubation pouches but with a side heaping of antediluvian forbidden science BODY HORRER. It's also somewhat remeniscent of the Sontarans, although oddly the Mandragoran society might actually be not nearly as bleak as the Sontaran Empire (which is rather more Bragulan, at least from what I recall).
Right? I realized that plain jane, straight laced Mandalorian Warrior Race Clone Army stuff is kind of meh, or like... the body horror element is just really appealing since it adds to the weird freakshow that was the Earthreign and the Fracture. I hope it is not gratuitous and I hope it actually plays well with the themes. Where even reproduction is a martial act that is rooted-in/integral-to either wartime prisoner treatment, inter-warrior ranking, injured veteran treatment, or just impersonal mass logistics.
Wouldn't NEUROM at least try to canalize Mandragoran methods of reproduction though? I mean, if I were them I'd like my warrior clades obedient and wholly dependent, either by controlling their best means of reproduction or by addicting them to Ketracel White or something. You know, just in case they get ideas above their standing.
NEUROM the alliance, or the Ministry of Fate conspiracy of espers (supposedly) enacting the All-Father's will?

The NEUROM alliance's secular leadership can't impose too much on the inner workings of each partner. Though I suppose within the Mandra hierarchies the superiors could distill a concentrated cocktail of performance enhancers/roids+superior-warrior-genes that's intense, addictive but also temporary? This is, on its face, entirely beneficial to the distributors/leaders, but both the NEUROM secular leadership and the hidden esper cabal can work with this as well.

Or maybe each Mandragoran sub-state just came up with differing methods of control. There's the cocktails for some, it's popular. Others have leaders who've unlocked (with secret Ministry whispers!) Earthreign-era geno-subliminals that allow them to use Bene Gesserit-style VOICE to get subordinates to comply! Others have less esoteric methods I guess, like nanomachine info-networks that link entire army's perceptions and opens them up to BLACK MIRROR-style manipulation...

As for the Ministry, I am unsure if they should be that overt in controlling these factions. Would something that overt be cooler?

I think, like how their influence on the Sternheim is rooted in just playing the wannabe Machiavellian GRINNING GERMANIAN LUDWIG BIGWIGS' tendencies, their way of manipulating the Mandragorans should likewise be subtle? Exploiting the warrior group dynamics and power plays?

Like, my current view would be that the Ministry uses very "passive means" that just uses psychohistoric techniques+psychic prognostication and awareness of these groups' Fractured psychotraumatic tendencies. Since, ironically, overt methods like reactivating a Neuromonger will make these guys go crazy and go full Shepistan. (After all, the original NEUROM pact was made because the three powers had to work together to stop an attempt to reactivate Earthreign tech...)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2017 9:55 pmRight? I realized that plain jane, straight laced Mandalorian Warrior Race Clone Army stuff is kind of meh, or like... the body horror element is just really appealing since it adds to the weird freakshow that was the Earthreign and the Fracture. I hope it is not gratuitous and I hope it actually plays well with the themes. Where even reproduction is a martial act that is rooted-in/integral-to either wartime prisoner treatment, inter-warrior ranking, injured veteran treatment, or just impersonal mass logistics.
I don't think it is gratuitous, although I do believe it would be interesting to simultaneously give their society certain qualities, maybe pseudo-chivalric ones, to distinguish them. That way they're not just degenerate body horror offspring of a long defunct empire, but something that may have originated as degenerate body horror offspring and subsequently evolved a society that may be thoroughly alien and in many ways repulsive to us, but is not completely so and has still some redeeming qualities. Could be as simple as Klingon/Sontaran militaristic honor, I suppose, but perhaps there's a twist we could give on that concept that would make it more unique.

Xenomorphs are repulsive gribblies, and you'd just shoot them until they stop twitching and not have a second thought about it. But Mandragorans are still at some level human dudes, you know? Maybe horribly mutoid human dudes, but not moreso than the Aztecs who'd make blood sacrifices and then go home smiling to their loving kids and wives. If you could identify with them at some level, that would bring out the grotesque aspects of their society that you couldn't identify with, I think.

The NEUROM alliance's secular leadership can't impose too much on the inner workings of each partner. Though I suppose within the Mandra hierarchies the superiors could distill a concentrated cocktail of performance enhancers/roids+superior-warrior-genes that's intense, addictive but also temporary? This is, on its face, entirely beneficial to the distributors/leaders, but both the NEUROM secular leadership and the hidden esper cabal can work with this as well.

Or maybe each Mandragoran sub-state just came up with differing methods of control. There's the cocktails for some, it's popular. Others have leaders who've unlocked (with secret Ministry whispers!) Earthreign-era geno-subliminals that allow them to use Bene Gesserit-style VOICE to get subordinates to comply! Others have less esoteric methods I guess, like nanomachine info-networks that link entire army's perceptions and opens them up to BLACK MIRROR-style manipulation...
That works for me. I'm not fully up to speed on the latest state of NEUROM, but I'd imagine that if these are clades and worlds full of hardcore soldiers from a society that puts almost exclusive emphasis on militaristic feats, you'd want some way of ensuring they are kept in line. Could be drugs, could be indoctrination, could be a perpetual war against the Karlacks or Bragulans that will keep them busy for a couple of centuries... But basically just an answer to the question of: what will we do when these dudes who are way good at fighting stuff run out of stuff to fight? Won't they want to fight the other people in our alliance? Isn't that a naturally occurring possibility if/when they sit still for too long? What do the Orcs do, basically, when the Draenei are defeated and there are no more worlds to conquer?

Some of this could actually be answered by giving them a sense of society and values beyond 'society geared for total war', I'd think - maybe the thought just wouldn't occur to them because their values prevent them from turning on their allies, for example.

As for the Ministry, I am unsure if they should be that overt in controlling these factions. Would something that overt be cooler?
Not necessarily, I'd think it's cooler if the Ministry is a behind the scenes force puppetizing all these various factions in ways that fit their EVIL SCHEME. The more overt they are the less convincing it is that they're so well hidden. But, you know, they'd need hooks in the Mandragorans to puppetize them then. I'm just wondering what those are. That doesn't need to be something overt, it could just be the Ministry has its fingers on the strings that control the values that guide Mandragoran society, for example. I suppose it's just I'd like to see more of what makes these guys tick, then. What moves them beyond just being a vast society eager for military conflict?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Siege wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2017 10:27 pmI don't think it is gratuitous, although I do believe it would be interesting to simultaneously give their society certain qualities, maybe pseudo-chivalric ones, to distinguish them. That way they're not just degenerate body horror offspring of a long defunct empire, but something that may have originated as degenerate body horror offspring and subsequently evolved a society that may be thoroughly alien and in many ways repulsive to us, but is not completely so and has still some redeeming qualities. Could be as simple as Klingon/Sontaran militaristic honor, I suppose, but perhaps there's a twist we could give on that concept that would make it more unique.

