Invictus wrote: ↑Thu May 04, 2017 3:42 pm
Siege wrote: ↑Thu May 24, 2012 9:35 am
Here's an idea: the datadjinni. They are tiny wisps of digital thought, originating within an X-ray burster binary. From a distance an eagle-eyed observer could see within the stellar corona the ephemeral shapes of their data-palaces, acutely complex and ever-changing fata morgana built of pure electromagnetic force. The datadjinni are masters of the EM spectrum, and have manipulated their home star into acting like a titanic hyperspace array, beaming copies of themselves at distant other stars as a means of colonization. More recently they have taken up residence within the Datasphere, the ubiquitous network of computerized information that permeates the Sovereignty. The datadjinni are as close to pure information as it's possible to get, and so feel perfectly at home within the endlessly receding lclusters and constellations of data. By their very nature they are fickle, ever-changing and thus unpredictable: only the very oldest and mightiest of the djinni have anything approaching a long-term memory. The djinni flock to interesting events within the Datasphere and can commonly be found swarming around CompInts like fireflies around a campfire; for organic creatures they are difficult to interact with, having little to no concept and even less understanding of the physical world. Nonetheless as intuitive masters of the digital they can be very powerful, and woe whoever spurns them, because in an age where your very identity is in large part digital, it is very unwise to cross the djinni.
This primordial post implies that starwisps by themselves do possess some capacity to beam themselves through hyperspace, although as Shroom pointed out, it may still be more reliable (and preferable to the wisps) to travel from star to star by artificial vessels. And also as implied, I think wisps are acculturated very differently depending on whatever electromagnetic patterns the sapients who happened to settle near their star put out. The wisps who become chatbot-buddies with sophistic Myrrani sunsmiths are going to absorb very different information, and develop very different "personalities", from wisps who hang around Solarian CIs, or fanatical Qylarthi cultists, or amoral Wild Space Emirs who feed them the souls of heretics and pilgrims. And even without such influences, I think the sheer distance and isolation between stars they live on would make wisps...pretty parochial as a whole. Whether this means they have different societies from star to star depends on whether they even have enough population density to form societies.
This touches on how Qylathi/Oolycyst Wisp Listeners might think that the Myrrani are committing BLASPHEMY with how they treat their wisps (I presume Myrran either tame the wisps into glorified pets and/or use their essences as vessels for Myrran sun-trances or whatever). Trucial Star Emirs who find "djinns in bottles" out of lost Oolycyst SUN ARKS might also spawn a faith that the Listeners might not agree with... but since the resulting faith is partly the making of said djinn, the Oolycysts can't say much.
Oh, I am thinking that one of the reasons for the Karlack blight that befell the Oolycyst Crimson Age was in part due to how they seeded a lot of suns with wisps. That attracted hungry Karlacks.
I also like the idea that cosmozoans need exposure of hyperspace to catalyze their tissues/essences into proto-ichor, hence creating a need for space whales to make long interstellar migrations that occasionally takes them (and all the parasites, symbiotes and Karlackoid predators that cosmo-ecologically rely on them) through civilized territories. Harpooning said space whales may imply just drilling into them to extract bodily fluids, something existing parasites already do and the whales have evolutionary provisions for. As for cosmozoans drinking wisps for sustenance - well wisps are basically a type of cosmozoan anyway.
It's best to harpoon cosmozoans when they are in space! And I guess the interstellar migrations are because the cosmozoans instinctively know that staying in one sun will dry it up. I think it's not JUST the sun-matter itself that they consume, but other drifting ethereal etheric things that get caught in stars' gravfields - so wisps,
Q-balls, hyperwhatevers...
I guess there are balances. Too many rayes will also mess up a star, they'll turn the entire coronas into raye-constructs and transmit themselves to other stars and in the process destabilize their host-star... but if the cosmozoans eat too much of the rayes, they'll also inadvertently eat too much of the starstuff!
speaker-to-trolls wrote: ↑Tue May 02, 2017 5:28 pm
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.
OK so Vic concurs with this.
So while generally cosmozoans and Karlacks tend to get digestive aid in hyperspace (I guess entering a realm with utterly different laws of physics helps this process! I imagine cosmozoan digestive organs are partially hyperspace-pockets too, kind of like the guts of Solarian vessels and the general hyperfieldtech of most interstellar civs...), unlike the ichor-dollar-reliant economies of the Fracture and the Cascade, the Qylaths haven't reached that degree of economic prominence because of Bragulan verdigrite nucleonic exports, Solarian cool-tech exports (they keep the Apexai-like goodies to themselves but perhaps highly optimized tech AND Datasphere-guidance/computative-assistance means their ichorless tech is up to par) and such competes with ichortech... nonetheless the Qylathic ichor exports are a big deal in Wild Space.
BUT the Padryceps' zombie-cosmozoans can't produce as much because they are zombies. BUT x2... I imagine the Padryceps' walkerized cosmozoans can actually HERD uninfected cosmozoans. BUT x3 Oolycyst Wisp Listener restrictions and limits on sun-sucking means the Padryceps can't turn entire sectors into sun-farms. Sun cultists will go Greenpeace and attack ichor-harvesting operations!
So ironically the Oolycysts are one of THE more ichor-hostile polities but they aren't doing this in the name of cosmozoan conservation. I imagine they hunt cosmozoans, harvest some of the ichor for their own use, but then also ritualistically dump the rest of the ichor into wisp-inhabited suns as SACRIFICE and TRIBUTE!
To compete with ichor-tech, these STRAIGHT EDGE ichorless Wisp Listeners probably have... solar sails for sublight and hypersolar sails for FTL. There can be a few stars that the wisps turned into supernovae and they channel the flares into focused beams that bleed through into hyperspace, causing FTL ripples that Oolycyst vessels can harness... of course, the trajectories aren't as flexible, these might be like literal "space railroads."
The supernovae can be similar to how the djinn can turn suns into hyperarrays, but it might be more sustainable and safer for the wisps if it's done with Oolycyst assistance, with corporeal/non-ephemeral apparatus dotting the altered stars. A macroscale version of the Wisp Listeners' SUN ARKS.
If this is the case, there would be an actual trophic flow of energy from hyperspace into our universe, and cosmozoans are a vital part of this chain that terminates in...sapient civilization? Or what is that feeding?
I think when ichor is used, it is re-sent back into the hyperverse or whatever. Like how burning fossil fuels sends carbon into the atmosphere and while it fucks our planet up, it WILL gradually be absorbed by plants that WILL in turn become fossils...