Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The Grandeur of Auriga uses hypersail tech and has refined it to its peak. In hypertravel the sails help catch tachyonic currents (or whatever) to augment the ship's own hyperdrive-propelled movements. More advanced sails can actively use field-manipulation to add a boost, like supplementary reactionless drives (there are probably instances where Aurigan warships' damage hyperdrives died mid-jump and the sails did the rest of the work). Out of FTL, lower-end sails just fold up and the masts act like nacelles. Higher end sails have secondary realspace field-manipulation capabilities, augmenting shields (or being the shield generators themselves), deflecting incoming rounds or even using hyperfields and grav-waves to slice smaller enemy vessels. Most lower-end hypersails are composed of physical meta-materials, whereas the most advanced Aurigan sails are made out of energies projected by masts that channel orgonic energies.

In short, it's a more complicated parallel-version of the Solarians' more advanced hyperfield tech, though the USSF's vessels requires no masts, using fields can be projected by smooth-hulled blade-like Strikestars. The Apexai warsaucers of old probably used hyperfields to go Doctor Manhattan disassembly on Braglan warfleets.

NEUROM vessels, particularly those of the Sternheim, are of similar caliber to their Aurigan counterparts. But due to their old Warmoon-derived tech and their psyches, their sails are sterner (lol duh), more rigid but more durable in form but less versatile than the Aurigans.' So their sails aren't sails, but solid wings. Their capships probably resemble Victory-class ISDs or enlarged X-Wings and Lambda shuttles, with wings that expand in hyperspace and fold or collapse into stubby parts that have supplemental shielding purposes while weapons and sensors pop out of the wingtips.

And their brand of humanism makes some vessels, the significant ones, oddly humanoid-shaped. The old Sternheim warmoon could've had the silhouette of a man on a throne.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Hypersails also bring the thematic possibility of external FTL boosting arrays - like lasers for laser sails except projecting hyperspatial radiations for a ship with sufficient trans-surface area to catch - letting individual ships save on mass and expensive higher-rated hyperdrive machinery. Such a system wouldn't be as expensive as building a hypergate outright, but probably imposes its own finicky demands for technology to track and lock on to ships in hyperspace transit, while using stationary facilities in realspace.

Inversely, this would imply that you can also build inverse hyperspatial boosters that push against approaching vessels, impeding them or even forcing them to drop out of FTL, so a star system with enough energy access and defensive infrastructure can't be FTL-blitzed that easily. Maybe that's even the solution to the relativistic spaceship terrorist problem - even if hyper-interdiction beam emitters can't catch and slow spaceships in time, the very action of painting a rogue FTL vessel creates a causal link between the outsystem ship and the planet the beam emitter is on and forces them both into the same reference frame or something, ensuring that it at least can't pull any cheap relative velocity-transfer tricks.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

As covered earlier in the thread, Bragulan FTL (and whatever they use for relativistic propulsion) is slow and very, very radioactive, enough that a fleet traveling in tight formation creates its own natural forcefield. This probably doesn't just stem from a refusal to innovate.

However, it's fair to say that whatever weaknesses the Bragulan military machine has, they're aware of them and will take them into account. Maybe they're deploying paleocruisers with leaky radiation signatures because that's what they have always done, getting rid of centuries' worth of overflowing war surplus. Maybe they're deliberately using leaky ships to shroud flights of stealth gunskimmers. Maybe it's even a sophisticated decoy broadcasting a much larger signature because they want you to think there are paleocruisers there for some reason. Maybe Bragulan fleet movements are always rigidly aggressive because they know Solarian strikestars can always react to their movements but still get into position first.

In fact, Shroom raised the intriguing idea that their strategic considerations are heavily informed, even traumatized, by Solarian resistance in Brag War One and fully developed and teched-up Sovereignty mobility doctrine in subsequent conflicts. Operational plans are always more convoluted than they need to be, and military maskirovka is applied nonsensically and to the point of absurdity, with the ideological fervor of a bunch of bears with graph paper and skyscraper-sized nucleonic mainframes trying to out-think CIs and furiously aware that it probably won't work.