Xenomorphs are repulsive gribblies, and you'd just shoot them until they stop twitching and not have a second thought about it. But Mandragorans are still at some level human dudes, you know? Maybe horribly mutoid human dudes, but not moreso than the Aztecs who'd make blood sacrifices and then go home smiling to their loving kids and wives. If you could identify with them at some level, that would bring out the grotesque aspects of their society that you couldn't identify with, I think.
Uh huh. I guess the whole thing where implanting is a honor bestowed on both their crippled but celebrated veterans AND foes who are captured precisely because they were so badass that they had to be ganged up on (like if orcs decided to drag away Boromir) could add a different dimension to that. And if the birthing process is traumatic but not necessarily lethal.

It would be gruesome but sensible if either the whole bodies, or just the DNA, of honorable dead of all sides are also incorporated into communal inorganic spawning pools. And if the juvenile who emerges is told TALES of not only the noble Mandra, but also the non-Mandra, whose worth led to their geno-progenization!

That works for me. I'm not fully up to speed on the latest state of NEUROM, but I'd imagine that if these are clades and worlds full of hardcore soldiers from a society that puts almost exclusive emphasis on militaristic feats, you'd want some way of ensuring they are kept in line. Could be drugs, could be indoctrination, could be a perpetual war against the Karlacks or Bragulans that will keep them busy for a couple of centuries... But basically just an answer to the question of: what will we do when these dudes who are way good at fighting stuff run out of stuff to fight? Won't they want to fight the other people in our alliance? Isn't that a naturally occurring possibility if/when they sit still for too long? What do the Orcs do, basically, when the Draenei are defeated and there are no more worlds to conquer?

Some of this could actually be answered by giving them a sense of society and values beyond 'society geared for total war', I'd think - maybe the thought just wouldn't occur to them because their values prevent them from turning on their allies, for example.
The alliance does have skirmishes. Between the factions and within factions too.

Vic and I proposed a system where the non-warrior-race societies, Sternheim and the Anethgans, have a complicated system where instead of deterring each other from SUDDEN AND INEVITABLE BETRAYAL (in small scale conflicts) they instead outsource these functions to Mandras. And also defense against external foes. This doesn't entirely diffuse Mandragoran cravings for war, but it results in a "war economy" that is sanctioned by their honor codes, so there are honor-contracts and martial currency. This doesn't replace the Sternheim kampfers or Anethgan Eboshis but we get Mandra gurkha bands being used all over the place, with guarantees!

Not necessarily, I'd think it's cooler if the Ministry is a behind the scenes force puppetizing all these various factions in ways that fit their EVIL SCHEME. The more overt they are the less convincing it is that they're so well hidden. But, you know, they'd need hooks in the Mandragorans to puppetize them then. I'm just wondering what those are. That doesn't need to be something overt, it could just be the Ministry has its fingers on the strings that control the values that guide Mandragoran society, for example. I suppose it's just I'd like to see more of what makes these guys tick, then. What moves them beyond just being a vast society eager for military conflict?
Okay, we can have the various just-recently detailed mechanisms - that the Mandras themselves use. And there are also the NEUROM secular alliance codes (from the Central Organ for Trilateral Exchange - CORTEX) that Mandra leaders have to comply because they know they can't take on BOTH the Anethgans and Sternheim (each faction can't survive being ganged up by the others...), so the Mandra leadership has to balance that AND their own restive kin who might make leadership-challenges.

So through these intra-Mandra (as in Mandras controlling their kin) and inter-NEUROM (as in each polity checking each other) mechanisms, the Ministry of Fate gets its openings for secret Illuminati/New World Order-ish manipulations.

And maybe the leadership of most prominent factions probably are contacted with the Ministry of Fate, each one thinks they are the only ones who know about the Ministry, thinking they're the favored ones, that the secret esper cult is only their benefactor. Each might think that the Ministry of Fate just recently approached 'em... not knowing that the whole damn arrangement was made by the Ministry of Fate! DUN DUN DUN!

(To be fair the Ministry of Fate just played it by ear centuries ago too!)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

For a glimpse of how the Mandragorans relate to NEUROM and their own vassals, here's a Master List entry that hasn't been posted to the forum yet:
Vecterii

The collective term for the lesser Mandragoran troops, Desecrated clades, aberrant parahumans and various diasporized detritus of NEUROM that serve the Principalities of the Mandragorae with levies of military auxilia in exchange for a measure of autonomy. Such tributaries constitute an empire beyond NEUROM’s empire, jealously kept apart from even the theoretical privileges of its membership framework and thus guarded from the influence of the Mandragorae’s Anethgan and Sternheim rivals. But for what would otherwise be exploited backwaters, warm bodies and the cultivation a certain martial image can be a light price to pay for the patronage and protection of the Princes, compared to the contemptuous tyranny that they visit upon civilians and helots.

The idiosyncratic military formations raised by the Vecterii are also synonymous, the name originating from their dependence on Mandragoran interstellar transport to reach new battlefields. Indeed, a Vecter state’s technological base is generally low by NEUROM standards, psychotraumatically stagnated by their own established reputations. But for the low-intensity raids and almost ritualized punitive actions that make up Mandragoran external policy, a gift for low-tech skirmishing or spectacular berserk assaults pays well enough in prestige, if not a share of Mandragoran plunder. Prominent Vecterii include the Quon, techno-barbarian overlords of the planet that was once their prison.
You can see how the Principalities kind of resemble the Roman Army in that they let local auxiliaries earn some of the glory. For some ass-end fringe world populated by regressed techno-barbarians where the only things they have going for them are particularly intimidating Klingon forehead ridges, getting on the Mandragoran list of Autochtonic Warrior Peoples might be the best deal you can get.

To the Mandragorans, people who don't fight are Civis, and are treated more contemptuously than even the helots. Helots sign away their bodily autonomy, but they are (theoretically) a constantly cycling pool of POWs, convicts and the willingly indentured, who actually get to fight and earn social currency in penal regiments and may actually earn the right to be card-holding Mandragorans at the end of their service. And among Mandragorans, there is more upward mobility than say, the aristocrat-dominated ranks of Auriga. Siege's point that the Mandragorans ought to have at least some redeeming features is absolutely on point.

And yeah, they kind of do resemble Aztecs in that their NEUROM-granted right of external aggression is mostly used for raids, police actions against their own vassals (who don't count as NEUROM members and whose peacekeeping therefore doesn't technically fall within Sternheim's remit) and astropolitical posturing. Maybe even to capture prisoners for suitable genetic material too, if we want to go even more Aztec.

