Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Rebellious alienoids refuse to believe the local conquistador lord's warnings of how good they have it under his 'benevolent' rule, so they conspire to send a hyperspace broadcast for help. After a mighty struggle and much bloodletting they capture a Myranni broadcast station and send their message, and lo! The Myranni immediately start packing their bags and vamoosing it into orbit! They are FREE! There are fireworks and celebrations!

Then a giant, ugly form blots out the sky. It is a huge uninviting block of armored plasteel, jagged and leaky with radiation and frightfully unlike the elegant Myranni starcutters the planet's denizens are familiar with. A growling voice bursts out of every speaker on the planet, hoarse and full of warbling static:

COMRADE ALIENOIDS. YOU ARE NOW SUBJECTS OF DARVYL SAGATANTRON BYZON. ALL HAIL MIGHTY BRAGULE.

From the frying pan, indeed.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Well I think we just established a pretty good picture of what Myrrani reign over their non-core territories look like. They aren't going to be entirely absent overlords, though less sophisticated would-be raiders and invaders are pretty much going to be blown away by invisible defenses the moment they warp into their territory.

But I do wonder about to what extent does this influence Myrrani culture. Myrrans can't stand the sight of each other and treat lesser species like crap, but how much does that extend to ideas and more abstract things that don't trigger their aversion instincts?

And Telestrons have something to do now! Instead of being rare hermits who act like plot devices (better fix that on the list, Shroom), their actions and agendas are writ upon their mind-children. Two factions of scrappy Bayformers having an all-out war might reflect a million-year old disagreement between two Telestrons that has just flared back into life, and the galaxy feels the consequences. It may or may not force the original creators to step in and intervene - if the original creators are even around - but the continuing presence of the Kerberi do help nail the enigmatic Telestrons to the events of the galaxy.
Siege wrote:Broadly speaking yes, although Telestron-made Kerberi must've come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, from tiny trinkets no bigger than rings or pendants to giant planetoids designed to beat on Rhapsodites, so who knows what they really look like (although I think I would quite like for them to have certain transbombulatory abilities).
I should have been more clear. I always envisioned that as a result of their origins as condensed quantum thermodynamic miracles, a "real" Telestron is basically not subject to the laws of physics. They transform, they grow and shrink when they transform, they propel themselves across space on spurious principles and pull massive amounts of energy out of nowhere in ways that confound scienticians. Everything they can do continues to be a miracle. But Kerberi are more detached from this source of creation, so they generally function more in line with the laws of physics as the rest of the galaxy understands it. While there's still some spark, as it were, imbued in them by the intentions of the Telestrons, divergent and late-generation Kerberi ought not to be anything that say, the USS cannot reverse-engineer or replicate.

And this does bring up the other idea I have regarding Telestron motivations, albeit formulated before the Kerberi took shape. The process wherein new Telestrons are born is something akin to the universe finally rolling a million sixes in a roll; and in the same way entropy is a function of probability the Telestrons represents that vanishingly tiny possibility all the atoms move in just the right direction to produce useful work. And then the analogy breaks down because the Telestrons do blatantly impossible things instead of just constantly beating the odds, but the whole idea that they are walking thermodynamic miracles implies that simply by existing, they disrupt the spread of probabilities for the rest of the universe and prevent other wonders from happening. Does this mean they are obliged to help beat entropy for the rest of the universe by providing their own entropy-free labors, or are they somehow accelerating the heat death by basically using up all the good luck in the universe? The Telestrons thus debate acting versus not acting, and the inherent cost of doing good. I'm just not sure whether the Kerberi can skirt these laws.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

As you said, the most recent Kerberi are something that mainstream interstellar civs can comprehend so perhaps The Signal has already dissipated by their generation.

And the amount of "Signal Infusion" on each generation of Kerberi, with the latest being relatively... free of the original cosmic Signal miracle and just animated by whatever alternatives they can muster, something as close as possible to the Signal's magic and awesomeness... this would probably be related to... how each iteration is less accurate in terms of following the dreams, desires, hopes and commands of the Telestrons. Perhaps the Telestron dreams and Signal perfusion are one and the same? Cause and effect?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I edited the Master List, incorporating the latest developments to the Telestron blurb.

I also edited the Shen Rhapsody, aside from having the Shen Rhap Orgone Accumulation Corporation as the de facto government of Shen, I have its influenced matched by "the Cultural Council of the Rhapsody, a collection of media moguls, fashion icons extremely popular artists, creative geniuses and thinkers who “govern” the pop culture. This group is comprised heavily of the space gypsies’ descendants and, more recently, Magi esper rockstars. "

So while the Shen-Rhap Corporation is in charge of all the gnarly JENOVA CELLS and Special Enhancile Elements Regiment and such with their buster swords, the Cultural Council (do I need a better name?) is the thing that makes Shen-Rhap filled with folks with spikey hair who wear leather and ride big fuckoff motorbikes and recite poems like LOVELESS.

Sheeeit, in retro-hind-spect, would the Shen Rhapsody be a reckless yet somehow really nicely progressive unintentional experiment by the Meridian Institute (or at least their excommunicated money grubbing members) and the Magi? Is the future synecritsm-synthesis of Fracture humanity represented by Final Fantasy knockoffs who defy the nostalgia and conservatism and psychotrauma of the Earthreignfall? They WERE made by colonist yokel gypsies on some fringe world...

In the founding days of the Shen Rhapsody, aside from the giant eerie monoliths, there were also abandoned cities (MIDGAR) built on top or around the monoliths. These were apparently EARTHREIGN city-rigs that reached through the crust to tap into the buried Rhapsodites. This was how those Meridian explorers discovered the god-corpses and the energy source, which the former inhabitants took to their graves them the Earthreign fell (mass suicide ahoy).

The Special Enhancile Elements Regiment of buster sword gunblade wielding badasses will have enhancements that depend on carefully calibrated and diluted infusions of GODFLESH (not literal injections of Rhapsodite-matter but... injections of intermediary carrier agents that themselves are already altered by the Rhapsodite-stuff...) that enable them to tap into minuscule levels of cosmic energy to attain brief spurts of superhuman abilities, allowing them to throw THUNDAGAS and FIRAGAS and heal damage with CURAGAS. :D

Megalomaniacs try to take it up a notch by even larger infusions of GODFLESH to turn into demi-gods, but the effect of awesome One Winged Angeling is temporary and the side-effects are horrible. The Overlords themselves degenerated into parasitic worm-slugs. So yeah.

Perhaps the Shen-Rhap have living weapons, larger post-creatures capable of harnessing the Godflesh-derived Orgone Energy. These things still aren't one winged demi-gods, but at least they can serve as... GUARDIAN FORMS and eidolons for Shen-Rhap military units. :P

Oh and exposure to the pollutants from the Rhapsodite-energy source process, the wastes from the Orgone Accumulation, results in THEOSTIGMA where the brain is infused with delusions of divinity while the body wastes away into albinism. One of the bosses of the Corporation is thus a DEFORMED CRIPPLE.

Leather-clad sword-wielding motorbike-riding gangs of albinos peddle drugs infused with orgone-pollutants as the ultimate trip, the experience of divinity, but the consequences of wasting. Like... super-krokodil.


I know I've mentioned these to Simon Jester and Invictus and Siege in the chat, but I'm just gonna put them here too so I won't forget and since this is easier than dredging up chatlogs ten months from now. :P
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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So, no objections to the idea that the Telestrons are conflicted over whether their actions accelerate the heat death of the universe or not?

Meanwhile, our gestalt roving eye turns towards the Ministry of Fate and its founder, the All-Father. As with the Magi several posts back, I thought the Ministry was due for some creative attention. It was previously established that the All-Father sought to create a homeland for mutants andpsykers, but what actually resulted was a big bad shadow empire of sith cults and malign viziers who are, for some reason, working to destabilize the Fracture via terrorism, subversion and harnessing the same ancient psychic superweapons that once laid humanity to waste. The original quasi-legitimate rationale of protecting psykers against irrational persecution, if it's still somewhere in the Ministry's vision, is completely overshadowed. As such, the Ministers as a whole don't really have much depth to them yet. So on I suggest a change of direction:

Shrrom suggested on the Facebooks that what if the All-Father, like many before him, partook of the Rhapsodite GODFLESH in order to maximize his powers, and now exists as a hybrid slugman God-Emperor directing his acolytes from his throne of Cryst corpses? And if so, what prevents him from suffering the same horrible fate as the bygone Overlords or the Shen Rhapsody's albino abominations?

But what if the All-Father didn't hybridize himself directly with Rhapsodite tissue, but with something less direct? The Rhapsodites stormed upon the galactic stage millions of years ago, the very epitome of power and hubris, such that long after they were destroyed their remains still persist up to today. But what if nature eventually found a way to restore the equilibrium? That at some time before the end of the Earthreign, there were discovered growing on the Rhapsodite cadavers creatures that could safely digest their power, and that these new breeds of scavengers, if allowed to spread, would eventually disperse the titans' unnatural power back into the galactic background? But instead, the secret didn't get out, the All-Father hybridized himself with these godmaggots under some further blasphemous process, so now he holds the narrative weight of something that truly could have resolved the galaxy's problems as well as being a "stable" uberpsyker? ("Stable" being a relative world, as he is still maintaining extreme effort not to sublime out of the physical realm entirely, unlike his counterpart.)