You'd have a Wild Space world suddenly plastered with nuclear missiles by an ancient battered subcruiser dropping out of warp because a century ago, Bragule made psychohistorical calculations of the future territorial expansion of the USS and decided to send off preemptive longshot strikes to deny the Solarians those systems, except they made the mistaken assumption that their mortal foes would expand as aggressively as they would!
Me wrote:is Bragulan doctrine always this caricature of deep battle that seems informed by their own paranoia as much as anything else
Shroom wrote:yes
On their end, Solarian war planners are absolutely terrified of THE BIG ONE (or TWO, or THREE, depending on how many big wars they've fought already), the final apocalyptic Bragulan offensive that will overwhelm the K-Zone for good, thus their strategy of constant maneuver and distractions and forcing the BSE to spend far more resources than necessary for counter-confoundment purposes. Of course, the downside of tricking your rival to spend a lot of resources fighting you is that, well, they now have a whole lot of resources to fight you with, a fortified frontier made of brute-force solutions. Mining worlds rigged to explode like verigrite-laced fragmentation mines. I'm not sure if the CI strategists are aware of the ironic monster they've created.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I'd presume the Brags have *some* fast-movers here and there, either the not-stealth but hotrod gunskimmers or Kerbal-like paleocruisers in which each one has a fallen sister-ship's recovered engines bolted on to make the thing resemble a deranged Vostok, including ridiculities like one way trips involving multiple ship stages... tail sections rated to explode after half a sub-sector's worth of travel, but propelling the remaining vessel even faster for the rest of the trip... and horrible hyper-nucleonic FTL-pusher arrays! Intense verdigrite-enriched hyper-arrays that shove moon-sized cargo vessels and moving-fortresses across systems. And warpgates for internal defensive movements...

There'd be more modern Imperator's Fist that move at kinda decent speeds thanks to modern FTL by Brag standards. I presume warmoons of more recent make have hyperdrives the size of cruisers and can actually move decently fast... maybe even drag half a fleet with it. But the most modern Brag stuff is situated in the mid- and core- sectors and the Brags are probably terrified of showing the USS their current-gen stuff because they are worried the CIs and psionic SORCERORS can start devising countermeasures!

And possibly some really recklessly-reverse-engineered xenotech and Apexaitech propelling experimental vessels, with hidden commissars and IBGV spooks in the crew to dissuade defection attempts! A rebuilt saucer phases too deep into hyperspace, the IBGV assumes the scientists/pilots fled to the USS, and so their families are sent to a bragulag or something!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

Invictus wrote: Fri Nov 02, 2018 5:10 pmI'm not sure if the CI strategists are aware of the ironic monster they've created.
It may well be a deliberate strategy on the part of the Sovereignty: tie up as many Bragulan resources in their ridiculous military to prevent them from ever devoting enough to catch up to the speed of technological development that the Sovs themselves have attained. The Brags aren't stagnant, but any new technologies cannot be properly rolled out across their military because they're utterly overstretched and have long exhausted any remaining organizational flexibility.

The only way the Brags can answer the Sovereignty is by basically massing the equivalent of the entirey Sov military on every conceivable front, simply because Brag ships and troops aren't as fast and agile. This creates a massive command and control issue, not just in arming and equipping the fleets but also because the Brags are paralytic with fear that one of their admirals takes his gigantic fleet and goes rogue on them. So they have to rig up this vast ideological control apparatus to watch their officers, but this apparatus has the same inherent control issue as the military itself, so it may well need a third agency to watch the watchers... And so on. The result is a gigantic clusterfuck of a bureaucratic imbroglio that couldn't ever possibly roll out any kind of new technology with anything remotely resembling efficiency. It takes decades for a new idea to be checked for ideological deviancy, let alone brought to the attention of actual decision makers, settled on, implemented and rolled out to actual troops. This process could take centuries. And while it is going on the Sovereignty is experimenting and implementing new ideas at the speed the CIs can dream them up. So by the time the Brags develop anything significantly threatrening to the current day Sovereignty, the CIs reason, the Sovereignty themselves will be Time Lords.