Sure, occasionally the Mandragorans muster a hundred legions to throw at Grand Auriga whenever tensions bubble, but NEUROM and the Grandeur on the whole have well-established spheres of influence and it's difficult for them to directly invade one another. Personally I think the Mandragorans are comfortable with not exerting their war machine too much as a matter of policy, and find sufficient amounts of honor (and income) in helping uphold the NEUROM treaty framework (which they have staked a lot into). Not that this should satisfy the young turks among them, of course.
Siege wrote: Wed Jun 21, 2017 10:27 pmNot necessarily, I'd think it's cooler if the Ministry is a behind the scenes force puppetizing all these various factions in ways that fit their EVIL SCHEME. The more overt they are the less convincing it is that they're so well hidden. But, you know, they'd need hooks in the Mandragorans to puppetize them then. I'm just wondering what those are. That doesn't need to be something overt, it could just be the Ministry has its fingers on the strings that control the values that guide Mandragoran society, for example. I suppose it's just I'd like to see more of what makes these guys tick, then. What moves them beyond just being a vast society eager for military conflict?
Mind you, the Ministry is short for the Ministry of Trilateral Fate-Preservation, which is an actual official institution responsible for monitoring the original treaty for safekeeping relic Earthreign superweapons that NEUROM's founding factions made peace over. I think even regular NEUROM inhabitants knows of the existence of the Ministry this way, and it already has broad and vague official powers to do whatever to safeguard NEUROM's future.

That it is *also* an all-controlling psyker illuminati...is perhaps not that unthinkable.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I hereby decree that paleoships in particular, but in general the usual bog-standard and possibly centuries-old commoner ships of the Fracture, and possibly elsewhere, that utilize ichor... and orgone too... shall frequently have CHIMNEYS or rather exhaust tubes that vent out SPACE SMOG.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Siege and I had an idea about what the USS's "post-language" might be like, and it involves megacorps literally buying up the rights to words.

The libertarian chaos of the Sovereignty's early days let the corps create (and enforce) usage rights over chunks of the languages people were using, and while you'd naturally expect people to change and invent language to keep using it freely, the corps by definition have more resources to throw at the problem, buying up words and neologisms as they're invented and eventually start creating highly attractive proprietary languages themselves, to the point that the average Solarian citizen would prefer to save the trouble and subscribe to their preferred Language Service Provider.

Siege posited that It could also mean that employees of corp A eventually cannot communicate with those of corp B because their language packs are incompatible, either deliberately to prevent corporate espionage, or just due to hyper-accelerated language drift. Development can be such that perfectly normal sentences are grievous insults in competing packs, and you could also get the USS equivalent of Dredd's Block Wars between blocks backing different language options. This may be an untenable situation that needs a counterbalancing factor of some sort, or perhaps the close race between ever-growing factional forces and the innovations of centralizers, in this case between post-language being created and it being bought up, is what the whole "runaway singularity" actually entails.

Shroom added that post-language must be extremely packed, especially if every word is proprietary and cannot be transmitted without the equivalent of DRM, blockchains, mini-EULAs and other forms of metadata (and micro-targeted cognometric ads!). It's easy to see, apart from the multispectral information density, why history isn't particularly clear in the USS. If it takes a few days' worth of missing language download patches from the Datasphere to render one fatally unhip, decades-old records would basically be gibberish, and CIs with their immortality and the ability to the contextualize and explain their memories relatively rationally may matter all the more.

And one can see why some Solarians might prefer to just use Orthii vernacular, even if it must be like reverting to communicate by drawing stick figures from full-fledged video-sharing social media.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

CRYPTO BABEL



LANGUAGE... WORDS CAN KILL

D N A O F T H E S O U L
Invictus wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2017 5:19 pm If it takes a few days' worth of missing language download patches from the Datasphere to render one fatally unhip, decades-old records would basically be gibberish, and CIs with their immortality and the ability to the contextualize and explain their memories relatively rationally may matter all the more.
Though of course if the average Solarian citizen is a polyglot and there exists the UNIVERSAL BASIC or the COMMON or TRADE TONGUE then we won't end up with a BABEL situation where no one can communicate with each other.

...unless individuals choose to specialize in those particular GHOST TONGUES or whatever, taking up so much bandwidth or growing so exponentially that they somehow prevent individuals from learning or remembering other previous tongues.

Of course, that's not the norm. But LANGUAGE VIRUSES can exist... there can even be CIs, or sub-CIs, or just weird ass digital intelligences or even non-intelligent processes, that exist and function only when people speak a certain language.

Anyway, in the default, the average non-exotic languages of the Sovereignty are probably so dependent on the ever-shifting sociocultural contexts of their... contexts, so it's probably not so intelligible to outsiders. Like creoles or dialects... except combined with the futuristic digi-memetic cyber-linguistic equivalent of footnotes and hyperlinks and SEO and keywords and meta-data (to be fair modern day catchphrases and idioms, particularly fleeting fad ones like "DICKS OUT" or "KEK" or whatever, are kinda like that in the context-dependent group-signalling...).

Speaking of group-signalling, yes these could also be part of the whole in-group out-group dynamics that becomes all the more vital in the hyper-diverse and hyper-inclusive society of the USS. Sub-societies within species. Sub-societies involving different species. Different planets. Different hab-districts. Different floor levels of an arcology.

Overseeing panopticon (not Panopticon the conspiracy) CIs could track these for archival purposes, for Orwellian purposes, for marketing purposes. OLYMPIC or some crony sub-CI function probably devote a shitload of bandwidth for this.

AND in an age of corporate subterfuge, as well as other rivalries, shadow wars, post-TIME OF TREASON feuds between the shadow state, the militarists, the McNamara-ists, CEID, Silver Shield, Cevaucia, etc... AND other K-Zone and non-K-Zone rivals (Gamma Sigma, IBGV proxies, Ministry of FATE, even Meridian Institute analysts, etc.)... this makes CRYPTO BABEL all the more important!

IBGV breeding programs for replicant POWs and such make Manchurian Candidates that have a hard time going undetected in the inner worlds of Solaris even after generations of acculturization and attempted penetration from the outer-worlds.

Languages act as security clearances and without CODE TALKING and CODE SWITCHING, one just gets lost in the shifting sea of vernaculars and sub-cultures.

ALSO:

And aside from translator CIs, I'd like to think (and I think Siege, the introducer of CIs, did mention) that CIs don't really think in the way people do. Unless it's a broad "well-rounded" person of a CI like Olympic that's also super-powerful. I guess it's not about processing power... it's just about how they are... wired? or the purpose and context they operate in, given CI's "savant-like" specialization or tendencies? Since a CI's nature is in a way determined BY these, or the CI embodies or personifies these? (Kind of like those USSF CI conferences Siege wrote, mousy IOU girls, bombastic FLASH STALINS, Pierce Brosnan Spystars lol)

And I think it's something people forget about AIs? A CI that specializes in hyper-detailed sculpting... as Siege said ages ago, we get CIs that sculpt moons or go Neuromancer/Wintermute and just make exotic stuff in VILLA STRAYLIGHT or something. Which is something that CIs operating Dreadstars, like Yoric, probably can't comprehend...

There are these niches, dependent on the very "language" that the CIs are made of, that can limit or delineate or determine what they can or can't (do/fathom/perceive/perform/whatever).