And then this new origin would play into new motivations. So far there's nothing on the Ministry's side that's as weighty as the Magi's goal to repair the Fracture and heal humanity's spirit. Perhaps the All-Father can also be investing in some long-term planning, taking humanity on a path that will guarantee its survival but only at the cost of the same immense suffering that the Magi seek to alleviate. He sees the Fracture as a catalyst for forging humanity into something stronger, and if anything its effects haven't been enough of a crucible. Hence Ministers drive conflict everywhere - their overall objective is to break down these calcified remnants of the Fracture even further, down to a level where the human spirit itself can be altered! That the All-Father raises the banner of radical mutantpsyker activism is just for gathering the talent most useful for this goal, not entirely unlike why the Sophia poaches psykers for recruits.

Shroom pointed out that this would make the most idealistic of Ministers - especially those who engage only with the psyker rights part of the agenda (cue Minister Moses going all LET MY PEOPLE GO on some Fracture slave-state) - indistinguishable from the most militant/debauched of the Magi, and I think that would be a desirable outcome. And when some chump Sith gets foiled/backstabbed/disposed of the Big F can legitimately tell him that all his underlings can see is a tiny part of his incomprehensible master plan!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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I think my main problem with that approach is simply the question of if that is his goal why isn't he more succesful at it?

From what I gather this guy is for all intents and purposes a living god walking behind the scenes setting up cults, training powerfyl psykers, controlling entire star-states and so forth. So if he's that powerful and invested and let's say all Wild Space conflict is to some extent the result of his infernal meddling... Then now what? Where's this forging, what's the point?

To me it sounds like he's just a petty anarchist on a power trip, or at least that's what he'll come off as without a more clear and in depth exploration of his motivations. And finally an issue that's a bit meta, but I have a strong dislike for references to master plans when it's blindingly obvious that the writers are just making random shit up as they go. I've seen that happen a few too many times in recent years, so if this guy is to have a master plan, I'd like to see it solidly laid out for a change.

I'm frankly not even sure he needs more motivation than 'conflict is good and drives progress' ala B5's Shadows. It's a pretty crazy philosophy but I can easily see why a super-powerful demigod would be attracted to a kind of extreme Objectivism because 'the point of life is the pursuit of power through ruthless competition with one's peers' is great if you're practically peer-less, on top of the heap, and in no threat from all the underlings that might like to depose you. Then he needs no further objective, because war and suffering is its own objective.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Could the All Father/Prime Minister/(Title Here) have failed in his master plan because the Magi are always there to cockblock him when he wants to lay waste to the nations of the universe?

I mean he may be a god but he can't be everywhere, and his main rival is a god who CAN be everywhere, even if she doesn't use her powers to actively fight him in god-to-god combat.. That would be my guess.

Though I understand the issue with the MYSTERIOUS PLAN, all too often it seems like a stall. Still, it is called the Ministry of Fate, you would expect some kind of long term plan.

Could the All Father maybe be prompting and prodding his Ministers into forming factions and making opposing plans? Some want a New Earthreign, some are Psyker Zionists, some want to Watch the World Burn and see what they can make out of the debris etc. He, meanwhile, is committed to his Darwinian principles and follows them by letting the processes of natural selection pick the strongest faction. I am not sure about this myself as maybe it makes him too hands off and raises the question of what he actually does. My guess would be that he still gives directives at the highest levels, coordinates the secret rule of NEUROM and works to destroy the Magi while balancing his minions between cohesion and healthy (deadly) competition. Possible compromise?

Also, a quick question on the Fracture; there was that off hand comment about monsters from the Id, are these a spiritual problem, or are parts of the Fracture actually like the Eye of Terror where your dark impulses will come to life and rape you?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Siege wrote:I think my main problem with that approach is simply the question of if that is his goal why isn't he more succesful at it?

From what I gather this guy is for all intents and purposes a living god walking behind the scenes setting up cults, training powerfyl psykers, controlling entire star-states and so forth. So if he's that powerful and invested and let's say all Wild Space conflict is to some extent the result of his infernal meddling... Then now what? Where's this forging, what's the point?

To me it sounds like he's just a petty anarchist on a power trip, or at least that's what he'll come off as without a more clear and in depth exploration of his motivations. And finally an issue that's a bit meta, but I have a strong dislike for references to master plans when it's blindingly obvious that the writers are just making random shit up as they go. I've seen that happen a few too many times in recent years, so if this guy is to have a master plan, I'd like to see it solidly laid out for a change.

I'm frankly not even sure he needs more motivation than 'conflict is good and drives progress' ala B5's Shadows. It's a pretty crazy philosophy but I can easily see why a super-powerful demigod would be attracted to a kind of extreme Objectivism because 'the point of life is the pursuit of power through ruthless competition with one's peers' is great if you're practically peer-less, on top of the heap, and in no threat from all the underlings that might like to depose you. Then he needs no further objective, because war and suffering is its own objective.
First things first, the Fracture is huuuuge. It comfortably swallows the entire K-Zone, let alone the bits of the K-Zone categorized as Wild Space. Having enough diffuse influence behind the multifarious polities (and a few open strongholds here and there) to be recognized as a power over the entire Fracture is a considerable achievement; especially when, as Speaker mentioned, another Fracture-wide power is working against them.

Under my idea, the problem would be that gaining power over the Fracture is still only the first part of plan to thoroughly break humanity. NEUROM is valuable in the sense that it's a useful blunt instrument for smashing other polities with; and the Minister who has bought into the line that psykers are a superior breed of humanity who must fight to establish their own psyker utopia isn't going to appreciate it when he learns that the All-Father actually intends for him to be a tool for the eventual betterment of humanity as a whole. I mean, that's the extent of the obfuscation of the All-Father's master plan - people who you've raised up don't like it when you tell them they're all disposable down the line.

And 'conflict is good and drives progress' is more or less the motivation I suggested above except in less words. If you conflate "progress" with "the welfare of humanity in a hostile universe".
speaker-to-trolls wrote:Could the All Father maybe be prompting and prodding his Ministers into forming factions and making opposing plans? Some want a New Earthreign, some are Psyker Zionists, some want to Watch the World Burn and see what they can make out of the debris etc. He, meanwhile, is committed to his Darwinian principles and follows them by letting the processes of natural selection pick the strongest faction. I am not sure about this myself as maybe it makes him too hands off and raises the question of what he actually does. My guess would be that he still gives directives at the highest levels, coordinates the secret rule of NEUROM and works to destroy the Magi while balancing his minions between cohesion and healthy (deadly) competition. Possible compromise?
I like what you've suggested and I'd be up to offer some faction/splat ideas for the Ministry of Fate as I did the Magi, but then I don't know how much direct oversight the All-Father has over his minions either. We might need Shroom in here.
speaker-to-trolls wrote:Also, a quick question on the Fracture; there was that off hand comment about monsters from the Id, are these a spiritual problem, or are parts of the Fracture actually like the Eye of Terror where your dark impulses will come to life and rape you?
There are...faults in the Fracture, places where calcified psychohistorical patterns overlaying societies differ too suddenly or rub each other so badly or are just so self-contradictory or filled with general malaise that physical monsters congeal out of thin air and start wrecking shit, yes. It's mainly a problem on the social scale.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Invictus wrote:
Siege wrote:I think my main problem with that approach is simply the question of if that is his goal why isn't he more succesful at it?

...
First things first, the Fracture is huuuuge. It comfortably swallows the entire K-Zone, let alone the bits of the K-Zone categorized as Wild Space.
Except the Bragulan Star Empire. The entirety of Bragspace, the whole sum of space occupied by bragulanity, would be a considerable percentage of the Fracture, which comprises the bulk of humanity's territorial and populational mass. Maybe Bragspace is like 1/4ths or 1/5ths the Fracture. Either way, sizewise it'll give the Fracture something to choke on.

PEDANTIC NITPICK SEGUE:

Though... I'm not even sure of these definitions since "Fracture"is more than just a concrete spatial term. The modern "Fracture" also includes so many entities that emerged way after the Earthreign, the Psychic Cataclysm, and all that jazz... why would a fringe world colony made 500 years after Earthreignfall be any more or less "Fracture" than the USS, which was also a fringe colony. Distance? Hmmm...

It's like talking about Europe when meaning only Eastern Europe, or talking about Asia and thinking of only the Pacific-bordering Asian nations and forgetting Central Asia and the Middle East. Or the "Anglosphere."
And 'conflict is good and drives progress' is more or less the motivation I suggested above except in less words. If you conflate "progress" with "the welfare of humanity in a hostile universe".
I see a huge overlap between Siege's suggestion and your suggestion anyway. The All-Father has a Master Plan in his grotesque mutaloidified brain, involving the transcendence of humanity under his guiding hand, his vast inscrutable orchestrated meta-scheme and all that... but a confluence of factors, from the Sophia's ethereal influences to the Magi's beamsaber-to-the-face influences to the actions of various Fracture polities, their resistance or compliance, might mean that the Master Plan's implication might be... a bit complicated, since it's based on the grandeurs of a precognitive who's trying to assemble a whole bunch of "what ifs" and "maybes" while other groups are working against him with their own set of "could bes" and such.

If the "good guys" play their cards right and foil the All-Father's schemes, all of them through space and time, then sure, he'll amount to nothing more than just a jumped up anarchist with delusions of grandeur and Super Objectivism... If.

But the good guys' goals are also a whole bunch of hypotheticals. Because both their long games are dealing with totally abstract principles.