The downside is, as you say, the outside possibility of a Big One during a relatively small and rapidly closing window of opportunity where the Sovereignty would actually still be vulnerable to such a thing. A century from now the Sovs will be immune to anything the Brags can throw at them, or so the CIs think, and if everything does go wrong they can in ultimo just pack up and leave, move a couple hundred lightyears and continue with everything that really matters (to them) about the Sovereignty, because its hypertech means that everything that matters can be packed in a couple heighliners. That's harsh for all the physical sentients left behind to face Brag nucleonic barrages but hey, perhaps they should've thought about that when they programmed their CIs this way in the Time of Treason.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Steve »

Hrm. The idea of one side with numerical superiority, but the other side having a truly decisive edge that makes them far more flexible and maneuverable, reminds me of Catherine Asaro's Skolian Saga, where the Eubians are three times the size of the Skolians, but the Skolians' possession of interstellar communications via their psion-empowered Web network allows their numerically-inferior fleets far greater strategic flexibility.

Actually, do the Solarians have psion-enabled interstellar comms too? With the Apexai and the hybrids and such?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I would imagine you could theoretically use psions to relay a message to another star system in real time, provided you can find a psion willing to do such utterly pedestrian work for you. It's hard to conceive a reason why you'd rely on psions though instead of communicating through the Datasphere like a civilized person - unless you are a psion, in which case it might well be easier. But it's certainly not any faster, and we haven't established that psions are any more difficult to eavesdrop on than military-grade Datasphere traffic. Are CIs easier to hack than psions? They may well not be.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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The Apexai definitely do still have functioning transpsionic communications, either puissant psions who can reach out, or systems/networks that utilize amplifying components but on a smaller scale than the bygone Oversoul (the Zedath-Kaleshi probably have Oversoul components that still work, albeit diminished from the fabled ancient one). Of course as Siege points out, normal hypercomms and encrypted means and sub-mesonics can do so. For the Apexai using long-distance psionic communications may be for either really special messages or ritualistic purposes - like Exodite astropaths sending psionic signals for some once-a-decade gathering (either physical or astral or both). Hmm... Apexai doing astral projection love-making and... conceiving a mind-child despite the partners being lightyears apart?!

Most likely the secret societies in Solaris such as the Silver Shield, and CEID's psion divisions, have similar if less whiz-bang capabilities.

Of course do that in Wild Space and there's a risk of attracting Karlacks, actual psychovores or whatever into the vicinity... and yeah maybe super high level K-Zone psions and Fracture espers can tamper/intercept/interfere such things... like a meditating Magi might perceive some dark secret message sent by Ministers, by curious happenstance (maybe fate!) and sense it as inkling and not literally akin to "we intercepted a transmission" ELINT type.

And yeah there's metaphysical differences between standard espers and Solarian psions descended from Apexai hybridization programs. Solarian psions, due to the "cold" nature of Apexai minds, are less prone to going Sith than natural non-hybrid espers. But Solarian psions and Apexai can still reach nigh-mystical stuff beyond just telepathy and TK. They can tap into and flow with a... less-large yet less-volatile... more-exclusive zeitgeist than the Fracture (or Wounded Life Force if some Gersallian scholar studies it lol). Esper "frequencies" have more overlap with those that normal minds can passively touch/be touched by.

Zigonians are more "esper" than "psion" in this respect.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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My impression is that the Datasphere is based on the same sub-meson technology that makes CIs work and enjoys the same nigh-instantaneous latency, like quantum entanglement stuff in other sf but without the drawbacks on bandwidth and reusability. To to able to crack Datasphere communications would be synonymous with being able to crack ludicrously complex and preposterously fast-moving bits of CI brain architecture - and probably would count as doing the same thing, considering that CIs are integrated into the very fabric of the USS's ultratech infrastructure. I think y'all mentioned somewhere that Olympic *is* the Datasphere.

(Which is not to say it's utterly impossible. I can imagine Telestrons somehow physically wandering into virtual CI meetings and Olympic getting very annoyed about it.)