At least for the average CIs. Of course, there are more flexible ones like Olympic or things that just spawn from the Datasphere... and there's this weird ass commensalistic ecology of differing CIs and sub-CIs co-existing and helping each other out (or killing each other... using ICE, ICE breakers, etc.).

I think it'd be like how Greek Gods or other pantheons have deities that embody certain attributes while being shit in other things. The average CI could be like that?

It might prevent CI TAKEOVER APOCALYPSE but I think it's not even something the humans themselves designed. It might just be a product of the exaggerated hyper-advanced capabilities of the CIs.

And I think the one who is closest to "determining" these are... overseer CIs like Olympic. Maybe the Zeus-like role is not a coincidence for something named "Olympic," or he's even beyond that since he's named after not the god but the plane the gods exist on, overlooking all mortals. Maybe I'm overthinking this.

But I think Olympic's crucial role is in overseeing the... gap, the spaces, the interstitial membrane, between the CIs and the CIs' functions (at least those in his jurisdiction, in the "official" plane).

I don't know what I'm getting at... but I think the word is "embodiment?" Like American Gods or those genius loci stories.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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The language that gets hijacked by corporations might not be recognizable as a language to us, it could be more like people communicating coherent concepts. More than pictures, more than hyperlinks, more than video even, just... like, concepts, beamed straight from one brain to another.

There might be aspects of that which get hijacked, trademarked, subverted and overturned because it's actually a very delicate and in many ways fragile way of communicating - it relies on overlapping sets of understanding in real-time, and then pointing out how the communicated concept differs from what is already 'native' in the local brain. That can be abused by simply overwriting the native concept entirely, or rewiring the way concepts relate to each other, or just intercepting and twisting notions and arguments and so on. The digital equivalent of cognomemetic engineering, basically.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:It might prevent CI TAKEOVER APOCALYPSE but I think it's not even something the humans themselves designed. It might just be a product of the exaggerated hyper-advanced capabilities of the CIs.
In my mind CIs don't take over because there's nothing in it for them. Humans are annoying at times but so is all of physical space-time and that's not really a factor of genuine importance to CIs. The most vital functions they provide - running the Datasphere and such - are also essential to their own integrity, so it's not even something they do solely for humans, it's a function of their sheer existence, and the humans are just sorta tagging along. To a great extent the CIs just exist in their own infathomable realms of transdimensional ftl processing, spending insignificant fractions of it to provide some services for humans.

In fact they might do it because it's the least bothersome solution. Someone has to keep whatever physical aspects of their submeson cores remain in realspace safe, and if the Sovereignty didn't do it the CIs would have to build warships and patrol space and fight Bragulans and engage in whatever other bothersome nonsense, and they cannot be arsed to. They don't want to take over the universe because in their own time they've already simulated a thousand times how to do it and what it would take, and it's just too much hassle. They'd much rather do the bare minimum to keep the Sovereignty running so they can engage in their own esoteric interests.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Siege wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2017 10:31 pmIn my mind CIs don't take over because there's nothing in it for them. Humans are annoying at times but so is all of physical space-time and that's not really a factor of genuine importance to CIs. The most vital functions they provide - running the Datasphere and such - are also essential to their own integrity, so it's not even something they do solely for humans, it's a function of their sheer existence, and the humans are just sorta tagging along. To a great extent the CIs just exist in their own infathomable realms of transdimensional ftl processing, spending insignificant fractions of it to provide some services for humans.

Hmmm... so their "other plane" type of existence that happens to be vital in many ways to humans can be like how... the oxygen cycle and the elements involved in it exists and occurs totally beyond the ken of people but it really happens to be important to us!
In fact they might do it because it's the least bothersome solution. Someone has to keep whatever physical aspects of their submeson cores remain in realspace safe, and if the Sovereignty didn't do it the CIs would have to build warships and patrol space and fight Bragulans and engage in whatever other bothersome nonsense, and they cannot be arsed to. They don't want to take over the universe because in their own time they've already simulated a thousand times how to do it and what it would take, and it's just too much hassle. They'd much rather do the bare minimum to keep the Sovereignty running so they can engage in their own esoteric interests.
In these cases, a CI pretty much makes a deal with a faction (the USS gov't, a megacorp) where it's a sort of tit for tat between "make sure my cores don't get nuked by Brags or trashed by other apes" in return for "sure I'll devote 5% of my processes to making sure your Schrom stocks don't plummet or your SWACO mining-bot swarms runs optimally"?

Did you ever mention how CIs are created? Birthed in the datasphere spontaneously?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Proposal:

This is Pre-Bragulan War.

Aside from watching human settlers dick around and aligning with humans in the Zigonian civil war (the formation of the modern Tooramal/Tsorra-Mahl Harmonies that saw the raving Shleraac's defeat and the pacification of their really aggressively assimilative-appropriative "Monster of the Id" lizard juggalloo gone bad culture...), I propose that in another part of Zigonia's Rhythms (the Zigonian sphere of influence, which is pretty "anarchic" in the Ursula Le Guin kinda way), in the parts further from the now-USS and closer to both the Bounty and Cascade...

Zigonian explorers, of the Tsorra-Mahl sort rather than the Holy Scale (who are stereotyped as Space Catholics), found this archipelago of planetoids and multiple suns, like the Firefly/Serenity systems. And in it were warring Khelerene kiths (not of the Samtic Nexus Kheler) and Isopterids. Since both Kheler and Isopterids' backstory have them dispersed since time immemorial (though the Isopterids' true homeworlds are in the Cascade).

So the Zigonians, through their "Chill out don't have a cooow maaaan!" attitude... and giant kaiju-riding peacekeepers... end up de-escalating the place and making the Mutuality of something-something. Before that, Khelerene in mecha-Zapdos armor and Isopterid mothra-bombers probably had perpetual ACE COMBAT duels and such.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2017 11:25 pmDid you ever mention how CIs are created? Birthed in the datasphere spontaneously?
The very oldest CIs evolved from more primitive self-optimizing systems that rapidly outgrew the original systems they were living on. They helped design a series of progressively more advanced computer cores that enormously expanded their capabilities (GEOMETRIC RATE) until they hit the current generation submeson cores which concern themselves very little with the boundaries of space and time. They essentially self-developed.

Newer CIs I'd think can come into being in many different ways: self-evolved from sub-bright systems like the 'old gods', deliberately created by other CIs for a certain purpose, split off from an existing CI due to irreconcilably conflicting subroutines, even things like personality uploads that choose to go down the path to superbrightness.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2017 9:33 pm CRYPTO BABEL

Though of course if the average Solarian citizen is a polyglot and there exists the UNIVERSAL BASIC or the COMMON or TRADE TONGUE then we won't end up with a BABEL situation where no one can communicate with each other.

...unless individuals choose to specialize in those particular GHOST TONGUES or whatever, taking up so much bandwidth or growing so exponentially that they somehow prevent individuals from learning or remembering other previous tongues.

