Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

I see religion in the Fracture for:

1) Answering the Big Questions: What happened before the Cataclysm made everyone forget? What is the fundamental structure of minds and souls and what does it have to do with psychic powers and hyperspace? What happens when people (definitely, beyond mind upload preservation or biological immortality) die?

2) Explaining the way things are now: cultural mythology to give meaning to past events and justifications for current practices. Where did this piece of mysterious Earthreign technology come from? Why don't we like espers? Why do the folks across the nebula have all the good shit? Why do we alone have these funny forehead ridges?

All this applying where empirical inquiry and science, political ideology and philosophy isn't enough, and modified by all the multifarious variations in cognition, culture, ontology and foundational metaphysics that the Fracture hosts. Variety which is then limited by the general conservative, archetypal tendencies of the Fracture. Societies are on average wary of espers and innovation and radical deviations from baseline humanity, and active religions may reinforce these values.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

Speaking of which (tangentially anyway)... Reading through some old notes the premier experts in weirdo noospheric research and development (and also hybrid psion cloning and such) in the USS were Cesare Aguero and Beauchamps Jabuzov. Once upon a time, anyway, because Aguero wasn't there anymore by the time the 'now' rolls along and Jabuzov alone runs the Foundation for Omega Point Experimentation, fancy boater hat and cane and all.

I don't think we ever established what happened to his intellectual life partner. What if one day he just vanished? Like, they found his clothes next to his research equipment but the dude was just gone. Theories range from being disappeared by CEID for disagreeing about what they did to his psions to accidentally obliterating himself -- but maybe Jabuzov himself believes that Aguero ascended, and as a result he talks to Aguero as if he's there in the room with him, profoundly unsettling pretty much everyone and making people in government think he's a total loon.

But since he's a loon who's like a father to the current DCEID and every hybrid psion in the Sovereignty and they would probably object very much and quite violently to anything happening to Jabuzov, the governemnt just sort of tolerates his looniness and gives him grants in the hopes that he'll not embarrass them too much. And then occasionally he goes on to turn out to be completely correct, so who knows?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Siege wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2017 7:19 pm Like, they found his clothes next to his research equipment but the dude was just gone.
I bet it's an elaborate prank! He went to Celeste to work on his tan and decided never to come back. :lol:

I did not know Jabuzov was the dad of the DCEID, whatshername... Abielle?

Now I imagine Jabuzov going all Anthony Hopkins in Westworld, except Aguero didn't experience anything as tragic as Arnold...

And now I wonder if aside from Sidney Hank, all these other guys, founders and "old ones" along with the CIs that match and later exceeded them, Olympic and all that, wax poetically about Sovereignty society and treat all the teeming masses going on about their lives as quaint... creations, products of these ancient ones' Herculean efforts, whose existences perhaps conform to their inscrutable designs!

The maze, Baylor!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Another name for the Fracture phenomenon would be The Great Forget, coined the initial orphan-survivors as they waited for Captain Walker to take them to Tomorrow-morrowland!

So as Vic and I mull over the Zel... I'm closing in on actually getting more work done on the Ygrd.
Ygrd
Perhaps the closest in morphology to the progenitors, or the one with the least radical anatomical advancements, with the archetypal centipillar or caterpede body-type on average at 15 feet in length, with longer manipulator forelimbs and shorter ambulatory limbs, and the ability to curl up into wheel-shaped rolling stances when required to move faster - their equivalent of running. The outer flesh of Ygrd is coated with countless hairs that vary in coloration and thickness, from soft hues to metallic sheens, growing from centimeter-long fuzz to coats of fluff. In paleohistoric times, primitive Ygrd used their elongated esophageal pouch-sphincters as catapults, allowing them to hurl out stones, spears and the like, an art they still preserve to this day. Modern Ygrd are mostly found in the Cascade-Fracture region, concentrated in the polity known as the Joining of Plurispeciestic Planets, a coalition of interstellar Ygrd societies with generally amicable relations with their aquatic neighbors, the L’cthei. Ygrd often wear stilt-prostheses of various lengths to augment their stubby lower limbs as a fashion statement and presumably as some holdover to their also-presumably longer-limbed ancestors.
So I edited the Ygrd to be fuzzy and colorful. I initially wanted another species that could be big and furry, like Totoros or Moomins... but why not the Ygrd?

Anyway, the Ygrd have just recently upgraded themselves from Babylon 5-levels of tech, as they deal with the Cascadian polities, the humans and non-humans (More on that later! Vic and I devised some Kalaquelle polities for the Cascade too! The mix of academic and benign authoritarian Vaosic Entelechtic Superbias and the Sajit Boddhisatva-blessed Heteroplex!) and fend of Pyrrhons... so their equivalent of the Earth Alliance or Federation is the Joining of Plurispeciestic Planets. The Ygrd nations of the world... Oraw (Made this up on the spot! Adding that to the doc now...) that encountered and befriended the aquatic aliens of L'cthei.