The most "concrete" short-term goals for the All-Father would be the destruction of the Fracture social constructs to enable the emergence of a new humanity. Iconoclasm. So the most understandable way of doing this would be through the militaristic/terroristic takedown of nation states (via Neurom's military, via revolutions and terrorism and Wild Space EVIL, the enclaves of extremist espers...). There are other ways to do this too, and the Ministry engages in them. But these are still just some of their first steps.


speaker-to-trolls wrote:Could the All Father maybe be prompting and prodding his Ministers into forming factions and making opposing plans? Some want a New Earthreign, some are Psyker Zionists, some want to Watch the World Burn and see what they can make out of the debris etc. He, meanwhile, is committed to his Darwinian principles and follows them by letting the processes of natural selection pick the strongest faction. I am not sure about this myself as maybe it makes him too hands off and raises the question of what he actually does. My guess would be that he still gives directives at the highest levels, coordinates the secret rule of NEUROM and works to destroy the Magi while balancing his minions between cohesion and healthy (deadly) competition. Possible compromise?
I like what you've suggested and I'd be up to offer some faction/splat ideas for the Ministry of Fate as I did the Magi, but then I don't know how much direct oversight the All-Father has over his minions either. We might need Shroom in here.
Our previous ideas did have the Ministry of Fate as some kind of Sith Order thing before the Rule of Two so while they all answer to him, various groups and individuals can totally ice each other to get to the top. And the idea of killing the All-Father and becoming the new All-Father isn't that rare amongst the Ministers?

How this squares with them working as a... viable organization, I don't know. The closest thing I can imagine is something like the 40k Inquisition, but with even more fraticide...
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Would it be too ridiculous or outrageous to suggest that the All-Father and the Ministry of Fate's evil acts of evilry are so... out there that to destroy the calcified stagnant anti-progressive nature of the Fracture, they'd resort to... strengthening calcified stagnant anti-progressive natured Fracture states? Moderate forces would enable the Fracture to limp along with relative stability, but promoting regressive reactionaries and fascists would provoke an anti-thesis, catalyze counter-cultures and revolutions to take them down.

Like how bankrupting the Soviet Union came from provoking them to build up their militaries to unprecedented levels (I know this isn't true and is Reaganite bullshit but still), or how breaking up the American world hegemon and its position as the guardian of the world came from a terroristic act that forced the USA to over-militarize into a paranoid state that alienated the rest of the world and fucked up its cultural image (this is oversimplification but still)? So the plans of the Ministry of Fate, and heck the Magi too, are... like... meant to achieve goals that are only measurable by Space Noam Chomskys and Sayids and other sagely cultural analysts and comparative literature majors and shit. :P

Is it a cop out? Too roundabout? It still plays into the whole "hrrr... Sansa... chaos isn't a pit, it's a ladder..." [/Little Finger] spiel about inspiring progress through horrible Super Space Objectivism.

If we're so meta, the All-Father might even realize that this is his designated role for the narrative he's seen with his precognition, the necessity of a meta-antagonist in pushing galactic civilization's journey of self-discovery.

What a load of bull, amirite? But it's kind of like the Grant Morrison-ey thing that some comic book nerds hate, but some also love. Maybe the All-Father or a Grand Minister (Inquisitor Minister!) might get obliterated when a Magi picks up a hyperphone and sings a song of pure love! :D


ANYWAY... some ideas for the rest of the 'verse. I was thinking of...

The Orb Weavers are a faction and a race of spacebound Isopterids with the requisite biomodular specializations. Their approach to hyperfield technologies differs from most conventional civilizations in that their technology morphs the hyperfields into the form of strings. Hyperstrings, superstrings, totally bastardized "string theory" BS akin to how Star Trek maligns the word "quantum." This results in weaved constructs, their orbs and such, that enable them to glide through interstellar space in space habitats made out of hyper-infused silk, and their networks of "webways" (need another term so Games Workshop won't sue us). These webways would be long, long, long strands of their hyperstrings that stabilize space-time corridors and enable for smoother travels - not as instantaneous as a warpgate/stargate but better than a hyperdrive. These require huge arrays, so they're not so plentiful, but these arrays are movable and prettier and more tactically flexible than warpgates. They pretty much dangle these lines in hyperspace to speed people up.

These technologies (which are hand-crafted!) might have been independently developed, making them an older strain of Isopterids. They will have some disdain or cultural biases towards the terraforming Isopterids and those living in giant space rock termite nests - the "Masonic" Isopterids.

OR, their technologies might have been developed after they were subjugated by Myrranni conquistadores. They rebelled, cocooned the local Baroness and hijacked her work-in-progress solar array and jerry rigged it with their own insectoid sciences to produce their hyperstring weaver grids.

(Man, their cosmic web-stations could be surrounded and protected by grids of hyperstrings that can activate and chop up incoming baddies. A kind of specialized stationary defense system, not that useful for offensively striking distant enemies, but lethal as an area denial system)

During the conflicts that saw the formation of their modern day polity, wandering ZIGONIAN PHILANTHROPISTS came in and helped them out and formed a bro-hood with the more multicultural and open Orb Weavers. So the Ziggies can the benefit of wicked cool hyperspatial textiles for their tree ships.

A sub-culture of Orb Weavers could exist, the Recluses. Yes, I am ripping off actual spider species names, yeah. These Recluses could be the more traditionalist ones who want people to fuckoff and they want to keep their art pure and out of the hands of the gaijin.

Anyway, if the Orb Weavers did come from a war against the Myrranni, then I was thinking that there could be this alliance called the Tapestry. The rebel Isopterids found unlikely allies in isolationalist Crysts who were minding their own businesses drifting in the coronas of negative suns before asshole Myrranni god-aspirants evicted them from THEIR STARS and started doing their unnatural crap to the cosmic bodies, offending the Crysts who went on to bring out some of their old doom-arrays. The conflict was less severe then the ancient Cryst-Samtic War, but resulted in this mutual defense agreement. The Orb Weavers also have appreciation for the Crysts' own strange fractal arts, and so they could communicate effectively.

Perhaps in the background, sneaky no good do-gooder Zigonian diplomats made this happen. Earning the ire of the space cats. Tee-hee-hee-hee.


Watching Nausica also made me want to create some kind of new K-Zone polity called the Satrapies, to homage Thanas' Sassanids, but also... well, I was thinking they'd be highly decentralized clusters of mixed alienoids, like a bastard hybrid of the Samtic Nexus and the Emirs of Wild Space. The ones closest to civilization would be great traders and such, but their rear borders, their periphery, have lunatics who some Satraps consider to be bio-heretics. Backwards natives who've somehow managed to live really close to Karlack Space, even living harmoniously with them. (Some frontier Bragulans can also do this) The most radical of these distant Satraps even have hybrids with the Karlacks. Causing all sorts of consternation amongst the other Satraps, in the past maybe even resulting in declarations of fatwas. But the distant madmen and dervishes are able to peacefully harvest Karlack Nectar - the closest thing to the Shen Rhapsody's Orgone - so... yeah, it gives them financial power. But the interferences of greedy Satraps wanting to exploit and weaponize these things also cause Karlacks to go in rage and eat folks. So heh.

Orthii and Zigonians would be prominent Satrap constituents. There might even be White Bragulans who've become local warlords and xerxeses.


EDIT: The founders could be bulbous multi-limbed... fungi-plantfolk or something. Weirdo dudes with weird ass customs, maybe they're the original sun-worshippers who influenced the Emirs of Wild Space to take up sun-gazing and praying to djinns and wisps. While they're civilized, their propensity to perfume and feast on decomposing organic matter makes them off-putting for most other folks, though business is business and these guys are p. cool. Any races are welcome... maybe the only clause is that these guys can get to decompose your bodies (with your consent)?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

One more horrible weirdo meta-thought for the Ministry of Fate and Magi divide.

When the All-Father and the Sophia ascended, did they tap into pre-existing... meta-principles that shaped the zeitgeists of the Fracture? Or did their own prejudices and preconceptions and notions and post-judices and post-conceptions and whatever... turn INTO the guiding meta-principles of the Fracture zeitgeists BECAUSE they both ascended into god-things?

Chicken or the egg. Did they discover these things, or did they invent/create these with their apotheosis.

Esoteric stuff, really. On the ground, to a skeptic, a non-believer, both Minister and Magi are a bunch of lunatic fanatics espousing and acting on some mumbo-jumbo, except one of them is trying to sacrifice a world to become a one-winged godling while the other one is trying to save it with fuzzy wuzzy sparkly lightshows harnessing the power of love and friendship.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Would it be too ridiculous or outrageous to suggest that the All-Father and the Ministry of Fate's evil acts of evilry are so... out there that to destroy the calcified stagnant anti-progressive nature of the Fracture, they'd resort to... strengthening calcified stagnant anti-progressive natured Fracture states? Moderate forces would enable the Fracture to limp along with relative stability, but promoting regressive reactionaries and fascists would provoke an anti-thesis, catalyze counter-cultures and revolutions to take them down....

If we're so meta, the All-Father might even realize that this is his designated role for the narrative he's seen with his precognition, the necessity of a meta-antagonist in pushing galactic civilization's journey of self-discovery.

What a load of bull, amirite? But it's kind of like the Grant Morrison-ey thing that some comic book nerds hate, but some also love.
While I think the idea of encouraging space fascists just so that they could destroy themselves, creating a series of mini Earthreignfalls to increase the pressure on civilisation, is workable, I'm not so sure about the second bit. Maybe I'm being overly cautious, but I don't see quite how his realising he was The Bad Guy and that The World Must Have An Enemy to Unite it For Good, the Veidt Gambit if you will, works as a twist at the end of the story but I'm not sure it does as a kind of established piece of background.