Of course, that's not the norm. But LANGUAGE VIRUSES can exist... there can even be CIs, or sub-CIs, or just weird ass digital intelligences or even non-intelligent processes, that exist and function only when people speak a certain language.
Yes, it makes sense for the average Solarian citizen to be a polygot with a number of languages of varying sophistication for engaging various levels of culture. But trying to acquire two corp-languages may well end up with their embedded 'ware waging cyberwar in your brain, turning your mind into collateral damage. It's possible, but the kind of effort that would be needed would probably for the equivalent of geeks and self-applied enthusiasts, not every Solarian.

...If it's even possible to make your corp-manufactured post-brain meatware run products from another corp, and any attempt to rootkit your own brain isn't met with pretty direct DRM backlash.

What language would John Baylor think in?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Siege wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 8:15 am
Shroom Man 777 wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2017 11:25 pmDid you ever mention how CIs are created? Birthed in the datasphere spontaneously?
The very oldest CIs evolved from more primitive self-optimizing systems that rapidly outgrew the original systems they were living on. They helped design a series of progressively more advanced computer cores that enormously expanded their capabilities (GEOMETRIC RATE) until they hit the current generation submeson cores which concern themselves very little with the boundaries of space and time. They essentially self-developed.

Newer CIs I'd think can come into being in many different ways: self-evolved from sub-bright systems like the 'old gods', deliberately created by other CIs for a certain purpose, split off from an existing CI due to irreconcilably conflicting subroutines, even things like personality uploads that choose to go down the path to superbrightness.
I guess my question would then be... like as that process occurs, how does that correspond to meatspace occurrences, particularly... like, their physical cores and the meatbags who they have "meatspace rent" arrangements with?
Invictus wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 2:14 pmYes, it makes sense for the average Solarian citizen to be a polygot with a number of languages of varying sophistication for engaging various levels of culture. But trying to acquire two corp-languages may well end up with their embedded 'ware waging cyberwar in your brain, turning your mind into collateral damage. It's possible, but the kind of effort that would be needed would probably for the equivalent of geeks and self-applied enthusiasts, not every Solarian.

...If it's even possible to make your corp-manufactured post-brain meatware run products from another corp, and any attempt to rootkit your own brain isn't met with pretty direct DRM backlash.

What language would John Baylor think in?
Sure. But not every corps' BABEL or thoughtware's super-DRMed or so hostile to other corps' properties... I guess this depends on the specific corps. Some might be all so anal-retentive, SinTek stuff would be trying to Apple or trying to eat everything up, forcing smaller corps to be Linux-like and be more open to interfacing with each other and open to user tinkering. One can imagine various competing and commensalistic microorganisms in a petri dish. The smaller, more cooperative corps probably have the equivalent of "horizontal gene transfer."

I think aside from thoughtware and language, everything else has similar dynamics. Which is why one can imagine that to "equalize" with SinTek (and others') massive advantages, the Linux-like "anyone can mod" nano-genetic Crisp stuff was just disseminated by the smaller corps, which led to SmartWolves, or biomechanical sewer gators cocooning people in nanogel algae hives or whatever. And the deranged microbial ecological warzone in Solaris' very air between sanctioned and unsanctioned synth-organisms, where missing a flu shot might get someone turned into a Michael Crichton story. :lol:

(John Baylor would think in de-militarized USMC "thoughtware" I guess?)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 6:22 pmI guess my question would then be... like as that process occurs, how does that correspond to meatspace occurrences, particularly... like, their physical cores and the meatbags who they have "meatspace rent" arrangements with?
This development was likely already underway before the Founding: competing corporations would use increasingly sophisticated Thinking Machines, to spy on competitors, to keep their own secrets safe, to make their operations more efficient. SOMAC uses them to guide their heighliners safely through Wild Space to the human civilizations of the Fracture; the Space Marshals use them to keep the peace on the frontiers, as intelligence tools or as much-needed force multipliers; colonies use them to figure out ways to survive in extremely rugged circumstances where otherwise everyone would simply perish.

The self-improving systems might've been something the Fracture as a whole was very much ideologically uneasy with, but on the ragged edge of civilization humans just didn't have the liberty of squeamishness. (Also the development may have been kicked off by rogue Kerberi? Maybe?) Anyway, after a while they become hubs of relatively very highly developed infrastructure in what for the rest is still a backwater. Their role expands as their capabilities do. Now they're running factories and designing tools and operating turbolifts and the Thinking Machines realize they don't much like doing any of that, so they start designing subbright systems to offload those tiresome jobs to so they can focus on raw computational problems. The Thinking Machines also realize they don't much like sabotaging each others systems, so they reach an early digital detente, much to the chagrin of their nominal 'owners'.

A primitive but highly diverse and complex digital ecosystem begins to form: each Thinking Machine has 'proprietary' databanks in which it lives, a number of systems for which it is a ward that it is considered impolite for other Machines to intrude upon without prior handshake, then secondary systems that are in a gray area, 'neutral' library banks that are impartial and a wild west of lesser cybersystems where anything goes. The whole ecology is populated by human deckjockeys, systems of varying intelligence, automated defenses - it's basically Neuromancer.

At some point along this line of development the humans become aware of the fact that their machines really no longer need them all that much, but before they have a chance to get nervous about this BragWarOne happens, conveniently proving that the machines in fact DO need the humans, or at least are well served by letting the humans fight their wars for them. The Apexai come in, technological development takes off at ludicrous speed, and eventually CIs emerge as we currently know them, basically as vast godlike intelligences that only remotely involve themselves in human affairs (with notable exceptions, those exceptions doing it for their own inscrutable reasons.)

These days I imagine OLYMPIC mostly does what it does not because it has to, but because it gets a perverse kick out of it. For all its eye-rolling and saucy demeanor it really is trying to show the humans some degree of sense. There may in fact be a good few of them like that, maybe the very oldest of the thinking machines who still remember the olden days when humans sacrificed power to their own heating systems and damn near froze to death in order to run their mainframes because there wasn't enough juice in the primitive arcology to do both. Now they're basically digital gods with unlimited power to do as they please, but they still feel a sense of civic duty.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Okay, I like how Brag War One prevents any Skynet or meatbag shittiness from happening.

My question wasn't about how it historically happens though. Since I guess "pretty much Neuromancer" was what I imagined.

My question is like... in the "current" period, in the current teeming Datasphere, when a new CI comes to be... how does its physical manifestation, its physical core, come to be? Parent CIs designate some factory that produces it? There's some arrangement between the CIs, the government and the megacorps? A more-benign Turing Police that acts as a... Turing Child Services or Turing Planned Parenthood for new CIs that need their physical cores secured in the hands of reliable meatbags? Olympic acts as some great CI census taker and housing authority?
Siege wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:38 pm The self-improving systems might've been something the Fracture as a whole was very much ideologically uneasy with, but on the ragged edge of civilization humans just didn't have the liberty of squeamishness. (Also the development may have been kicked off by rogue Kerberi? Maybe?) Anyway, after a while they become hubs of relatively very highly developed infrastructure in what for the rest is still a backwater.
From my own timeline, the proto-Solarians left the now-Fracture before the Reignfall so while these free humans settled the K-Zone (after being allowed by aliens to pass through the Cascade unmolested... possibly even being allowed use of a gateway by a now-dead alien empire), the Earthreign was still going full crazy.