So the L'cthei - pronounced Lick They - are pretty much sea-horses with arms and simple lungs that supplement their gills. They are primarily aquatic, evolving in these spire-reefs that dominate the shallow seas of their worlds, and so they evolved to climb out of the water and pull themselves up the reefs' higher levels to hunt gliding photosynthetic molluscs and avoid predators. They are tool users but they obviously didn't invent fire. They domesticated a lot of species but without fire and because they can only subsist out of the water for so long... they never went interstellar or even industrial. Tribal sea farmers.

The Ygrd made first contact and things actually went well! The Ygrd are land-based so competition wasn't terrible. The Ygrd being the evolved descandants of hybers who can't recount their exact histories probably subscribed to Intelligent Design since it's not like they found pre-Ygrd fossils on their world, so seeing the L'cthei that naturally evolved on their world was kind of astounding.

The Ygrd didn't really uplift the L'cthei so much as just provide them with what they needed for terrestrial survival and just open doors to their society. The main adaptive tech would be these... wheeled segway-suit like things. They provide the L'cthei with moisture and breathable water, come with re-oxygenators, and are either bi-wheeled or monowheeled... bipedal locomotion is foreign to the L'cthei so giving them legged mecha-suits was too troubleosme. Pimped out wheelchairs are better. The rich ones can get contragrav rigs that allow them to move as though they're in the water.

They probably later found some Isopteric groups, the ones that didn't get absorbed by the Cascadian Freeworlds or the Terranates. And they made contact with the Vaosic Kalaquelle. Oh, all while fending off Pyrrhons... but their small size meant that they never attracted enormous Pyrrhon Slaughts.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2017 7:38 pmI bet it's an elaborate prank! He went to Celeste to work on his tan and decided never to come back. :lol:
:-D Could be. It's no less whacky a theory than having accidentally annihilated his corporeal form with a flash of PURE INTELLECT.
I did not know Jabuzov was the dad of the DCEID, whatshername... Abielle?
Abielle Magritte her name was. Jabuzov and Aguero ran the program that hybridized humans and Apexai, or at least in my mind they did, back in the days just before Brag War One. They were at the forefront of funky brain science even then. So they're essentially godfathers to all hybrids everywhere. And Magritte is one half of the most powerful psion duo in the Sovereignty together with whatshername, Vandemir-Garcia, the Regeneratrix of the Silver Shield.
Now I imagine Jabuzov going all Anthony Hopkins in Westworld, except Aguero didn't experience anything as tragic as Arnold...
I never got around to doing anything with it but I liked to think that no CEID psion ever 'read' Jabuzov. It'd be ambiguous whether that was because they wouldn't because of their giant soft spot for him, or because he engineered them in such a way that they couldn't. That's not too far off what Ford did with his hosts, really.

Alternatively he can't be read because his ascended intellectual life partner doesn't allow it ;-).

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Or they unglued themselves from the Verse in some way, so their paths cannot be read! I'm partial to Aguero finishing some equation that made him realize some fundamental nature of reality and spontaneously auto-Dr. Manhattaned.

So
L’cthei

(Pronounced: lick-they) Upright and rigid-bodied aquatics, with distinct snouted heads, two forelimbs with dextrous webbed digits and lower bodies ending in long prehensile tailfins. L’cthei have three eyes and simple lungs that supplement their gills as they evolved in the spire-reefs of their homeworld Medjial’s shallow seas. There they navigated complex coraline environments, even climbing out of the water for hours-long stretches, pulling themselves up to the reefs’ higher levels to avoid predators and farm photosynthetic molluscs. They developed tool use, though obviously never harnessed fire on their own, but they did succeed in domesticating numerous marine species, allowing them to conquer the open oceans.