Nevertheless, I think the main problem with the modern USS in total war isn't winning the OODA game, but just...convincing enough of the Solarian state to mobilize notwithstanding the radical decentralization, the ultra-hedonism, the extremely refined media bubbles telling people it's fake news, etc. The USS is undoubtedly endless energetic and creative, and what would take another polity a whole interstellar state's worth of control and coercion to do, a smart-mob of like a hundred Solarians could spontaneously accomplish - but it's energetic in the way an explosion is energetic, much harder to focus than with the people who were fighting for their survival in Brag War One. The CIs can always resort to their comprehensive control over the Sovereignty's hardware, but the Sovereignty did fight a whole civil war over not doing that.

Interstellar astropathy seems more like a Fracture thing, and the Earthreign of old definitely did do it by like, plugging giant mutant brains into massive beacon relays. And for many places, the most valuable piece of communications infrastructure you can have is still a Magi meditating in a cell, Magi being Extra Bullshit even by psion standards.*

*There is in fact no inherent reason for whose espers touched and transformed by the Sophia to become extra powerful; what they do become is extra flexible, and eventually found ways to transfer their psi-potential to chosen successors. This adds up over time.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I wonder if there are paranoiac rules in even saner Fracture states in which esper congregations can't exceed... certain magnitudes of astropathic puissance... lest it be seen as an impromptu neuromonger-like thing warranting sanction. So a big Magi temple in the Grandeur or wherever can't just get a few hundred espers to create an astropathic choir without freaking out the authorities who'll think their brains are about to get zonked.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I wonder if there's not some sort of... right-angled intersection, between the noosphere of rapidly expanding Solarian thought-stuff, this coginova of supercharged dream/morals/enlightenment exploding into the cosmos, and the Datasphere, which is essentially this same notion clad in technology. If there is some sort of interaction between the two, perhaps the Silver Shield have built interchanges that allow their hybrids to walk the Datasphere without a jack - possibly by using arcane techniques and technologies inspired by or inherited from the Apexai, whose Oversoul functioned in a not quite similar yet suspiciously familiar fashion.

I figure for psions this would be more akin to some sort of trippy dreamwalk through a David Lynchian interpretative phantasmagoria, rather than the straight rip into glowy receding neon datastacks that a jacker gets to see. Maybe it's not quite the Datasphere, but a strange shadow that it projects onto the noosphere... Or strange precipitous crossroads of Aguero-space-vectors where the greater mass of Solarian sentience actually cuts across the vestiges and outskirts of cognitive CI thought.

And some CIs, aware of this peculiar intrusion into the outer rim-shells of their logic, may have learned to intrude the other way.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

It might be akin to the vodou strangeness in Count Zero. The Datasphere, even sans psion influence, could as you said through sheer density start "glitching" in ways that are attuned to the collective subconscious of the population... CI and cyberspace algorithms are programmed to expand and learn, but they did so in unexpected ways molded by the billions (or trillions?) of lives and mindsets hooked to 'em, so there's an American Gods' effect in cyberspace. Like, if reality itself is already malleable through psionics and life force - as seen in the Fracture (and reminiscent of 40K's Warp but less grimdark) - then virtual reality might be similar. Aside from cyberjockeys and appropriately equipped psions, there could even be haphazard subcultures that somehow without technical or psionic expertise can already play around with facets of the Datasphere using sigil magic and Words of Power.

"The ward on this paper, if you show it around, will make you blur in the eyes of kill-drone software/Panopticon sensorium/etc."

Yeah we've established that synthetic minds aren't immune to Fracture-esque effects so... sufficiently specialized CIs could enter the psychic realm. The Apexai Oversoul probably had psionic golems and conjurations and summons to act as librarians or filing clerks for the collective Pensive memory-storages.