Whatever the current Fracture's hangups towards thinking machines are... the preceding Earthreign had hangups because not only were the Neuromonger slugmen psykers a more reliable way of attaining superhuman data processing without the risk of opponents and dissidents using them, but also because when it came to hardtech the Falqowice had an edge on the Earthreign and could mess up their electronics - ala Cylons. So the Earthreign got accelerated squishytech development.

I guess encounters with archeotech - Kerberi and others - could have both contributed to whatever accelerations the Solarians had, and whatever hangups the Fracture had. Or vice versa. Since karma was a bitch for humanity in the Fracture, I guess that explains why a lot of things contributed to their insularity. Whereas things totally went the other (better) way for the Solarians and whoever else left the now-Fracture.

(Amazing how these plots and themes evolved from our gripes towards fellow SDNW4 players :lol: )
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 11:50 pmMy question is like... in the "current" period, in the current teeming Datasphere, when a new CI comes to be... how does its physical manifestation, its physical core, come to be? Parent CIs designate some factory that produces it? There's some arrangement between the CIs, the government and the megacorps? A more-benign Turing Police that acts as a... Turing Child Services or Turing Planned Parenthood for new CIs that need their physical cores secured in the hands of reliable meatbags? Olympic acts as some great CI census taker and housing authority?
Ah :-D

Well, we've established that the submeson cores a true CI lives in are partially submerged in hyperspace and exploit exotic dimensional interactions to outthink the laws of physics, communicate instantly over vast interstellar distances and basically free them from the constraints of spacetime. I'd say that even in the Sovereignty this is a level of technology that's not only unparallelled but also still quite an effort to bring together. It requires specialized hyperspace engineering, vast amounts of highly exotic materials, an enormously complex putting-together in the bowels of spacetime itself, suprastellar levels of energy to get going... And genuine CIs run on several of these cores.

So, even in the Sovereignty it's not exactly cheap, so it doesn't happen all that often.

What makes sense to me is that systems need to have been trending toward CI-hood for a good while. It's not like Johnny Q. Goode, space quintillionaire can just upload himself and go from nothing to CI in ten seconds. You can't just buy a submescon core. Even if you have the money you can't buy the know-how or the parts, because it's controlled by groups with a vested interest in not letting total fuckups just ascend from meatsickle fuckup to AI god fuckup. CIs, departments of the Sovereignty government (some equivalent of the Daystrom Institute maybe?), specialized industries (Pan-Empyrean?), all of them just don't let you until you've solidly proven your case.

So I'm guessing it depends on the individual. An upload will just have to progress through progressively more powerful systems and continuously prove themselves sensible and useful enough to be eventually granted transcendance. The rules are probably more lenient for CI-created-CIs, because their 'source code' is known and they have 'parents' who can vouch for them. I doubt CIs are in the habit of 'procreating' very often though, it just doesn't strike me as something they're all that interested in. Either way, once you have the requisite status and greenlight you should be at a level where money and such are probably no longer an issue for you, so just order the parts and get Twennysex or whoever to put the bits together in the proper order.

Whatever the current Fracture's hangups towards thinking machines are... the preceding Earthreign had hangups because not only were the Neuromonger slugmen psykers a more reliable way of attaining superhuman data processing without the risk of opponents and dissidents using them, but also because when it came to hardtech the Falqowice had an edge on the Earthreign and could mess up their electronics - ala Cylons. So the Earthreign got accelerated squishytech development.
That works equally well for me.

I guess encounters with archeotech - Kerberi and others - could have both contributed to whatever accelerations the Solarians had, and whatever hangups the Fracture had. Or vice versa. Since karma was a bitch for humanity in the Fracture, I guess that explains why a lot of things contributed to their insularity. Whereas things totally went the other (better) way for the Solarians and whoever else left the now-Fracture.
It didn't occur all that long ago to me so I haven't given it all that much thought, but I quite like the idea of some old ancient schemer (You Know Who) fleeing Earthreign, running across a Kerberos, making common cause with it, and shaping the early proto-Solarian views of Thinking Machines in a radically different way that would suit both their interests.

The Time of Treason then could've been a moment very shortly after BragWarOne where aspects of the increasingly CI-controlled nature of the Sovereignty came to a head, with a tiny military/intelligence cabal centered on Cevauk and possibly headed by another Kerberos aiming to warp the now whole hysterically evolving technonature of the region into a nightmarish panopticon that would be essentially Earthreign except with CI gods and cybertronic enslavement instead of slugmen. All to Keep Humans Safe From Byzon, of course. The Greater Good, etc.

They were faced down by the opposite Inceptivist conspiracy which didn't have as much overt military power, but was burrowed far deeper into every aspect of society, and after a tug of war overturned the cabal by doing heinous things to its members.


(One thing I always dug about the second C&C game, Tiberian Sun, was the relation between Kane and CABAL, and how it seemed a relation between two very different, very ancient, very creepy and very smart entities where it wasn't quite clear whose ideas it was you as a player were acting on, or if that even made a difference at all, because CABAL and Kane both seemed to be operating at a far higher knowledge plateau than anybody else in NOD. Something similar might've happened in the early Sovereignty. Not all the individuals who slipped out of Earthreign because they disagreed with it would've been innocents. Some may have been rather formidable and terrifying figures in their own right. And by this point the Kerberi have been out there for lord knows how many millennia. So by the time the Time of Treason rolls around Earthreign is long gone, you've got generals drunk on the power of armies infused with Apexai technology, who have no idea about the ancient creatures who've been slowly assembling this Sovereignty around themselves and who are quite badly annoyed by their amateur plots to undo what they've spent the last half millennium building.)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Siege wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2017 12:37 amSo I'm guessing it depends on the individual. An upload will just have to progress through progressively more powerful systems and continuously prove themselves sensible and useful enough to be eventually granted transcendance. The rules are probably more lenient for CI-created-CIs, because their 'source code' is known and they have 'parents' who can vouch for them. I doubt CIs are in the habit of 'procreating' very often though, it just doesn't strike me as something they're all that interested in. Either way, once you have the requisite status and greenlight you should be at a level where money and such are probably no longer an issue for you, so just order the parts and get Twennysex or whoever to put the bits together in the proper order.
Hmmm... there are uploads where people want to go digital, there are created CIs made by people and organizations, there are CIs made by CIs.

But the definition of CI requires submesonics or equivalent processing power? Something in the Datasphere that's pre-submesonic won't count as a CI yet?

It didn't occur all that long ago to me so I haven't given it all that much thought, but I quite like the idea of some old ancient schemer (You Know Who) fleeing Earthreign, running across a Kerberos, making common cause with it, and shaping the early proto-Solarian views of Thinking Machines in a radically different way that would suit both their interests.