Depends how it was played of course.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Maybe the All-Father or a Grand Minister (Inquisitor Minister!) might get obliterated when a Magi picks up a hyperphone and sings a song of pure love! :D
This seems entirely possible for them.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Weavers
Love it.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:EDIT: The founders could be bulbous multi-limbed... fungi-plantfolk or something. Weirdo dudes with weird ass customs, maybe they're the original sun-worshippers who influenced the Emirs of Wild Space to take up sun-gazing and praying to djinns and wisps. While they're civilized, their propensity to perfume and feast on decomposing organic matter makes them off-putting for most other folks, though business is business and these guys are p. cool. Any races are welcome... maybe the only clause is that these guys can get to decompose your bodies (with your consent)?
I actually have an idea on that, in two words: Space Zombies!

In more words: But not really.

If the Satraps are fungoid, maybe the mobile ones are actually like parasites that make modifications to the bodies of their host organisms, like growing extra brain space or psychic fruiting bodies or something. People living in the Satrapies can sign a contract so their bodies can, like, revert to the state when they die, either to be decomposed for food or donated to science or, and this is the most in demand, used to form the basis for a new Satrap being. The new Satrap which uses your body isn't you, and it isn't a pre-existing Satrap, it is considered a unique individual in its own right, but maybe has next of kin rights or equivalent (since inheritance laws would probably be completely different among such creatures.)

I actually had the idea, based on some speculation that Somes J did long ago about how Eywa might have evolved, maybe the original Satraps, lets call them the... Padishahs or something. The Padishahs are like Eywoid intelligent forests, where the fungus lives symbiotically with vegetables and uses animals as mobile manipulators. The Satraps are the descendants of some of those animal servitors who now, culturally, prefer to be ambulatory rather than vegetative, sometimes, some Satraps could have gone back to the old ways and be giant intelligent mushroom forests.

It could even be that the fringe weirdos near to Karlack space are the original Padishahs, because they ARE Karlacks, but later generations have forgotten this as they merged with mainstream galactic civilisation and accepted the comforts of not being involved in the 24-hour death race to oblivion that is natural selection.

Some ideas.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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speaker-to-trolls wrote:'m not so sure about the second bit. Maybe I'm being overly cautious, but I don't see quite how his realising he was The Bad Guy and that The World Must Have An Enemy to Unite it For Good, the Veidt Gambit if you will, works as a twist at the end of the story but I'm not sure it does as a kind of established piece of background.

Depends how it was played of course.
Also while he's avoiding the Sophia's fate of embracing ethereality by using bastardized hybridized Rhapsodite-Cryst tech, who knows what's happening with his mind, he's still physically existent, but the boundaries between individual thought and sublimation with the zeitgeist... The best thing would be to keep the All-Father's true perspective mysterious, I guess. Nobody ever gave Sauron his own ballads and perspective paragraphs.
I actually have an idea on that, in two words: Space Zombies!

In more words: But not really.
This. Is. Amazing. Yes, we are totally going to have these. I propose these guys came from the same world and currently co-exist with another fungaloid I was mulling over before I read your post. They can come from the same world, like Mon Calmaris and Quarren in SW. One world doesn't have to have only one dominant sentinet/sapient species.

So, their neighbors and siblings:

Oolycysts - Tripedal pentapods, three-legged, two-armed, total of five-limbed creatures with multiple compound eyes and digestive fluid-spewing, goo-sucking proboscises for mouthparts. Physiologies more like fungi than conventional vertebrate lifeforms, though the fungal anatomy has evolved equivalents to the normal organisms' bio-functions. They are the original K-Zone solar wisp-worshipping culture that influenced later Wild Space societies (like the Emirs). Their home world is a steamy, pseudo-Venusian greenhouse planet located near a wisp-inhabited sun, resulting in a dominant religion founded by prophets who heard the wisp-songs (perhaps they used the solar energy to battle the zombie Padishahs in prehistoric times before they learned to tolerate and co-exist with each other), but as their fungal forms are sensitive to strong light, worshippers must wear damp rag-robes to protect themselves (they are thus clad in these robes when dealing with alienoids in sunny environs...). Sun-worshippers developed sacred technologies that used crystals to record solar whispers and harness wisp-energies, creating ark of the covenant-esque weaponries out of their divine scriptures.

In the ancient times of the Oolycyst space nations, one empire expanded into what is now Wild Space but fell afoul of pre-Byzonic Bragulans (the Hyber... who in ancient times were the most numerous of the Brag-kingdoms because of their prolific uses of colonizer cryoships). Though more primitive than the Oolycysts, the Brags forced them out of Wild Space. The weakened empire was then beset by the other Oolycysts, but their conflicts spilled over to the "south," disrupting, awakening and enraging a Karlack hive - thus ending the Oolycyst Golden Age. This lead to schisms amongst the solar worshippers, the militant-monks were disgraced for their arrogant and heretical use of militarized wisp-worship and sacred technologies. Other religions, beliefs, or non-beliefs grew prominent.* Modern Oolycysts now constitute a major populace of the Satrapies, a multi-species trade federation of interstellar states, checked by the Brags and by their healthy fear of the Karlack Swarm.

*Another prominent religion could be the Fungal Zombie Padishas'** form of mysticism. Their horrifying ability to reanimate the dead and recycle their organs and processes might enable them to access the memories of the deceased, and as these fungoids shed their "garments" and take new hosts, as they germinate and grow "children" perhaps bearing their spore-memories, they might come to be regarded as revered saints of unlife. Though others, like sun-worshipping Oolycysts, rebuke them as charlatans.These cults can spread throughout Wild Space.

**The real-life zombie funguses are called Cordyceps, and the Last of Us uses these guys by name. We can't use that name, so I propose whatever name we give them can have the cool suffix of "-dycids." Since we don't want every alienoid race name to end with a "-ian" or "-an."


EDIT: The Oolycyst tripedal pentapod, three-legged, two-armed, five-limbs total layout (somewhat similar to the Khelerene concept in the next post) is based on the following:

Hexapod configuration from an alienoid in the awesome PROPHET comics. I wanted this layout but with one less limb. So you have two arms that are well developed manipulators, and three hind legs for walking/running... tripod, two well-developed leg and one... "stand." Something like...

...Tripod configuration of Spielberg's WOTW Martianoids, except for the Oolycyst the "arms" are above the "legs" because I think the Martian's useful arms are too small and weak whereas those three legs are kind of... over-developed, good for moving but it can't use any of its tripod walking appendages for meaningful tool-use without losing balance. The weak arms underneath can't support the weight if it decides to use two of its well-developed legs to use tools. It's like having your arms weakened and placed between your legs, in your crotch! The arms must be above the legs and more developed, to make it meaningful. But this Martianoid is almost ugly enough to be an Oolycyst.

Final exhibit of the closest real-life example to a three-legged, two-armed, five-limbed in total creature we can get, a Kangaroo! The tail is well-developed and is practically another limb. Its fore-limbs/arms are well-developed and if evolved can use tools without being hindered by the legs (unlike the crotch-arms of the Martian:( ). So if a Kangaroo had a limb instead of a tail, better arms, disgusting fungal flesh instead of fur and meat, and a grotesque multi-eyed, proboscis'ed face... it would be an Oolycyst! :)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Vic and I are brainstorming bipedal amphibians to form a large demographic of the Samtic Nexus, as civilians and also as their infantry (the Kheler* are the Samtics' new military badasses because they're a younger more energetic race of vicious avians who hate and fight the Myrran a lot, but the birdies are frail and can't bayonet people in the face planetside). Anyway, I propose the name Dendryle for them, because fattynerd herpatologist (amphibian-reptile biologist) SDNW4er Alyrium Denryle had a (psychic) frog race in SDNW4... but aside from this reference, these guys are entirely different. Other humble proposals of mine:

The amphibians can change gender depending on environmental factors, gender proportions in the population, pheromone perfusion, and sociocultural/behavioral factors. If it becomes a sausage-fest, sexually malleable amphibians might start becoming bi-curious while their bodies start changing and pretty soon they're now female - and the other way around too. Some of the amphibian societies have strict traditions regarding sex changes, changing gender is something that might be done with rituals like marriage or baptism, so wanton sex changes can be seen as immoral akin to multiple divorcees and church-hopping. Of course, this is dumb and libertines can gender bend without having to celebrate each transition with a frog barmitzvah. Metabolic dimorphism also exists, based on nutritional/dietary and environmental factors, where moderated intakes result in lean salamander-ish dudes while excessive intakes result in large toad-like configs. (The sex changes and grossly differing appearances based on nutrition are modeled to real-life frog and salamander species). Class-based segregation in the past caused rifts between the "skinnies/salamanders" and the "toads" before Samtic Nexus intervention, but still,lingering, simmering tensions exist centuries later, even in the egalitarian Samtic society.

**Khelerene anatomy: Originating from a low-grav moon, the Khelerene evolved from feathery six-limbed tree creatures whose forelimbs gradually turned into wings while the mid-limbs turned into clawed manipulator arms and the then-vestigial hind limbs became tailplanes connected to serpentine lower bodies, which undulate during flight and slither during terrestrial ambulation.