The L’ctheic nations remained aquacultural and never reached the industrial age until first contact with the Ygrd, a terrestrial species that made settlements on Medjial’s land masses. Their incompatible habitat ranges paradoxically allowed them to dodge interspecies conflict. Trade, diplomacy and overall good relations led to the soft uplifting of the L’ctheic nations and the establishment of the Joining of Plurispeciestic Planets, an alliance between the two peoples as they recognized the challenges posed by the greater galaxy around them. For prolonged terrestrial exposure, the L’ctheic use Ygrdtech dry-rigs that provide moisture and breathable water, and mobility via wheels, hydraulic legs, very pricey contragravs that allow near-aquatic movement, or a combination of these.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Some ink was spilled about the Zel a few pages back: they deviated from their ancestral trunk species by becoming soft and fragile with even-more vestigial limbs, requiring them to travel in nutrient-filled locomotor spheres (hamster balls). Maybe something went wrong with their hybernation revival process and gave them flawed bodies. Maybe it was actually an adaption to the natural environment they de-hybered in, some kind of aquatic silty environment that made it advantageous for them to be able to breathe and eat through their skin and slither through narrow spaces? The exact process of dehybernation here is a bit vague, but given the kind of biological monstrosities the Ruun were capable of engineering themselves into, post-reawakening biological adaptation is a definite possibility.

The initial titbits on the Zel were that they built robots and sought to completely master their environments, which makes sense given their fragile physiologies. I additionally proposed to Shroom that they actually woke up inside a region of space bordering the Cascade that had become an Intervergence, which further added to the chaos they faced and their sense of insecurity when they looked out to the stars. We're probably talking about sending out whole clades of explorer robots here, with confused human neighbors having no idea what they actually are. On the other hand, Shroom proposed that the Zel then also acquired a reputation among humans for philanthropy instead of lolling about in their replicator-based abundance as morbidly obese pug-slugmen ought.

Well, one branch of them gets treated as munificent fat alien buddhas anyway. Shroom also proposed that the Zel actually woke up deep within human space, maybe even in the Earthreign itself, and as a consequence were badly scatted across known space.

They are perhaps the most inward-looking of the trio, seeking the cyclical and philosophical roots to their condition. The Kwit-Zel Recursions have been tossed around as a polity name.

The three Ygrd-Zel-Ruun headliner clades may form a triangular schema, equally successful evolutionary divergences that represent the unfolding potential of the the base mother species, as never before imagined.


The Entelechic Vaosich Superbias live around gas giants. This means they can take advantage of vast amounts of resources and living space without coming into direct competition with the humans of the Cascade, and the tougher physiologies of the Kalaquel lets them better withstand the intense electromagnetic flux found around gas giants. As a result, the Superbias are also crazily populous and would be a regional superpower if the Freeworlds and the League of Teerranates weren't even huger.

However, the harsh natural environment and the care and artifice needed to maintain space habitats with what isn't the most advanced technology requires a technical and regimented society, as Shroom mentioned. Strict social controls means nothing like bloc wars and other forms of social pressure valve, and there is little in common with the satykarmic Kalaquel in the Bounty or indeed, the default assumption of Kalaquel as this rolling Malthusian catastrophe. The Superbias and self-reliant, technologically advanced (maybe with a bit of Bragulan and Isopterid aid here and there) and kind of xenophobic towards humans from both sides.


Meanwhile, there are other, less successful civilizations in the Cascade. Not surprising, considering that we looked at the map for the first time in months and realized that like half of the Cascade was taken up by the Green Sea, home to the local murder-machines-without-a-cause Pyrrhons that periodically lap around and devastate surrounding space. I'd say it's only until the current Fracture powers arose and started hitting back that their threat is somewhat abated, freeing up new star systems in the Cascade for living in.

And even with that, they reckoned without the coming of the Prophet. The Grace-Giver. The Thunderbolt King.

Once, a (probably rather heterodox) Sajit missionary from the Bounty boarded a Massjammer for the Cascade. The passage changed it not unlike the scene in 2001, and when it arrived it was probably downright heretic. Maybe it attempted to preach among the masses, a sole titan among outcast humans and kalaquel, but eventually it accepted a deal, became a Hirado and decided to set up its own ideal celestial paradise, leveraging newfound unimaginable wealth and power to building an empire from scratch: the Heteroplex, or the Dominion of the Hekkakra.

At its base the Heteroplex is still a massive trade empire, its magic supply of stargates and its massive ongoing inflow of resources making it a natural place to host the Cascade's biggest bazaar. Revenues from that isn't enough to account for the importing of construction materials, population, expertise, luxuries and exotic resources from every corner of known space that goes into the Dominion's rising temples and sprawling gardens, but the coffers of the Raptured Lords are bottomless, and there are so many other things a Hirado can offer besides.

Unlike the tiered and specialized adaptation of species-castes to environmental niches as espoused by the Satykarma, the Prophet is the guide and the sole point of light, and all other mortals are equal before its enlightenment. Priests and Hirad-Hands bearing hypertech prayer-wheels enforce the Prophet's doctrine, and even ordinary pilgrims are entitled to devices that record the accumulation of meritocratic karma and grant powers based on levels of virtue. Even Pyrrhons find solace in the Heteroplexy, the Prophet apparently possessing some facility to make them no longer be semi-sapient murder machines. This bit especially worries neighboring powers, because as cool and intimidating as it might be to be able to hire a posse of honest-to-god Pyrrhons to follow you around, a power that can potentially convert the Green Sea to its ends is one to watch out for.