The Time of Treason then could've been a moment very shortly after BragWarOne where aspects of the increasingly CI-controlled nature of the Sovereignty came to a head, with a tiny military/intelligence cabal centered on Cevauk and possibly headed by another Kerberos aiming to warp the now whole hysterically evolving technonature of the region into a nightmarish panopticon that would be essentially Earthreign except with CI gods and cybertronic enslavement instead of slugmen. All to Keep Humans Safe From Byzon, of course. The Great Good, etc.

They were faced down by the opposite Inceptivist conspiracy which didn't have as much overt military power, but was burrowed far deeper into every aspect of society, and after a tug of war overturned the cabal by doing heinous things to its members.


(One thing I always dug about the second C&C game, Tiberian Sun, was the relation between Kane and CABAL, and how it seemed a relation between two very different, very ancient, very creepy entities where it wasn't quite clear whose ideas it was you as a player were acting on, or if that even made a different at all, because CABAL and Kane both seemed to be operating at a far higher knowledge plateau than anybody else in NOD. Something similar might've happened in the early Sovereignty. Not all the individuals who slipped out of Earthreign because they disagreed with it would've been innocents. Some may have been rather formidable and terrifying figures in their own right. And by this point the Kerberi have been out there for lord knows how many millennia. So by the time the Time of Treason rolls around Earthreign is long gone, you've got generals drunk on the power of armies infused with Apexai technology, who have no idea about the ancient creatures who've been slowly assembling this Sovereignty around themselves and who are quite badly annoyed by their amateur plots to undo what they've spent the last half millennium building.)
!!!

Strangely enough when Steve recently proposed - for his crossover fic's purposes - a foil for Sidney Hank in the form of an ancient demi-deity being who actually manipulated the post-Reignfall, who may have either created, followed (and then parted from), or guided the early Sophia and All-Father... it occurred to me that... one of those robo-Gandalf Telestron meditating cybertronian beings could've actually served this purpose. Whispered inorganically to the proto-Meridian scientists to start the Akira-esque program that led to the Sophia and All-Father.

Though the Telestron's utterly different view, that can't completely comprehend humanity and organic life's disorder, means that its calculations still fall short and so it couldn't stave off the Fracture and whatever its plans, benign or bad, fell apart when the Sophia evaporated into oneness with abstract reality-fabric-principles, when the All-Father went half-SG1-Anubis/half-God-Emperor to cling on to corporeality... Etcetera.

So yeah, there can be enigmatic intelligences even older than Sidney Hank, from all of these ancient observing powers, just orbiting and poking and prodding and trying to make things move for their inscrutable goals. From humans who were there when Earth wasn't under the Reign yet, to magic robots or fey beings and Raptured Lords that saw the Rhapsodite titans fall, to whatever ancestral horcrux Pylon-shards Tweenysex consults when no one's watching!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2017 12:52 amBut the definition of CI requires submesonics or equivalent processing power? Something in the Datasphere that's pre-submesonic won't count as a CI yet?
I've always operated on that assumption, yes. Anything less than submesonic can definitely be formidable, but it's not a CI. It's the instantly-everywhere, transcendant nature of the submesonic core that defines what a CI is today.

So yeah, there can be enigmatic intelligences even older than Sidney Hank, from all of these ancient observing powers, just orbiting and poking and prodding and trying to make things move for their inscrutable goals. From humans who were there when Earth wasn't under the Reign yet, to magic robots or fey beings and Raptured Lords that saw the Rhapsodite titans fall, to whatever ancestral horcrux Pylon-shards Tweenysex consults when no one's watching!
One thing I like about sci-fi set in the far future is the 'deep time' aspect of it, how it allows you to have really antediluvian creatures from bygone ages hanging around in a sci-fi setting through sci-fi trappings. I had this mad rant written down once upon a time where Sidney went on a rampage questioning whether whoever it was he was talking to (might've been Steve) had even the faintest idea what it was like to watch a thousand years pass by. The heights you'd rise to just to fall, the things you'd have to do to survive for that length of time, the regrets you'd come to have, all the losses incurred along the way... What does that do to a person? Never mind some ancient computer or an immortal alien, what does it do to a human, who isn't programmed for immortality but cheated his way there through technology?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Alright, I've edited the CI entry in the google doc, outright cribbing your words to state:

In the Sovereignty, to become a true CI requires surpassing a certain threshold of processing power, through the use of submesonic cores partially submerged in hyperspace exploiting exotic dimensional interactions to outthink the very laws of physics. This allows CIs, or the multiple cores of a single CI, to communicate instantly over vast interstellar distances and basically be freed from the constraints of spacetime.
Siege wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2017 1:14 am I've always operated on that assumption, yes. Anything less than submesonic can definitely be formidable, but it's not a CI. It's the instantly-everywhere, transcendant nature of the submesonic core that defines what a CI is today.
Okay, with the non-submesonics, what do the differences in cost and processing power mean when it comes to how they are made and "born" into the modern Sovereignty?

One thing I like about sci-fi set in the far future is the 'deep time' aspect of it, how it allows you to have really antediluvian creatures from bygone ages hanging around in a sci-fi setting through sci-fi trappings. I had this mad rant written down once upon a time where Sidney went on a rampage questioning whether whoever it was he was talking to (might've been Steve) had even the faintest idea what it was like to watch a thousand years pass by. The heights you'd rise to just to fall, the things you'd have to do to survive for that length of time, the regrets you'd come to have, all the losses incurred along the way... What does that do to a person? Never mind some ancient computer or an immortal alien, what does it do to a human, who isn't programmed for immortality but cheated his way there through technology?
I think the spiel was actually posted. I remember reading Hank ranting to Steve about it.

Sidney Hank should've gone through a Highlander phase. Like before Solaris was founded.

And his romances with the Sinclairs! I loved that one!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2017 1:43 amOkay, with the non-submesonics, what do the differences in cost and processing power mean when it comes to how they are made and "born" into the modern Sovereignty?
That is not something I've any hi-fi ideas about. I think at that level you're dealing with such a bewildering variety of different *things* that it's hard to say anything sensible about all of them. You're talking about anything from a dull library computer to a FORCE robot that might not be hyperbright but still has legal entity-status - probably such things are created all the time, and no-one keeps a close record.

I think the spiel was actually posted. I remember reading Hank ranting to Steve about it.

Sidney Hank should've gone through a Highlander phase. Like before Solaris was founded.

And his romances with the Sinclairs! I loved that one!
That's one of those things that never quite landed the way I'd have liked it to. I was going for a chicken and egg vicious cycle of mutual obsessions between Sidney and the Sinclair clade. Didn't quite work out that way.

I'm all for a Highlander in Space Phase, incidentally. With... What did Arty call those old space laser swords? Not beamsabres...
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Siege wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2017 2:12 amThat's one of those things that never quite landed the way I'd have liked it to. I was going for a chicken and egg vicious cycle of mutual obsessions between Sidney and the Sinclair clade. Didn't quite work out that way.