Think of a garuda upper body with a naga lower body, though more eel-like than snake-like. The low-gravity moon means that flying through the air is made more similar to swimming under water, so the Kheler evolved a weirdo combination of bird-like flying movements for their upper bodies with sea serpent movements for their lower bodies. I think evolutionarily, they were feathery, beaked tree-naga before they grew wings.


Lastly,

Sardican thoughts: Sardicans began as Mandragoran descendants who were assimilated by agriworlder and spacer societies. During the depravities of the Fracture, a great leader of Mandragoran descent called the Sardic united the tribes and led an exodus to a promised land amidst distant stars (gleaned by the Sardic from lost holy charts, probably ancient Earthreign survey scrolls). During the pilgrimage, they were joined by and interbred with spacers drawn to the Sardic's words and hoping to escape the Fracture's chaos. Other peoples were also picked up along the way, some freed from the proto-nations that would become the modern Fracture states. When they found their promised land of milk and honey, all was well until the coming of a Phyrron horde. In the ensuing war, the Sardicans had to poison the earth, irreversibly turning the land into a desert to starve and ultimately defeat he alien barbarians. The aftermath devastated the Sardican society but it also saw the emergence of a new liberation theology created by the Sardic based on their collective experiences of fighting and fleeing for freedom. The Sardicans scattered across space, spreading their faith by fighting for other beleaguered peoples - especially those battling the Phyrrons - while periodically partaking in pilgrimages to visit sacred shrines of te exodus or even to retrace the entire journey. The modern mercenaries renowned throughout Wild Space are descended from these fedayeen.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Vic and I are brainstorming bipedal amphibians to form a large demographic of the Samtic Nexus, as civilians and also as their infantry (the Kheler* are the Samtics' new military badasses because they're a younger more energetic race of vicious avians who hate and fight the Myrran a lot, but the birdies are frail and can't bayonet people in the face planetside). Anyway, I propose the name Dendryle for them, because fattynerd herpatologist (amphibian-reptile biologist) SDNW4er Alyrium Denryle had a (psychic) frog race in SDNW4... but aside from this reference, these guys are entirely different. Other humble proposals of mine:

The amphibians can change gender depending on environmental factors, gender proportions in the population, pheromone perfusion, and sociocultural/behavioral factors. If it becomes a sausage-fest, sexually malleable amphibians might start becoming bi-curious while their bodies start changing and pretty soon they're now female - and the other way around too. Some of the amphibian societies have strict traditions regarding sex changes, changing gender is something that might be done with rituals like marriage or baptism, so wanton sex changes can be seen as immoral akin to multiple divorcees and church-hopping. Of course, this is dumb and libertines can gender bend without having to celebrate each transition with a frog barmitzvah. Metabolic dimorphism also exists, based on nutritional/dietary and environmental factors, where moderated intakes result in lean salamander-ish dudes while excessive intakes result in large toad-like configs. (The sex changes and grossly differing appearances based on nutrition are modeled to real-life frog and salamander species). Class-based segregation in the past caused rifts between the "skinnies/salamanders" and the "toads" before Samtic Nexus intervention, but still,lingering, simmering tensions exist centuries later, even in the egalitarian Samtic society.
After some thought I'm tempted to turn the puny salamander/leathery Krogan dichotomy into two distinct lifestages. In the early stage they are kind of soft-skinned and amphibian, but remain highly receptive to external stimuli throughout in regards to sex, growth rate and other cosmetic factors. (Though it won't go as far as actually shrinking in size). Then a combination of age and external stimuli causes them to enter the later stage, undergoing a final growth spurt that largely locks them into shape but also renders them tougher and less reliant on moisture. (Maybe this is an adaptation in response to radical climate cycles on their homeworld?) It's possible, especially with modern medical technology, to forestall the metamorphosis indefinitely and at times a state of sustained plastic neoteny could have been a mark of privilege.

Anyway, when combined with a phenotype-conscious society, this leads to an acute need for polities to control the environment so that the "proper" characteristics can spawn and develop in the required amounts. Fairly literal hydraulic despotism is instituted. Territorial expansion is complicated by environmental variables that compromise social makeup, but is also inexorably driven on by population pressure - resulting in lots of splintering hierarchies and conflict. This gets even worse when the amphibians start colonizing other worlds and even more uncontrollable environmental factors creep in, not to mention the increasing distances between populations creating even more divisions over what the "ideal" phenotype should be. (I mean some colonies manage to go blissfully isolationist or achieve tolerance, but this isn't the story) So you have what is on the whole a bunch of warring interstellar hegemonies who remain longtime (if rather poor) neighbors to the Samtics for a long while until the Nexus is formed and the amphibians are sucked into its orbit, and through it pushes through some technological bottlenecks to liberalize to the Samtic ideal.

Within the Nexus, the amphibians are probably of similar formal status to the Kheler for having been a flourishing interstellar civilization long before the Samtics got their tentacles on them, but unlike the Kheler who welcomed their alliance out of necessity, they are quite mindful of their own heritage and are more willful allies.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Since we're talking about these guys anyway, we can run through other alienoid ideas for the Samtic-Myrran areas of space. I had a non-SOTS idea long ago, of another sci-fi verse where the space opera races are based on Serengeti African lifeforms. Predatory militaristic lionoids and big cat aliens, great vast migratory herds of bovine/buffaloid space truckers, etc. It's like Star Trek or B5 starring everyone from Lion King. They don't have to be direct anthropomorphic animaloid alienoids (in my brain, the Myrran and Brags and such are more than just anthro'ed cats and bears).

So I was thinking the Myrranni-Samtic area of space to the southwest of the Fracture would be like this. But because of the Phyrron and the Myrrann, all sorts of alienoids have to go Farthing Wood and Watership Down to escape the barbarians and/or the conquistadoras. The Samtics provide refuge, but I imagine a lot scatter to the Fracture - where they might good treatment in the modern Cascadian Freeworlds and those loony leather-clad big-haired motorbike-riding Shen Rhapsodistas, but Grand Auriga onwards they're just... douches. Space Boat People! Isopterids treated like FOOKIN PRAWNS by space Boers.

The Gorok can be these bulky horned herbivorous creatures with leathery hides - the combination of all sorts of large terrestrial herbivore mammals, part buffalo, part bovine, part rhino, part moose, whatever. Can alternate between bipedal and quadrupedal motion, bodies like gorillas. A young interstellar race until they got subjugated by the Myrran, who made use of their expertise in cultivating agriworlds to create the breadbaskets of the Ascendancy. Their homeworlds are now places where Myrranni tourists can sit in the grassy fields and read poems while the herbivore peasants toil.

The Goroks who made it to the Samtic Nexus and to other greener pastures are able to recreate new greenworlds and lots join the military to get even with the cats.


SPEAKER:

I was thinking the Padishahs, Padryceps? Shadryceps? When first contact was made on their own homeworld with the Oolycysts, the Padishahs would have been perceived as grotesque grave-robbing ghoul-parasites. Utter nightmares. But those familiar to them would regard them and their cemetery-shrines with reverence, some kind of fatalist death-faith with an actual biological equivalent to the Hindu-Buddhist concepts of cycles, renewals of existence and such - so worshippers give their dead to the Padishah cemetery-temples to perpetuate the cycle of existence and have their deceased... continue on in other forms. Of course, other folks still think they're grotesque, like the wisp-worshippers with their SUNBURN STIGMATAS who think they're heretics and blasphorities. During the end of the Oolycyst Golden Age and before the modern Satrapies, there could have been all sorts of schisms and religious conflicts between followers of whichever faiths. And we can get heretic Padishah charlatans setting up cults in Wild Space.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:SPEAKER
Shroom:
I like Padryceps as a name.

I was thinking along very similar lines for the conflict between the two fungaloid races. The Oolicytes would have been the Padryceps ideal hosts and as such would have either idolised or reviled them. My thought was that the Oolicyte Wispite culture could have dominated on their home planet, the padryceps and their allies would have lived as tolerated-but-mistrusted dhimmis in most Oolicyte territoies. The Wispian Oolicytes would have put injunctions against the Padryceps germinating more forest forms on new planets, hence why they are now almost entirely found in the zombie form.

I had an idea that the forest forms are needed to produce spores that are genetically stable. Zombies can produce spores on their own but, in evolutionary terms, they are meant to carry spores produced by the forests, in their natural state zombies making new zombies leads to degeneration, loss of memory and culture and ability. In the modern age perhaps genetic tweaking has fixed this.

But the modern Padryceps could revere the ancestral forests of their distant home as a spiritual home, a heavenly ideal. Their religion would be to spread the mystic wisdom of their ancient giant forms to other beings post mortem, making them one with the body of the Forest.

Yhese days they could be dominant in some of the Satrapies and the ancient religious wars of light and dark could start to flare up again with the Wispite Oolicytes.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I actually also mulled about Padryceps (damn I originally meant Padrycids but Padryceps has stuck!) ecologies.

The home and parent would be the forest, but the walkers would have to bring carcasses for the forests to germinate into, and to provide nutrition to the forest. Only dead things, hence the initial perception of Padrycep ghouls and corpse-stealers. Understanding Oolycysts figured it out and became all wise and shit and donated their dead to the forests, and these resurrected wandering dead would be revered and shit. Like those... wandering sufis. Whereas the forests would be revered as cemetery-temples cause that's where all dead things are brought, to provide hosts AND food to the forest (it can't feed itself... unless a symbiotic living and dying ecosystem sprouts on the fungal forest too...?)