What is the Prophet's Raptured patron getting out of this? The sheer disruptive drama caused by a whole new empire popping into existence with existing trade routes disrupted, and new pleasures and vices spreading across the region to enable new dysfunctions. Rulers of polities are tempted
by easy solutions to problems. The various Terranates have less incentive to pull themselves out of their resource-curse holes when there's a new voracious buyer of their mining output. Both sides of the Laurentian Civil War gain a new source of funding and the conflict continues. And so on.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Magnificent.

+The Entelechic Vaosich Superbias escaped the nowFracture region before the Reignfall so they didn't get amnesia-fied like those closer to the epicenter of the Cataclysm... so while there is memory decay, unlike the other Kalaquelle that have been on the run for far too long, the Vaosich are the keepers of archeotech and archeoscientific archives. Hence the Entelechy they practice. So their regimented society's got a self-defense protection arm and also they've got really respectable STEM and intellectual branches in their government too - so one can imagine these furry fungaloids have a bipolar half-Shepherd half-Meridian thing going on. Among the Kalaquelles that have managed to reconnect, maybe thanks through the Heteroplex' stargates linking the Cascade to the Bounty, the Entelechy of Vao are seen as the Elder Race, the Minbari, amongst the "younger" Kalaquelle who didn't hold on to their past. Or at least that's what the Vaosich like to think?

I'd like to imagine the Heteroplex was named such because it was first called the Heterodox' Complex...
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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So I wrote this in the master list but it's still a WIP:

Joining of Plurispeciestic Planets

A relatively young polity that started as an alliance Ygrd polities from the world Oraw, then known as the Planetary Joining, before first contact with the L’cthei sea nations of Medjial in the adjacent star system. Trade, cultural exchange and the lack of conflicting interests resulted in relatively warm relations, the soft uplifting of the L’cthei and an eventual multiplanetary alliance as the both peoples came to realize the scope of the greater galaxy and the dangers lurking in the void - Pyrrhon Slaughts chief among them.

The Joining is the embodiment of the non-confrontational non-zero-sum diplomacy-centric policies developed during the Ygrd-L’cthei contact. At the same time it has been steadily developing a robust self-defense capability using indigenous equipment and imported tech. While it is a middling power at best, it has nonetheless grown to include Isopteric Relicts that shied away from the Guilds of Cascadia, some minor Kalaquelle colonies and nomadic Joxnd Voyages, as well as human worlds from neither the Freeworlds nor the Terranates. This growth has led it its exposure to and dealings with the region’s elder power, the Vaosich Entelechic Superbias, which shares the Joining’s Pyrrhon concerns; those perpetual rivals, the Freeworlds and the Terranates, the latter anxious over a rising alien power; and the grand interstellar bazaar that is the Heteroplex.

The Ygrd’s shared ancestry with the Zel and the Ruun have also resulted in relations with the Kwit-Zel Recursions and the Gantrine Ruun with their Samtic allies. The Joining’s position and strategic potential has also attracted Bragulan attention, and corresponds with a sudden proliferation of both proponents of Inhumanism and Byzonism as well as Bragtech arms deals.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I DECREE that to spite SNDW4 lame ass "omg lookit our rank insignias it's the fucking same as the US military" lamery the Fracture region will adhere to ANIMALS as rank statuses.

MONGOOSE REICH

ARSENAL HIPPO

RAMJET KESTREL

INFRARED GRIFFON

Just like in Metal Gear :D

Sternheim can use stellar phenomena?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Vaosich Entelechic Superbias

Kalaquelle who migrated to the Cascade to escape the the Earthreign’s deprivations. They hid in the Vao system’s gas giants, establishing floating colonies in intense electromagnetic flux zones and stormy atmospheres, their Projectioners foregoing more hospitable prospects to avoid the Reign’s wandering killfleets. Surviving their harsh environment and maintaining their Superbias with what they had on hand led to the development of a technical and regimented society proudly bearing the legacies of older Kalaquelle civilizations, sheer distance insulating them from the Cataclysm that brought on the Reign’s end and Fractured Earth-touched sectors with the Great Forget.