So a Zigonian monk burning some incense and tripping could then "hear" some psi-CI using techno-metaphysical means to reach out and warn him of some Cevaucian plot or whatever.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Simon_Jester »

Oh hey I completely forgot about this setting, despite having participated in it back on page NEIN NEIN NEIN. Boy is my face red. :(
Shroom Man 777 wrote: Mon Nov 05, 2018 3:58 pm I wonder if there are paranoiac rules in even saner Fracture states in which esper congregations can't exceed... certain magnitudes of astropathic puissance... lest it be seen as an impromptu neuromonger-like thing warranting sanction. So a big Magi temple in the Grandeur or wherever can't just get a few hundred espers to create an astropathic choir without freaking out the authorities who'll think their brains are about to get zonked.
Looking at this from the Meridian perspective, it's an opening for their "do more with less" schtick that I referenced back in the day. Compensate for lower raw signal power by finding the cosmic frequencies that are still and quiet, screen out interfering thought-waves for maximum receptivity, that sort of thing.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Simon_Jester wrote: Sun Nov 25, 2018 3:03 amLooking at this from the Meridian perspective, it's an opening for their "do more with less" schtick that I referenced back in the day. Compensate for lower raw signal power by finding the cosmic frequencies that are still and quiet, screen out interfering thought-waves for maximum receptivity, that sort of thing.
Interestingly, the Meridian Institute should not lack for espers because of their relatively enlightened attitude towards them. They're also an attractive place for Magi to work for, due to their bygone connection with the Magi's ascended founder figure - indubitably, the Institute's understanding of the backstory behind the universe is the closest to ours, the authors' and readers'. Combined with strong coordination and a practiced big picture strategy, they can probably throw as much concentrated psi-weight at a hotspot in the Fracture as anyone else.

Though it's true that despite all these advantages, the Institute prefers its tai-chi approach to problems because they also have the most advanced understanding of unintended consequences.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

And let me copy out some helpful musings on the Magi and the Institute before they are lost again in the vagaries of the facebook chat archives:
Re: the saints of major Magi factions

Meridian Magi probably have an understanding closest to the 'real' history
Since esper stuff has no privileged place in Meridian epistemology, so they try to understand early magi as historical figures who have tangible influences
Also because meridian magi tend to be involved in the immersive deep covet work, so they have to be able to flexibly translate the saints they map to universal archetypes
And this leaks into their internal beliefs
So Meridian Magi saints is like biblical archaeology- a lot of postulates and codenames like 'Hypothetical Gospel A' and 'Pseudo-Apollonia' and so on
The ones they privilege are the verifiable ones who left lots of writing behind, especially wrt ways of knowing

The Aurigan Avestavra is more of a true-gnostic mystery religion
So the learning process consists of being revealed how everything you knew was wrong/recontextualized/symbolic as you go deeper
And whatever story about the early magi they choose to publicly tell is probably based on what lesson they want to impart rather than its factual basis
With a lot of figures who exist to fill in/illustrate/neaten up the whole metaphysical schema and definitely aren't to be taken literally
This is in turn because Aurigan insight into the Sophia is necessarily a synthesis of lots of incomprehensible mentat musings and SPICE VISIONS
And the multilateral centers of power and influence reflects on how everyone is right in their own ways but still need to fit into a unified system

For Shen Magi I need to go into a bit about overall Shen spirituality first
They're obviously secular, materialist and cynically exploitative
Yes, they've heard all the the "pumping dead alien god poop" jokes before. All of them.
And this has effects on their beliefs about human specialness
Magi have shallower roots in Shen, and you'd expect more of the old school Haruhiist self-absorption with celebrities forming weird cults around themselves from the rich and health-paranoid Shenites, with crystals and pyramid energy and vaginal goop treatments and so on
Shen imports culture, so maybe their magi import and reinterpret whatever saints they find useful, and are like the Meridian but more cavalier about it, advised by Septentrional School graduates and their business theories
OTOH, Shen could instead have a philosophy around alchemical improvement - still materialistic, but posed on spiritual transmutation like how they're turning orgone to gold
So Shen Magi may favor figures who were innovators and disruptors - people who catalyze society for the better

History is less significant than the now, and saints are less agents acting in context and more channels of a timeless, limitless source of inspiration
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Idea:

Apexai DNA, or the physical code governing their existence, isn't just amino acids and stuff... their genes extend beyond physical-chemical composition and into the psychospheric. So the Apexai Hybrid shenenigans with Solarian humans (and the Byzonic propagandas of ancient Apexai meddling of Bragulans) is less of a literal pulpy style cross-breeding for gnarly powers and more of a psionic quasi-mystical imbuing. A granting of metaphysical puissance that does leave marks in one's DNA.