This explains why people bring offerings of fruit to the dead (Chinese do these things, do other cultures do this?)! In Padrycep-revering Oolycyst terms, they're providing foodstuff to the sacred forest-cemetery-temple-compost heaps!
The Wispian Oolicytes would have put injunctions against the Padryceps germinating more forest forms on new planets, hence why they are now almost entirely found in the zombie form.

I had an idea that the forest forms are needed to produce spores that are genetically stable. Zombies can produce spores on their own but, in evolutionary terms, they are meant to carry spores produced by the forests, in their natural state zombies making new zombies leads to degeneration, loss of memory and culture and ability. In the modern age perhaps genetic tweaking has fixed this.

But the modern Padryceps could revere the ancestral forests of their distant home as a spiritual home, a heavenly ideal. Their religion would be to spread the mystic wisdom of their ancient giant forms to other beings post mortem, making them one with the body of the Forest.
Wait, if there is a fatwa on new forests... and zombie walkers can't reproduce stable offsprings and can only make degenerates (ravenous zombie ghoul lich wights!)... how did the pre-modern Padryceps spread as a stable workable society?

Cause I was thinking scattered around space would be all sorts of forests, great and small, for minority populations of Padryceps and follower Oolycysts. These would be outright banned by some Wisp-worshippers, tolerated by more moderate factions, or supported in places ruled by allies.

Most of space would be understandably hostile of corpse-wearing, carcass-decomposing fungi-parasites. In (most) places, where forests are not allowed, Padrycep walkers could wander around like sufi mystic pilgrims, dervishes who do as you say - spread their faith by carrying forest-spores, hopefully in the kosher way by reanimating folks who've given their consent.

I am also thinking that Padrycep walker pilgrims are pilgriming because they are the eyes of the forest, and when they return home they'll share the sights they've seen with their sacred parent forests... by being absorbed by the forests.

This cool noble stuff doesn't mean the Padryceps aren't capable of evil, we can have isolated cults of Padryceps with small forests swindling and scamming people and being like Falun Gong weirdos.

I was also thinking that the wisp-worshipping Oolycysts... some might be influenced by djinn and wisps that might not entirely be altruistic. Or that the wisp-songs and energies they harness in crystals might sometimes be corrupted somehow... or perhaps the secret of wisp-messages is that they might not always contain any divine star-information, instead they can also unlock things within their listeners* and sometimes the things within their listeners' hearts and minds might be bad stuff. Devout wisp-Oolycysts get stigmatas, in domed structures where holes in the wall turn to patterned camera obscuras, etching burn-patterns of holy scripts on their flesh! They then cover the burns with pigment bandages, creating solar tattoos! Whereas the absolute fanatics grow those wisp-energy-absorbing crystals on their flesh!

*Shamans IRL use drugs and their effects on consciousness to... tap into personal aspects that already exist, though the drugs shuffle and reorient it to new perspectives. Perhaps the mentallic emissions of weirdo space-time sun creatures might have similar effects. Like temporarily doing a Vulcan mind meld with Dr. Manhattan. Maybe that's what the Myrranni Celestials discovered, that cosmic frequencies don't have to contain the voices of divine beings, merely amplify and refract the thoughts of the beholder, hence the introspection and meditation and brooding within Myrranni star-castels!

**Maybe Oolycysts' first ever off-world exploits involved setting up colonies closer to the sun, in either temple-space stations or by building mecca-shrines on their version of Mercury. The migration of the more extreme members of the wisp-worshippers, the ones extreme enough to build spaceships to go closer to the sun in the name of religion, might have decreased the population of lunatics on the Oolycyst homeworld, making the climate more friendly for the Padryceps and their followers! :D
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:I actually also mulled about Padryceps (damn I originally meant Padrycids but Padryceps has stuck!) ecologies.

The home and parent would be the forest, but the walkers would have to bring carcasses for the forests to germinate into, and to provide nutrition to the forest. Only dead things, hence the initial perception of Padrycep ghouls and corpse-stealers. Understanding Oolycysts figured it out and became all wise and shit and donated their dead to the forests, and these resurrected wandering dead would be revered and shit. Like those... wandering sufis. Whereas the forests would be revered as cemetery-temples cause that's where all dead things are brought, to provide hosts AND food to the forest (it can't feed itself... unless a symbiotic living and dying ecosystem sprouts on the fungal forest too...?)
The ecosystem is something I clearly hadn't thought about in all that much detail... a fungal forest would need to be either a parasite/symbiote on a plant forest or sitting on a giant compost heap. But the compost heap would have to be continuously renewed and it would need, I don't know, an army of zombies that genuinely would maraud around the countryside gathering food (most of which would be moldy bits of wood, but would still freak people out). Maybe as a compromise Padryceps could have large fruiting bodies acting as nerve centres for a giant forest network, with hyphae extending all around the local forest area ducking up micronutirients. In ancient times Padrycep civilisation could actually have moved around a lot more than you would think because fruiting bodies could die when an area dried up but new ones could be grown with their memories being transferred over.

The compost heap temples would therefore not be the entire forest, but like shrines within a forest taking the form of a set of giant mushrooms. These would be the focal points of padrycep civilisation. Padrycep zombies would, as time went on, develop their own form of agriculture where they produced Settler Units to prepare and fertilise areas to grow new fruiting bodies, just as they would go and colonise new areas to set up descendant forests.

Anyway, that would all be ancient history by now.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:
The Wispian Oolicytes would have put injunctions against the Padryceps germinating more forest forms on new planets, hence why they are now almost entirely found in the zombie form.

I had an idea that the forest forms are needed to produce spores that are genetically stable. Zombies can produce spores on their own but, in evolutionary terms, they are meant to carry spores produced by the forests, in their natural state zombies making new zombies leads to degeneration, loss of memory and culture and ability. In the modern age perhaps genetic tweaking has fixed this.

But the modern Padryceps could revere the ancestral forests of their distant home as a spiritual home, a heavenly ideal. Their religion would be to spread the mystic wisdom of their ancient giant forms to other beings post mortem, making them one with the body of the Forest.
Wait, if there is a fatwa on new forests... and zombie walkers can't reproduce stable offsprings and can only make degenerates (ravenous zombie ghoul lich wights!)... how did the pre-modern Padryceps spread as a stable workable society?

Cause I was thinking scattered around space would be all sorts of forests, great and small, for minority populations of Padryceps and follower Oolycysts. These would be outright banned by some Wisp-worshippers, tolerated by more moderate factions, or supported in places ruled by allies.
'Injunction' was probably too much of a blanket term. Like you said it would probably be mixed between different factions. Though my thinking was also that if a hardcore Wisp-church became dominant on the homeworld, the wandering zombie mystics could become the face of the Padryceps, going about the universe discreetly and gathering followers until they could set up a forest on another planet out of the church's control (I say church I don't know what Oolicyst Wisper religion is meant to be like). And older Padrycep satrapies could be descended from these little cults they established in the days of conflict and repression.
Shroom Man 777" wrote:Most of space would be understandably hostile of corpse-wearing, carcass-decomposing fungi-parasites. In (most) places, where forests are not allowed, Padrycep walkers could wander around like sufi mystic pilgrims, dervishes who do as you say - spread their faith by carrying forest-spores, hopefully in the kosher way by reanimating folks who've given their consent.
Exactly! Though as you say, 'hopefully', and I imagine that in desperate times, or where the forests are less wise and compassionate towards ambulators than might be hoped, you might get more traditional zombies when they start converting non-consenting corpses and even living beings, who would have to be subjected to torture or poisoning to weaken their immune systems. This would be a blasphemy in the whatever-a-mushroom-has-for-sense-organs of most Padryceps, the equivalent of using drug-addled child soldiers to a... well a person with a moral compass.

Though another source of conflict in the modern age could be post-padryceps who have amped up their spores so much they unavoidably start zombifying the peoples they encounter, essentially condemning themselves to a life devoid of contact and viewed as a pariahnic space plague.
Shroom Man 77 wrote:I am also thinking that Padrycep walker pilgrims are pilgriming because they are the eyes of the forest, and when they return home they'll share the sights they've seen with their sacred parent forests... by being absorbed by the forests.
Yes! Perfect! 8-)

Once a walker has gotten enough out of life, or when its body is dying, afterall the fungus can't keep a dead body moving forever, it gets buried and reabsorbed into its home forest and enriches it with life experiences. A new Padrycep colony will be judged to truly begin, not from the first to be born there, but the first to be buried. In fact, maybe new forests are started by burying a specially chosen walker, whose body forms the initial nutrients for the first fruiting body, and hose memories form the bedrock of its personality. Anybody who becomes this kind of walker is super-specially holy in the eyes of its fellows.

Also, I have an idea here about a padrycep sect: Some padryceps maybe believe they are a Karlack offshoot... Maybe some take that a step further and believe they, and maybe all life, are the seed-walkers of the Karlack swarm, and it is their duty to create NEW swarms, and/or is the destiny of civilisation to deliberately get itself eaten (in an attempt at the neologisms of SOTS I will call them the Apotheophagists :D ) and rejoin the cosmic forest. Essentially genestealer cults, but within a context that values religious freedom, so you would have televised debates where they try to convince everybody to embrace the swarm :)
Shroom Man 777 wrote:This cool noble stuff doesn't mean the Padryceps aren't capable of evil, we can have isolated cults of Padryceps with small forests swindling and scamming people and being like Falun Gong weirdos.
In their hundreds in Wild Space, I would imagine.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:I was also thinking that the wisp-worshipping Oolycysts... some might be influenced by djinn and wisps that might not entirely be altruistic. Or that the wisp-songs and energies they harness in crystals might sometimes be corrupted somehow... or perhaps the secret of wisp-messages is that they might not always contain any divine star-information, instead they can also unlock things within their listeners* and sometimes the things within their listeners' hearts and minds might be bad stuff. Devout wisp-Oolycysts get stigmatas, in domed structures where holes in the wall turn to patterned camera obscuras, etching burn-patterns of holy scripts on their flesh! They then cover the burns with pigment bandages, creating solar tattoos! Whereas the absolute fanatics grow those wisp-energy-absorbing crystals on their flesh!
That would certainly make a lot of sense, I mean anything a being of living starlight tells you will be hard to decipher and could easily just lead you to take messages from your own mind and interpret them as its will.