These were the foundations of the Entelechy nurtured by the Vaosich’s visionary Projectioners, balancing dedication to their archeo-heritage, the drive for intellectual advancement and discipline needed to steel themselves against threats that arose after the Reignfall. Threats like the neverending Pyrrhon Slaughts of the Green Sea, or Reign remnants that had to be snipped at the bud before they could rebuild, and the later human settlement of the Cascade that worried the Vaosich to no end until the Terrans thankfully broke apart in a civil war.

Vaosich culture values moderation, explaining their existentially-crucial social controls like measured copulation rites and merit-measuring competitions to prevent the overpopulation and tumult seen in other Kallaquelle societies. As one of the more matured polities in the Cascade, the Vaosich are prudent in the application of hard power and encourage restraint in its neighbors to avoid unwanted Pyrrhon notice. Due to their recollections of the Earthreign’s horrors, the Vaosich also remain ever suspicious of humanity.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Lelouch vi Britannia »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2017 5:52 pm I DECREE that to spite SNDW4 lame ass "omg lookit our rank insignias it's the fucking same as the US military" lamery the Fracture region will adhere to ANIMALS as rank statuses.

MONGOOSE REICH

ARSENAL HIPPO

RAMJET KESTREL

INFRARED GRIFFON

Just like in Metal Gear :D

Sternheim can use stellar phenomena?
So, does a Psycho Mantis outrank a Screaming Mantis?

(Also, to be fair to myself, it was either U.S. Armed Forces or Japan Self-Defense Force rank insignia for the Haruhiists, and JSDF doesn't have anything for OF-10. The Servians, on the other hand? Who knows. Personally would have gone with Italian [seriously, the Carabinieri rank insignia look really nice] if I was running a faction that was basically Romans + Tolkien elves and orcs IN SPACE.)
I ship Eino Ilmari Juutilainen x Lydia V. Litvyak.

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Idea:

Rotworld Sanctuaries.

The Padrycep necrofungis were driven off Qylath by the Oolycysts led by the Burnt Deacons who returned to the world *after* the Padryceps' populations grew unusustainably. Not in a methodical attack but just uncontrolledly, without malice, the Padryceps swelled in numbers turning Oolycyst AND animal dead into Walkers. So the Wisp Listeners fled off-world in the face of this zombie apocalypse that's not really the Padryceps eating Oolycysts... but more like a whole mass of those the Listeners regard as "filthy undesirables" trashing their homeworld, so the Oolycysts live off-world ala Elysium. For more than a century the Padryceps just stagnated because yes, the living followers are sentient, but the forests' and walkers' thinking aren't the same, learning and organizing into a truly functional society takes time (and hence their population surge was uncontrolled, disorganized and messed everything up).

The Listeners returned, led by the Burnt Deacons, the Padryceps were contained, it wasn't peaceful so... yeah, lots got killed, it was outright ethnic cleansing but the Oolycysts weren't deranged enough to wipe them out. There were accords, the Padryceps, the followers, the Walkers and the Forests, agreed to reforms to prevent any more unsustainable growth, but they were kept in ghettos.

Eventually they were allowed to leave. I don't know how spaceflight exoduses are so easy for them... either a third party facilitated the transportation (the Apexai? since this is pre-USS, pre-Bragwar, maybe even pre-Reignfall)... or maybe the Oolycysts built them their spaceships with the guarantee that the Walkers would act as a vanguard for later waves of Oolycyst colonies (like Australians!)... maybe the Walkers became a servant underclass, or at least leased non-sentient animal-zombies as labor for the Oolycysts...

Anyway, the Padryceps claimed a few habitable worlds that became the Rotworld Sanctuaries. Entire ecosystems being harnessed by this zombie-fungus civilization. Maybe before the rotting, they were fringe worlds of the Brags or the Hrlgtuhe or the Desthej even, full of peasant terraformers.

After the Oolycyst expansions and warrings that triggered the Karlack blight, the Rotworlder Padryceps then helped these infestation-fearing peoples
rebuilt their numbers and reclaimed Qylath. In the Rotworlds the HOLY WALKERS - walkers with vision and wisdom beyond the average rottens - were able to create the MOVING FORESTS, engineering assembled non-sentient walkers and mechanisms, like an entire building-sized mass of Padrycepses can ambulate. Imagine herds of elephant or giraffe-sized creatures arranged around scaffolding, the creatures' flesh and the inorganic support structures graphed together into a pseudo-chariot-thing. The biomechanical complexity of these things developed over time, resulting in Treading Temples. The Padryshah Emperor is the holiest of the Holy Walkers and his throne is a forest, perhaps a moving one!