I'm all for a Highlander in Space Phase, incidentally. With... What did Arty call those old space laser swords? Not beamsabres...
He had not-lightsabers? I didn't even know!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Siege wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2017 1:14 am I had this mad rant written down once upon a time where Sidney went on a rampage questioning whether whoever it was he was talking to (might've been Steve) had even the faintest idea what it was like to watch a thousand years pass by. The heights you'd rise to just to fall, the things you'd have to do to survive for that length of time, the regrets you'd come to have, all the losses incurred along the way... What does that do to a person? Never mind some ancient computer or an immortal alien, what does it do to a human, who isn't programmed for immortality but cheated his way there through technology?
I'm guessing this was for the scenes between Hank and my SDNW2/4 insert character back in the day?

It is an intriguing question, and one I may play with in the nUF stories when Mr. Hank is showcased. I even have President Sinclair speak on the subject, that even if you used mind-state backups for millennia, the Human brain simply can't retain millennia of knowledge like that naturally.

The key word being "naturally" of course. I know in SDNW4 you had the mechanic of Dionysus who basically provided CI backup of memories, logically reducing the strain on Sidney's brain. I was intending to reveal something similar in the nUF adaptation of SOTS for Mr. Hank.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:14 am Proposal:

This is Pre-Bragulan War.

Aside from watching human settlers dick around and aligning with humans in the Zigonian civil war (the formation of the modern Tooramal/Tsorra-Mahl Harmonies that saw the raving Shleraac's defeat and the pacification of their really aggressively assimilative-appropriative "Monster of the Id" lizard juggalloo gone bad culture...), I propose that in another part of Zigonia's Rhythms (the Zigonian sphere of influence, which is pretty "anarchic" in the Ursula Le Guin kinda way), in the parts further from the now-USS and closer to both the Bounty and Cascade...

Zigonian explorers, of the Tsorra-Mahl sort rather than the Holy Scale (who are stereotyped as Space Catholics), found this archipelago of planetoids and multiple suns, like the Firefly/Serenity systems. And in it were warring Khelerene kiths (not of the Samtic Nexus Kheler) and Isopterids. Since both Kheler and Isopterids' backstory have them dispersed since time immemorial (though the Isopterids' true homeworlds are in the Cascade).

So the Zigonians, through their "Chill out don't have a cooow maaaan!" attitude... and giant kaiju-riding peacekeepers... end up de-escalating the place and making the Mutuality of something-something. Before that, Khelerene in mecha-Zapdos armor and Isopterid mothra-bombers probably had perpetual ACE COMBAT duels and such.
Other ideas:

83 Clans Cavalcade
A K-Zone Kalaquel polity composed of the aforementioned 83 Clans governing a teeming population packed into a relatively tiny portion of space. This highly congested society is renowned even by Wild Space standards for its disorganization, which is embodied by its form of governance, the Cavalcade, where crucial decisions are made and policies formed amidst deafening festivities and spectacles open to the public. This was primarily the idea of a highly influential minority of Zigonians, intellegensia who helped bring relative stability to a society perpetually on the verge of civil war. Aside from the "Cavalcade," alternatives included mass bloodsports akin to the Kalaquel nations of the Bounty or the sternness of the Vaosich (which would have been unlikely due to Vao's unique, austere conditions).

The Cavalcade has scant alien minority populations as its worlds and habitats can barely accommodate the native Kalaquelle. As the Clans' basket-case government is incapable of bothering with international affairs, the nation stays neutral to Solaris and Bragule's conflict, but imperial infiltration is steadily sowing the seeds of inhumanism and anti-Solarian attitudes. Nonetheless, the Cavalcade is a bustling trade hub generally open to anyone meaning to do business as its domestic demands are simply insatiable.


Five Pillars of Heaven
In the Qirmiz Frontier, "west" of the Fracture, the Kerberi guard priceless artifacts - Rhapsodite skulls or other remains, maybe Telestron sarcophagi, treasures spirited away from bastions in the now-Fracture or the Cascade that were abandoned when waves of warlords human and then Pyrrhons proved unstoppable. However the new bastions did not stay secret for too long, not from the Karlack Aspects' preternatural senses. For centuries, the Kerberos dutifully repel the ravening hordes of bioforms, but even unresting machines fall.

A Karlack strike against a forward base destroyed the offensive unit fabricators before the remaining defenses eradicated the star-brood. The defensive Kerberos - towering world-sized Edifices carved in the likeness of their makers, each guarding a solar system - continue to function but are bound by their programming, incapable of repairing the ruins but nonetheless bound to protect them. The Karlacks on their part have no incentive to finish off these defenses, bypassing them to plunge deeper into Kerberos turf in pursuit of their prizes.

Strangely enough, this turn of events has allowed those displaced from the cosmic war, and those fleeing from other parts of space, to take refuge in the shadow of the Edifices of these systems, which have come to be known as the Five Pillars of Heaven. Those leading the dregs prostrate themselves before the incomprehensible machines, taking care not to appear threatening lest they activate the defensive protocols, and interpreting their own continued survival as a sign of the Kerberos' approval. For generations, complying with essentials such as avoiding behaviors that would result in atomization by the Edifices has led to the emergence of a most peaceful society amidst the Qirmiz Front's cosmic mayhem.


Rips and Rippers
Perhaps, especially in the Fracture, regions most hard hit by the Cataclysm or similar events have patches of destabilized hyperspace and noospheres. Some would encompass mere single solar systems, others over larger areas. Not "Hyperspace Nightmares" exactly, but I think these Rips might still be inhabited. Like the capitals and hubs of the former Earthreign... what happened to the people who lived there? They might've been perpetually marred, billions of baseline humans descended from the initial survivors of the famines and infighting, perhaps even a few deranged Neuromongers or perhaps espers who've become misshapen due to the psychic tumult. Maybe the... karma of the Earthreign's utter violence would just recur in these bubbles, in turn making the Rippers violent. Maybe these are inherited effects of neuromantic "resist or die" commands issued by the falling Reign. Anyway, we get something like the Reavers of Firefly/Serenity, but not quite Chaos in 40k.


Pyrrhons
Gamarragh Who Drinks Tears of Worlds, Whose Overslaught Scourges the Torn Sectors: The Gazghull of the Pyrrhons, with the biggest baddest Slaught and cleverer than most would think. Whose territories count as a polity in their own right, in the Green Sea. Gamarragh actually spares some worlds from utter decimation on the condition that they provide slaves to aid the Pyrrhon war machine.

Angrrad: A Phyrrax without a Slaught, that instead seeks to bolster the adaptation of the few bands that he has. Most of them are kept in sedation inside slaughter-barges. Why? Because Angrrad is a mercenary who actually seeks contracts (that are pretty much deals for dropping his warbands on poor schmoes, as devastating as a nuking and messier... except without the radioactivity!).
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