It gives one's DNA a psionic expansion pack.

Idea 2:

I'm thinking in the ancient pre-Byzon pre-moonbreaker demise of Apexaia K-Zone, the Apexai after the Golden Age decided to take an indirect approach towards their enlightened guidance of other societies. The Invisible Imperium is implemented by a Prime Directive-like hands-off and soft-power approach, connecting societies with gate networks, using trusted Keepers (Apexai advisors and local talents given psionic puissance). Like the post-colonial neoliberal way of influencing the third world.

So there were societies in the Cascade, the Zigonians pre-USS alliance, lots of Kalaquelle, and even the pre-Byzonic Bragulans, who were part of this network. All stable, nice and more enlightened.

Societies like the Hrlgtuhe, Desthej and Qylathics were resistant or unstable and were left out.

While Apexaian society by and large was growing apathetic, at least their trusted Keepers could babysit these societies. The Earthreign was going to shit, the Samtics and the Sajit were managing their enormous and tedious coalitions, but the Apexai at this point don't care. The Keepers were a token gesture, the bare essentials to the "enlightened civilization guiding others" stuff.

Of course, after the Bragulan Civil War ended with Byzon on top and deposing the Keeper-friendly old regimes, yeah he set his sights on the ancient superpower that's had its pants down for the last half-millennium (and neighboring powers, whether they were Apexai-friendly or not).
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote: Sun Dec 02, 2018 6:14 pmIdea 2:

I'm thinking in the ancient pre-Byzon pre-moonbreaker demise of Apexaia K-Zone, the Apexai after the Golden Age decided to take an indirect approach towards their enlightened guidance of other societies. The Invisible Imperium is implemented by a Prime Directive-like hands-off and soft-power approach, connecting societies with gate networks, using trusted Keepers (Apexai advisors and local talents given psionic puissance). Like the post-colonial neoliberal way of influencing the third world.

So there were societies in the Cascade, the Zigonians pre-USS alliance, lots of Kalaquelle, and even the pre-Byzonic Bragulans, who were part of this network. All stable, nice and more enlightened.

Societies like the Hrlgtuhe, Desthej and Qylathics were resistant or unstable and were left out.

While Apexaian society by and large was growing apathetic, at least their trusted Keepers could babysit these societies. The Earthreign was going to shit, the Samtics and the Sajit were managing their enormous and tedious coalitions, but the Apexai at this point don't care. The Keepers were a token gesture, the bare essentials to the "enlightened civilization guiding others" stuff.

Of course, after the Bragulan Civil War ended with Byzon on top and deposing the Keeper-friendly old regimes, yeah he set his sights on the ancient superpower that's had its pants down for the last half-millennium (and neighboring powers, whether they were Apexai-friendly or not).
Wonder why they didn't give the humans the same treatment though, since the Apexai must on some level be aware of their passing through the veil and into the K-Zone since their Keeper let them through. Did they already stop uplifting new Keepers at that point, which was substantially before the Reignfall but still a long way away, or because the Apexai took one look at the Earthreign and decided that humans were already unstable and psychic enough?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote: Mon Dec 03, 2018 4:54 pm Wonder why they didn't give the humans the same treatment though, since the Apexai must on some level be aware of their passing through the veil and into the K-Zone since their Keeper let them through. Did they already stop uplifting new Keepers at that point, which was substantially before the Reignfall but still a long way away, or because the Apexai took one look at the Earthreign and decided that humans were already unstable and psychic enough?
The Keepers let them pass but yeah at that point the Apexai probably didn't care and/or there was a probational period to see how the humans would fare, if they were tainted by the Earthreign's PSYCHOSTIGMA or whatever... appointing of Keepers probably requires some state of civilizational readiness and the initial proto-Solarian fringe world yokels didn't meet the standards. And this became moot when The Bragulans Attacked, but when humanity proved itself in the greatest way and when other Keepers fell or their societies crumbled without their Keepers, the creation of psion hybrids was the Apexai exiles' closest equivalent of gifting Solarians keepers.