On the other end, the Karlack blight and the inability of the Wisp Listeners' sacred rayes to help them led 1/4th of the Burnt Deacons to renounce their ways, weakening the Listeners and allowing the Padryceps to take over. Some of these renounced deacons fell in with the Padryceps who could treat the infested, others started venerating Karlack Aspects as they heard voices amidst the swarm-feasts. The latter went to worlds nearest the Karlack areas, forming the Heretic Cystems literal fungus-machines growing and terraforming moons that have cosmozoan ecosystems.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Ichor harvests? Spore pod decontamination? Or some biotech watercooler-moisture accumulator?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Idea:

Calxene. Our version of vespene gas. Found deep in the Earth or in accumulated globules within gas giant clouds. Basically it's from huge dead Karlacks and cosmozoans that got trapped in gravity wells and sank within landmasses and just decomposed over eons, but their exotic ichor did a pseudo-verdigrite, it turned into this volatile reactive state that turns into vapor when taken out of high-pressure areas... but in the process of decomposition and transmutation, it got diluted by other similarly dense minerals (MINERALS!)... on one hand it's not as energy-dense and exotic as ichor so it's not quite useful for FTL fuel, on the other hand a calxene deposit has probably absorbed and combined with whatever uranium or iridium or rare earth elements there are... so each calxene deposit has the potential to have a different composition from the last one!

The etymology comes from calx... which is a substance related to phlogiston. Archaic terms are great for these future sci-fantasy fuel terms!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

It's a cool idea, that suffers only very slightly from being named something that I imagine is pronounced similarly to pizza calzone ;-) .
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Oh man. I haven't had a calzones in a looong time. I wonder if that calzone place I once went to is still around.

This reminds me. For his super-crossover fic, I told Steve that in SOTS the Cataclysm erased all human knowledge of pizza and in the USS or other progressive places, they had to reinvent the dish and they call them yum discs presumably in honor of the Apexai exodites' arrival into Sovereignty space and how they so helped the USS repulse Bragule!

Inspiration:

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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In Qylath, the Wisp Listener Oolycysts worship the solar entities that in return direct the solar winds to thaw PROMISED WORLDS and MOONS further out in the system. Perhaps the rayes are benevolent or they want something in return... anyway, so the Oolycysts build these solar sail trains (resembling the one in Tron) that just ride concentrated solar winds directed by the rayes. Perhaps the rayes do this so that the worshippers can construct SUN ARKS that help the rayes propagate to other un-rayed suns. There's nothing stopping the rayes from actually creating constructs within the suns! The ones who interpret the rayes' messages are the Burned Deacons... and the ones who bring these Sun Arks to new systems can be called the Dawn Bringers.

Secularists could be called Sundowners or Dusk-somethings or whatever. Some pun where their version of a secular "enlightenment" is a "endarkening" lol. This would be another faction beyond the necro-fungi Padryceps...

And I think when the Karlacks ruined the Oolycyst Crimson Age, quite a few wisps in the suns ended up getting eaten by Karlack star-whales.

So I think rayes, crysts, cosmozoans and Karlacks can be part of a food chain...

Oh and perhaps Dawn Bringing wanderers might think the Myrrans are blasphemers if the Myrrans, being what they are, end up subjugating the rayes as pets. Domesticated sun-beings.

But what will Wisp Listeners think if they realize that some Myrrans transcend their physical limits and possibly encode themselves into the very essence of the suns they make their thrones, in effect turning into wisps? There can be Oolycysts who lose it and begin worshipping SUN CATS!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Steve »

I'm still trying to remember when precisely the rank insignia thing came up back in SDNW4. I mean, I basically looked up Brit ranks and ran with it, and I probably spent more time coming up with the Order of the Silver Moon's rank structure and the translations of it into the Lushan-Dorei language. :P

And I'll try to remember the yum disc thing when I get to UF Episode 2-14, "Solarian Nights". ;)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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The rank insignia thing was frustrating because for some people that's ALL the worldbuilding we got from them, especially when they used the name of something that in pop culture has radical cool giant motorbikes, huge swords and everyone wearing leather BDSM-ish gear covered in zippers... but in the SDNW depiction lacked all of this cool shit and just had Sergeteanant Blandy McBlanderson and Generalissimo Gunshooter Soldierman of the Marangerines. Sheesh. Crap even our obnoxious parodies of Genericopolis SpaceMerica end up with spontaneously odd unusual worldbuilds for the hell of it.

I mean... like it's not good when Shep going "fuck it" and just making offensive pisstakes and references to Fallout and BSG ends up out worldbuilding people. Mr. 1950s Graphs being LESS bound to mil-stuff and rank insignias. Waw.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

There is so much stuff here and I am so far out of touch, AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH :o :o :)

I will note on the ideas of the Padryceps that when you mentioned the Padryshah Emperor in earlier posts I always imagined it as being a planet, a single forest covering and penetrating an entire world, which was why it became the second spiritual home/master of all Padryceps.