I love the idea of Oolicyst fanatics burning themselves with camera obscuras, great image. Keep in mind also that there could be a lay population that may or may not be in step with the priesthood/sangha/whatever, and rival heliotheological doctrines.

I had a thought maybe the homeworld could have been a red dwarf flare star, like in that... that discovery channel thing with the alien planets. The sun is actually only bright from some of the holy desert mesas, except for when it flares up which spreads radiation, but also allows gifted people to hear the songs of the wisps. The ancient Oolicysts could have been sandwiched between the priests of the mesas, communing with the wisps and telling them how to deal with the flares, and the Padryceps, insulated under the thick canopies of their forests.

I think the idea of the Padryceps making a break for it when the most fanatical Wispers sank all their efforts into colonising a planet closer to the sun is definitely workable.


OKAY, one more thing: The Oolicysts are fungaloid, or Zoofungaloid since they function like animals. Do you have any ideas of what fungal characteristics they might have? I had the thought that in reproduction they could have a disgusting alternative to the usual forms: Basically an Oolicyst gathers a pile of food, maybe one sex traditionally does this while the other takes care of the young, and then they both extend hyphal organs into the compost heap and germinate an Oolicyst spore inside, which slowly grows into a new fungoid larva-baby. To the Oolicysts this is the most beautiful miracle of life. To a human... it would be very rude to disagree with them about that, very rude indeed.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Speaker, you are a genius. Would it be okay if you did the honors of adding the Padryceps to the list? Siege and Vic already have entries. The list will be enawesomed by your typings.
speaker-to-trolls wrote:The ecosystem is something I clearly hadn't thought about in all that much detail... a fungal forest would need to be either a parasite/symbiote on a plant forest or sitting on a giant compost heap. But the compost heap would have to be continuously renewed and it would need, I don't know, an army of zombies that genuinely would maraud around the countryside gathering food (most of which would be moldy bits of wood, but would still freak people out). Maybe as a compromise Padryceps could have large fruiting bodies acting as nerve centres for a giant forest network, with hyphae extending all around the local forest area ducking up micronutirients. In ancient times Padrycep civilisation could actually have moved around a lot more than you would think because fruiting bodies could die when an area dried up but new ones could be grown with their memories being transferred over.

The compost heap temples would therefore not be the entire forest, but like shrines within a forest taking the form of a set of giant mushrooms. These would be the focal points of padrycep civilisation. Padrycep zombies would, as time went on, develop their own form of agriculture where they produced Settler Units to prepare and fertilise areas to grow new fruiting bodies, just as they would go and colonise new areas to set up descendant forests.

Anyway, that would all be ancient history by now.
Riiight! Yes. I forgot that plant forests would provide the decay needed for the Padrycep ancestral forests. Padrycep walkers (perhaps like the dead of Oolycyst jungle tribe allies) could protect the place from fungus-feeders, with the help of, say, domesticated geckoids that eat maggots and such. Domesticated insectivores.

The compost heaps would be for those nodes, as you say, or when Padrycep walkers try to set up new forests in lands that are less fertile, unable to sustain a plant forest/jungle. Say, steppes, where Padryceps would have to domesticate sheepoids and kill em for food and for compost.
'Injunction' was probably too much of a blanket term. Like you said it would probably be mixed between different factions. Though my thinking was also that if a hardcore Wisp-church became dominant on the homeworld, the wandering zombie mystics could become the face of the Padryceps, going about the universe discreetly and gathering followers until they could set up a forest on another planet out of the church's control (I say church I don't know what Oolicyst Wisper religion is meant to be like). And older Padrycep satrapies could be descended from these little cults they established in the days of conflict and repression.
Exactly! Though as you say, 'hopefully', and I imagine that in desperate times, or where the forests are less wise and compassionate towards ambulators than might be hoped, you might get more traditional zombies when they start converting non-consenting corpses and even living beings, who would have to be subjected to torture or poisoning to weaken their immune systems. This would be a blasphemy in the whatever-a-mushroom-has-for-sense-organs of most Padryceps, the equivalent of using drug-addled child soldiers to a... well a person with a moral compass.

Though another source of conflict in the modern age could be post-padryceps who have amped up their spores so much they unavoidably start zombifying the peoples they encounter, essentially condemning themselves to a life devoid of contact and viewed as a pariahnic space plague.
There could be a dichotomy within Padrycep societies, including post-Padryceps, where there are those who've turned their decomposer society roles into belief systems that... accept death and the impermanence of living things, themselves and non-Padrycep future corpse-hosts, but this is not fatalism or nihilism, it is the kind of eastern/oriental philosophy wherein through this acceptance and harmony, the believers are thus enable to stop fretting over mortality, transcend futile efforts that might be selfish and at the expense of others, and engage in more constructive efforts in their mortal lives and those of others. Selflessness and some kind of enlightenment and altruism and at least utilitarian constructiveness due to the understanding of morality and impermanence - the special meaning of the brief moments of existence.

Whereas the other side is that you have Padrycep death cults that have become fatalistic and nihilistic, a warped view believing that death, decomposition and thus Padrycep-hosting, is the ultimate fate of all beings, that living creatures are just meant to become fertilizers or corpse-hosts and their activities while alive, their actual mortal lives are meaningless - so consent is unnecessary and unwilling hosts are taken and zombified.

The enlightened Padryceps would have absolutely beautiful funeral rites.
Once a walker has gotten enough out of life, or when its body is dying, afterall the fungus can't keep a dead body moving forever, it gets buried and reabsorbed into its home forest and enriches it with life experiences. A new Padrycep colony will be judged to truly begin, not from the first to be born there, but the first to be buried. In fact, maybe new forests are started by burying a specially chosen walker, whose body forms the initial nutrients for the first fruiting body, and hose memories form the bedrock of its personality. Anybody who becomes this kind of walker is super-specially holy in the eyes of its fellows.
I am thinking the Padrycep fungi can... somehow reanimate the life processes of the dead, but yeah, it's not a Lazarus Pit/Elixir Vitae (though Padrycep mystics... wandering corpse-pilgrim mummies... might concoct attenuated forms of their own fungus to serve as medicines for the living!). The walkers and their hosts will eventually expire. Perhaps the Holy Chosen Walker you speak of, whose body, nutrients and memories are the foundation of the new forests... are also believed to... reincarnate or recur through history! As quasi-Messianic figures... Lamas!
Also, I have an idea here about a padrycep sect: Some padryceps maybe believe they are a Karlack offshoot... Maybe some take that a step further and believe they, and maybe all life, are the seed-walkers of the Karlack swarm, and it is their duty to create NEW swarms, and/or is the destiny of civilisation to deliberately get itself eaten (in an attempt at the neologisms of SOTS I will call them the Apotheophagists :D ) and rejoin the cosmic forest. Essentially genestealer cults, but within a context that values religious freedom, so you would have televised debates where they try to convince everybody to embrace the swarm :)
And even these would be split between the cynical nihilists who think that the lives of living beings are irrelevant and should embrace the afterlife that comes with assimilation (similar to more toxic Christians and other religions people who even relish in the suffering of life due to the promised rewards of afterlife... like Mother Teresa), contrasting with those who have a nicer view of the Circle of Life and see that creatures struggling to live and avoid becoming fertilizer/Karlack-food is still part of nature and so... while they profess that Karlacks are a natural order of things to be accepted in eventuality, they also have a positive view to the endeavors life forms have... including endeavors to stay un-eaten!


That would certainly make a lot of sense, I mean anything a being of living starlight tells you will be hard to decipher and could easily just lead you to take messages from your own mind and interpret them as its will.

I love the idea of Oolicyst fanatics burning themselves with camera obscuras, great image. Keep in mind also that there could be a lay population that may or may not be in step with the priesthood/sangha/whatever, and rival heliotheological doctrines.

I had a thought maybe the homeworld could have been a red dwarf flare star, like in that... that discovery channel thing with the alien planets. The sun is actually only bright from some of the holy desert mesas, except for when it flares up which spreads radiation, but also allows gifted people to hear the songs of the wisps. The ancient Oolicysts could have been sandwiched between the priests of the mesas, communing with the wisps and telling them how to deal with the flares, and the Padryceps, insulated under the thick canopies of their forests.