The Apexai "commonwealth authorities" that managed the Keepers probably cared enough to rubber stamp the proto-Solarians' Crossing, but these guys were probably on the lower end of the Invisible Imperium's pecking order and the real movers and shakers had become apathetic. Perhaps the Apexai minding the Keepers were less forlorn due to their minding of these dynamic younger races and their faith in humanity, Zigonians and so on were proven right when the exodites found refuges.

The Zigonian Space Pope is probably descended from Keepers, or the position inherits those blessings. So there's some Apexaian crystal in some wooden staff or planatir or something wielded by the Crocodilus Pontifex.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:56 pmThe Apexai "commonwealth authorities" that managed the Keepers probably cared enough to rubber stamp the proto-Solarians' Crossing, but these guys were probably on the lower end of the Invisible Imperium's pecking order and the real movers and shakers had become apathetic. Perhaps the Apexai minding the Keepers were less forlorn due to their minding of these dynamic younger races and their faith in humanity, Zigonians and so on were proven right when the exodites found refuges.
I was going to say, it would be heartwarming if it was the Zigonians who vouched for the humans to settle in the KZone in the first place.

It may depend on what point it was in their own history, though.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 4:11 pm
Shroom Man 777 wrote: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:56 pmThe Apexai "commonwealth authorities" that managed the Keepers probably cared enough to rubber stamp the proto-Solarians' Crossing, but these guys were probably on the lower end of the Invisible Imperium's pecking order and the real movers and shakers had become apathetic. Perhaps the Apexai minding the Keepers were less forlorn due to their minding of these dynamic younger races and their faith in humanity, Zigonians and so on were proven right when the exodites found refuges.
I was going to say, it would be heartwarming if it was the Zigonians who vouched for the humans to settle in the KZone in the first place.

It may depend on what point it was in their own history, though.
Gasp. The Holy Scale Nomads could have done this, they're the wanderers who also encountered The Last Catholics.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I think we're starting to attain a big-picture history of the K-Zone. From a non-humanocentric perspective, its significance is obviously that it's where Apexaia's at - the heart of the Invisible Imperium. The Apexai created envoys and advisers to less advanced species by uplifting some of them into Keepers, but otherwise didn't seem interested in ruling the post-Titanfall galactic landscape. There's a parallel here to the proxies employed by their contemporaries, the Aetherids and the Raptured Lords, with the Hirados and the Dirge and possible origins of the Satykarma and the Babylos Infall, and maybe there's something about the era that put its survivors off directly exercising their sovereignty.

On the gradual decline of Apexai power, the cause probably lays somewhere between the aversion from every failure under their watch, and their increasing inability to tear themselves away from the Internet Oversoul. Maybe one reason the Bragulans have been so slow in reversing the bounties of fallen Apexaia is because the Apexai indexed and organized everything through the Oversoul, which gave them seamless psionic access to all parts of the civilization regardless of actual location, and Apexaia was actually terminally disorganized on the physical plane.

Shroom even raised the forbidden possibility that the Earthreign got its start from human Keepers - psionically-enhanced prophets who inadvertently sowed the seeds for the horrible no good big bad empire. Personally I think it's better to keep a topic as distant as the founding of the Earthreign behind the veil, but this isn't the first time Apexai-Earthreign relations have been broached in this thread and I *am* tempted to suggest that they had one - of something distant and sour, the latter envying the former but even in the heights of its arrogance didn't dare mess with - and even with such a stand-off, the contemporaneous existence of the two powers would lead some alien historian another thousand years later to conclude that the human Earthreign was in fact the fullest expression of the Apexai paradigm.