Don't know why I never said that before.

The idea of it being space-bound is cool, though, especially if it is made up largely of Padrycised cosmozoans or zombie karlack krakens. Imagine also, if you will, that this grand assemblage, this pilgrim-pilgrimage-government-church-in-one, tours around the rotworlds and the Padrycep planets and interfaces with them, or perhaps infects them, by sending it's own walkers, big ones, great bioforms with tremendous intelligence and wisdom and a huge weight of memory, to become part of the forests, giving them a dose of its own wisdom directly into the Planetary unconscious.

It sounds a bit like infection to me, but a fungal infection has different connotations to a Padrycep. This is how the Emperor has kept it's status and importance and mystique.

Maybe it's the only one made up of Karlack zombies? Maybe its wisdom is because the Karlack Jungle is still humming away in its subconscious, making it supremely adaptable and giving it a kind of cosmic perspective that even world forests lack?

Oh, hi again everyone :)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I applaud your vision! Yes, we should go BEYOND mere crawling-fortress forests and go for actual space-forests! I'd like to imagine that the moving moon-sized THRONE OF DECAY (decay in Padrycep having loftier spiritual connotations) is necromechanical! And is currently moored on the homeworld Qylath to symbolize the Padryshah Emperor's rule!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Thanks!

Do you imagine there are still cosmozoans and the like hanging around the Qylathic systems, maybe being farmed and cultivated by the Padryceps? (and conveniently eating the wisps, making things difficult for the Listeners)

I was wondering if this would allow for a continuous supply, first of ichor, but also of infested cosmozoans for the Emperor and lesser Shahs/Satraps, who could emulate the Padryshah with their own, inferior, school of space bound Walkers.

But the Padryshah was the first to do this and it has more of the big, scary Karlacks. But maybe it's given so many away that it can't throw its weight around so much say more since, though they are still connected, they're not in the same place.

And from the outside this seems like a loss of power, a decay, but like you say, the Padryceps have a different understanding of decay. Maybe when the Satrapies look like they're crumbling from the outside, to many Padryshah loyalists it seems that the wise Emperor has made things ready for them to release spores.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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speaker-to-trolls wrote: Fri Apr 28, 2017 3:45 pmDo you imagine there are still cosmozoans and the like hanging around the Qylathic systems, maybe being farmed and cultivated by the Padryceps? (and conveniently eating the wisps, making things difficult for the Listeners)
I was actually thinking that before the Padrycep resurgence, before the Karlack blight, during the Oolycyst Crimson Age the Wisps would've told the Listeners to slay sun-drinking cosmozoans and Karlacks, in exchange the wisps would give blessings like favorable solar winds for solar-sailers and like targeted solar flares to help warm up worlds for terraforming, plus SUN SMITING! And the Wisp Liseners would then make SUN ARKS or something to contain Wisps that want to go to new stars, hauled by DAWN BRINGERS (perhaps a lost ARK was found by the Trucial Stars Sardics, like djinn in a bottle!).

Anyway, perhaps the slaughter of sun-drinking Karlacks was what brought on the blight and I think a lot of defensive Sun Arks and Wisps got gobbled up...

I don't think the Padryceps at this point outright direct cosmozoans to eat wisps. MAYBE. But if they have a lot of cosmozoans and Karlacks reanimated... that might mean they've got "gobble all your wisps" as some kind of deterrent against Listener hostility?
I was wondering if this would allow for a continuous supply, first of ichor, but also of infested cosmozoans for the Emperor and lesser Shahs/Satraps, who could emulate the Padryshah with their own, inferior, school of space bound Walkers.

But the Padryshah was the first to do this and it has more of the big, scary Karlacks. But maybe it's given so many away that it can't throw its weight around so much say more since, though they are still connected, they're not in the same place.
Hmmm... these are questions to ponder. If they do provide considerable amounts of ichor, that might make them economically respectable even if they're nowhere near Bragulan or Solarian tech and fuel exporters... a respectable regional power in terms of space economics!

But I think sun-drinking is harmful to fungi, but the Padryceps can necro-fertilize within the cosmozoans and Karlacks...

I like having other ROTWORLD Padryceps ride corpse-vessels, just like but smaller than the Emperor's... but the question is, how industrialized could their ichor production be?