And there's a lot to explore with the pre-Byzonic Bragulans and their long-time presence in the K-Zone. Were the bears already there when the humans arrived?!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 4:34 pm And there's a lot to explore with the pre-Byzonic Bragulans and their long-time presence in the K-Zone. Were the bears already there when the humans arrived?!
I'd say Bragspace's current borders with K-Zone's Wild Space was former Hrlgtuhe territory and Apexai territory so while the Brags were in the K-Zone, their territories were broken between the old Brag powers and were a bit smaller... up to a half less than the current BSE.

Hrlgtuhe against the Apexai probably clashed against Apexai-friendly Brag powers with appointed Keepers. So these Hrlgs probably supported anti-Apexai Brags that clashed with the pro-Apexai Brags. Among these would've been early folk hero revolutionary Byzon. And, well, that investment paid dividens lol.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shroom Man 777 wrote: Sun Dec 09, 2018 6:42 pmHrlgtuhe against the Apexai probably clashed against Apexai-friendly Brag powers with appointed Keepers. So these Hrlgs probably supported anti-Apexai Brags that clashed with the pro-Apexai Brags. Among these would've been early folk hero revolutionary Byzon. And, well, that investment paid dividens lol.
This suggests some prime "Hrgltuhe Hegemons took Byzon from exile and packed him on a train to Bragule" shenanigans. How did the proto-Imperator ever conceal his girth among the diminutive aliens? :lol:
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote: Tue Dec 11, 2018 5:33 pm
Shroom Man 777 wrote: Sun Dec 09, 2018 6:42 pmHrlgtuhe against the Apexai probably clashed against Apexai-friendly Brag powers with appointed Keepers. So these Hrlgs probably supported anti-Apexai Brags that clashed with the pro-Apexai Brags. Among these would've been early folk hero revolutionary Byzon. And, well, that investment paid dividens lol.
This suggests some prime "Hrgltuhe Hegemons took Byzon from exile and packed him on a train to Bragule" shenanigans. How did the proto-Imperator ever conceal his girth among the diminutive aliens? :lol:
For all we know it was Byzon's mentor who was taken in! The Hrlgs might have had Bragulan populations.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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The topic of pre-Byzonic Bragulans is a fascinating one because, earlier in the thread, I have been working under the assumption that the Byzon Revolution happened while their species as whole still had negligible interstellar presence and they have been expanding explosively since. But no! The Bragulans were actually an old and familiar presence in the K-Zone, already laboring under a number of hoary, baroque and vaguely Russian tyrannies. All these have been thoroughly assimilated/obliterated by the Bragulan Star Empire, a polity more unified and more totalitarian than anything that came before, and all that is left are maybe a few exiles holding out beyond the Imperator's reach. But they were there before.

I had the idea before that it was so easy for the BSE to deify Byzon because they were just adapting from existing Bragulan traditions of star-striding, god-slaying bogatyrs, which were in turn distorted legends of ancient atomic chieftains wielding verdigrite-tipped gae bolgs. But according to Shroom, they could have been like that well into the space age, Fourth World-esque technobles pursuing feuds with each other as they concentrate all power and technology to themselves - utopic tiered worlds and cities in sky upon which they lord over the masses and watch them war with beast-drawn deathrays and other such scraps of advanced weaponry.

In this, the atomic tsars opened their courts to other prevalent presences in the K-Zone: Xerberans, Shrelacc-aligned Zigonian Rasputins, and most significantly Apexai-uplifted Bragulan Keepers* who counseled and conferred legitimacy in the name of the Invisible Imperium, the sole remaining elder power of the age. So when Byzon saw the need to steer his race from wicked and degenerate influences, to smash Apexaia and truly claim the mantle of Defender of the Universe, he probably didn't come up with the idea out of pure megalomania.

*We're looking for a fancier name than this, by the way.

Another idea is, well, what were the Raptured Lords doing in the Apexai era before they decided to dismantle a couple of civilizations each into Massjammers and go to sleep? Were they the same kind of seekers of wealth and entertainment that had them empower proto-Hirados to go forth and make waves, directly messing with the stewardship of the Keepers in the process?
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