Maybe the necro-fungi consume the ichor, there's added metabolic expenses, so there's not much left to export?
And from the outside this seems like a loss of power, a decay, but like you say, the Padryceps have a different understanding of decay. Maybe when the Satrapies look like they're crumbling from the outside, to many Padryshah loyalists it seems that the wise Emperor has made things ready for them to release spores.
YES! THE ROTTEN PATH! The Spread of Spores! I guess the reason why the Satrapies are dysfunctional is because of this, because socioculturally the Padryceps are unfamiliar with having preeminence and they were always marginalized and always expanded due to their marginalization... so their views of decay-cycles means that they don't really care if the Satrapies fail as a state, that's a criteria they barely consider! And if the state collapses and everyone scatters and spreads spores, that might actually be OK with Padrycep ideologies!

(Also... sun-drinking cosmozoans and Karlacks that are necrotized from within... means that these creatures are actually resistant to Listeners' SUN SMITING!)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: I was actually thinking that before the Padrycep resurgence, before the Karlack blight, during the Oolycyst Crimson Age the Wisps would've told the Listeners to slay sun-drinking cosmozoans and Karlacks, in exchange the wisps would give blessings like favorable solar winds for solar-sailers and like targeted solar flares to help warm up worlds for terraforming, plus SUN SMITING! And the Wisp Liseners would then make SUN ARKS or something to contain Wisps that want to go to new stars, hauled by DAWN BRINGERS (perhaps a lost ARK was found by the Trucial Stars Sardics, like djinn in a bottle!).

Anyway, perhaps the slaughter of sun-drinking Karlacks was what brought on the blight and I think a lot of defensive Sun Arks and Wisps got gobbled up...

I don't think the Padryceps at this point outright direct cosmozoans to eat wisps. MAYBE. But if they have a lot of cosmozoans and Karlacks reanimated... that might mean they've got "gobble all your wisps" as some kind of deterrent against Listener hostility?
That all sounds good, although the speculative history here makes me wonder, can the Wisps be said to have a civilisation of their own? Maybe wisps on different stars beam themselves from one star to another using solar flares as launch pads, essentially travelling as lasers, but this is both slow (from the 'ground' anyway, to the traveller it's instantaneous) and dangerous since a laser can't steer and they can end up attenuated or even just crashing into something. Better to travel as a genie in a bottle as long as you can trust someone to carry it.

But do they have nations or cultures in any way we could understand?

I agree about the modern Padrycep policies completely, like, they aren't ordering the eating of wisps, but if their cosmozoan herds keep the numbers down thats a happy coincidence.
Hmmm... these are questions to ponder. If they do provide considerable amounts of ichor, that might make them economically respectable even if they're nowhere near Bragulan or Solarian tech and fuel exporters... a respectable regional power in terms of space economics!

But I think sun-drinking is harmful to fungi, but the Padryceps can necro-fertilize within the cosmozoans and Karlacks...

I like having other ROTWORLD Padryceps ride corpse-vessels, just like but smaller than the Emperor's... but the question is, how industrialized could their ichor production be?

Maybe the necro-fungi consume the ichor, there's added metabolic expenses, so there's not much left to export?
If there needs to be a cap on the amount of ichor they can produce, how about saying that cosmozoan ichor production requires that the beasties travel through hyperspace to catalyse the ichor production process (baby cosmozoans start producing it because they latch onto their parents during jumps, so they get the required n-dimensional radiation nutrients). This way they could still be ichor barons, and important for it in western Wildspace, but they couldn't battery farm the creatures to get it, and neither can anyone else, hence their reliance on space whaling.

Also this leads to a feedback loop, the beasties need ichor to jump, so drain too much from them and jumping is harder, so they get less radiation to catalyse their ichor glands, so they produce ichor more slowly. So the Padryceps could slowly build up big reserves of ichor which they're hesitant to actually sell because it takes a while to restock, but their way is more sustainable and safe than Karlacking.
YES! THE ROTTEN PATH! The Spread of Spores! I guess the reason why the Satrapies are dysfunctional is because of this, because socioculturally the Padryceps are unfamiliar with having preeminence and they were always marginalized and always expanded due to their marginalization... so their views of decay-cycles means that they don't really care if the Satrapies fail as a state, that's a criteria they barely consider! And if the state collapses and everyone scatters and spreads spores, that might actually be OK with Padrycep ideologies!

(Also... sun-drinking cosmozoans and Karlacks that are necrotized from within... means that these creatures are actually resistant to Listeners' SUN SMITING!)
Precisely! A forest is a fine thing, but it has to die eventually, the important thing is that it produces something that survives, that continues to enrich the world around it with.

Though there could be others who disagree with that idea, or think they should be going for a new paradigm to ensure the continuance of their form of life (and the really dissatisfied ones who join the Cystemic heretics or are lured by the bright lights of the USS or the snappy uniforms of Byzonism)
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