I think the idea of the Padryceps making a break for it when the most fanatical Wispers sank all their efforts into colonising a planet closer to the sun is definitely workable.
Aside from holy desert mesas, there could also be HOLY MOUNTAINS that stick through the canopies and the clouds and such, enabling contact with the sun flares.
OKAY, one more thing: The Oolicysts are fungaloid, or Zoofungaloid since they function like animals. Do you have any ideas of what fungal characteristics they might have? I had the thought that in reproduction they could have a disgusting alternative to the usual forms: Basically an Oolicyst gathers a pile of food, maybe one sex traditionally does this while the other takes care of the young, and then they both extend hyphal organs into the compost heap and germinate an Oolicyst spore inside, which slowly grows into a new fungoid larva-baby. To the Oolicysts this is the most beautiful miracle of life. To a human... it would be very rude to disagree with them about that, very rude indeed.
Eeeew! Yucks! Gross!

This is magnificent. The Oolycysts also puke digestive fluid to turn the compost heap foods into vomit that the spore can absorb.

Some Oolycyst variants could envelop the spore and the rotting food-yolk, in some sack which they can carry around like seahorses! So a "pregnant" Oolycyst can walk around showing a proud baby bump that smells like carrion.

Marsupial Myceloids!
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

"I was thinking" :P

The demise of the Oolycyst Golden Age, with the shitloads of dead and dying and diseased from the Bragulan ass-beating received by the once-mighty Oolycyst empire, plus the wars between the nations and the Karlack attack (perhaps even plagues, fungus-blight, that came from the Karlack attack) would see the discrediting of the Wisp-Sects (their solar-crystals did jack shit to stop their enemies) and the rise of all sorts of nihilism. This could have resulted in a short-lived dominance of the once-persecuted Padryceps, as the dead provided no shortage of hosts, and the grieving nihilistic populaces would have been susceptible to mystics and missionaries, be they of cynical or sincere persuasion.

So came the Padrycep Satrapy, which lasted however long it lasted, but the Padryceps are still minorities so eventually the Wisp-Sects regained some semblance of prominence and as times grew less nihilistic, the Padryceps also lost influence. All sorts of civil wars, schisms, reformations, sectarian conflict and in-sect infighting could have come about, purges whatever. The result is that the modern Satrapies are not dominated entirely by either one, the Padryceps' Padishah Emperor is pretty ineffectual and depends on the cooperation of the leading Wisp Sect - kind of like how the Saudi monarchy can't stand without the compliance of the powerful Wahabbist clerics who hate the royalty's guts. Both parties are still alive because they have something with which to blackmail the others with.

The Padryceps' ace in the hole is a White Bragulan noble or general, a war criminal who fled Bragspace during the Great Revolution because Byzon was about to stomp on his face forever. His flotilla of paleocruisers, teeming with Hyberist refugees, traveled as far as they could to escape the Byzonists and reached Satrap space. Millions of the Brag escapees were dead, the whole ordeal - of committing atrocities and being atrocified in turn traumatized the White Bragulan General and he became susceptible to the Padrycep mystics who took them in. In exchange for shelter and succor, he allowed his fallen comrades to be reanimated into Padrycep hosts, and a mutual agreement was had with him granted mastery over his own Satrap, a refuge for the remaining Bragulan survivors, as long as the general would act as the Padryceps' enforcer, together with their legions of ZOMBRAGULANS.

On the Wisp-Sects' side, I am thinking that Oolycyst pilgrims searching for divine suns ventured further than ever before, beyond the K-Zone, and blundered into a forgotten Myrranni star. And they lucked out, for the mistress of that sun had been in utter isolation for so long that she had completely lost herself to the frequencies of the sunheart, she was not only soulless, her own Myrrannity was gone! Armed with tech that was godlike by then-Oolycyst standards, yet bereft of her own memories and identity, she saw these groveling wretches and... was moved by their plight. She became their Saint and allowed the Oolycyst pilgrims to take her to their own star, a new stellar body for her to sate her curiosities with, along with an obedient flock, who she rewards by occasionally answering their prayers (and smiting their enemies!). She probably crafted likenesses of herself made out of solar matter - coronal constructs that the Oolycysts can keep in tabernacle-weapons, an Ark of the Covenant Mk. 2!

This resulted in an outpouring of other Oolycyst pilgrims who venture to even more distant stars in search of other Saints, which results in hilarity when they run into non-amnesiac Myrranni and hermitic Crysts.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Firstly, forgive me for missing anything.

So to get things straight, the Oolycysts (pentapod ambulatory fungoid creatures) and the Padryceps (intelligent fungoid zombie plague) eveolved together on the same homeworld, which is a steamy hothouse planet orbiting a flickering red star. It's probably easy to guess why photosynthesis didn't emerge as a worthwhile strategy (at least for the organisms living at the dim, cloud-shrouded ground level), so the primary producers in the food chain might have been chemovores or even thermovores, and there even may have been high efficient photosynthesizers that spend their lives in the upper atmosphere, catching the weak sunlight on massive but paper-thin films, their decaying remains raining down all over the planet to provide sustenance for the rest of the biosphere. I also admit that something like this also matches the overall theme and mood of the fungoids.

I'm not sure how plausible life evolving on a warmish Venus orbiting a dim red star (that also has solar flares) is in any case, but it does hint at a rather unstable situation in the long run, and perhaps this urgency informs the imperatives of the Oolycysts/Padryceps. Did the sun use to be more energetic, feeding a formerly vibrant ecosystem that is now cannibalizing itself? Are the solar flares stripping away at the thick atmosphere, weakening the greenhouse effect and slowly lowering global temperatures and causing everything to freeze? Or is the greenhouse effect still getting worse, and the ancient forests remember a time when the they could see the sun more often and everything wasn't as humid and moldy? Or true to the spirit of Nausicaa, is the current environment artificially caused by some bygone civilization that blew everything up, the maniacs? Just tossing random ideas out here.

Moving on to the Padrycep lifecycle, there could be a lot of different "mobile" forms out there given the fungi's liberal infestation abilities. Instead of repelling fungi-feeding insects, they could lure them in with spore-fruit and turn them into new infestation vectors. Many other animals dwelling in the Forest-forms could serve the Padryceps' interests in managing the ecosystem. Indeed, an important question is how smart these Padrycep-infected creatures can be. Obviously Oolycysts are the optimal Walker hosts because of their shared genetic heritage and compatibility, but I don't see much angst over the ethics of taking corpses if, say, the spores can turn any animal of sufficient size into a sapient, articulate missionary that can give back to the Forest. Or maybe I'm missing the assumption that only sapient hosts produce sapient Walkers, and only sapient Padryceps can pass on the proper contextual knowledge to perpetuate Padrycep civilization in the manner of all other sapient species.

I guess the angle I'd like to push is that although the Padryceps apparently function the Zerg (with centralized hatcheries and creep and everything), it doesn't mean that they can spread and reproduce like well-oiled von Neumann machines like other space zombie plagues (the Flood, the Beast, etc.) in science fiction. There's probably some deliberate and painstakingly learned effort that goes into maturing a Forest form, ensuring that its accumulated knowledge is preserved and spawning new Walkers that the Padryceps will do catastrophically without, just like if humanity forgets how to agriculture. Compounding the problem is that the primary vectors of knowledge are Walkers, who as unseemly reanimated corpses don't last very long...
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I like your suggestions, all of them.
Invictus wrote:I'm not sure how plausible life evolving on a warmish Venus orbiting a dim red star (that also has solar flares) is in any case, but it does hint at a rather unstable situation in the long run, and perhaps this urgency informs the imperatives of the Oolycysts/Padryceps.
Perhaps the wisps, or the Oolycyst sects' interpretations of the wisp-sayings stored in crystals (CRYSTALLINE SCRIPTURES!), urged them to leave the world, so some went and formed temple worlds closer to the sun to further their delusion and get even more solar stigmatas, while others went to their equivalent of Mars to do some terraforming, perhaps in anticipation of the expanding Goldilocks belt.

This could have lessened pressures on the Padryceps who stayed, with less persecutors to persecute them, and perhaps Oolycyst populations abandoned by the devout for impurities (Left Behind during their interplanetary Rapture!) could become unexpected allies. And later on, before the world was lost, the Padryceps were able to found new forests on other worlds or in space. Maybe the original forests still remain, in deep catacombs and canyons, with technological augmentations or environmental shielding to protect them from climate change - becoming a pilgrim site! Other forests send their walkers on journeys to other, fellow venerable forests to cross-pollinate their spores or something.
Moving on to the Padrycep lifecycle, there could be a lot of different "mobile" forms out there given the fungi's liberal infestation abilities. Instead of repelling fungi-feeding insects, they could lure them in with spore-fruit and turn them into new infestation vectors. Many other animals dwelling in the Forest-forms could serve the Padryceps' interests in managing the ecosystem. Indeed, an important question is how smart these Padrycep-infected creatures can be. Obviously Oolycysts are the optimal Walker hosts because of their shared genetic heritage and compatibility, but I don't see much angst over the ethics of taking corpses if, say, the spores can turn any animal of sufficient size into a sapient, articulate missionary that can give back to the Forest. Or maybe I'm missing the assumption that only sapient hosts produce sapient Walkers, and only sapient Padryceps can pass on the proper contextual knowledge to perpetuate Padrycep civilization in the manner of all other sapient species.
Some fungi-feeding insects could have devised countermeasures to survive infestation, but yeah, the Padrycep Forests can totally ensnare would-be predators (fungivores? herbivores?). Even the commensalistic, defensive insectivores, when they eventually die, could be possessed by Padryceps to continue their duties from beyond death!

I don't know if non-Oolycyst, non-sapient cadavers can produce sapient walkers. One part of me says that it would be unlikely, the brain-network might be insufficient... but then again, the other part of me says that it's awesome to have sentient sapient "forest spirit animals" that are undead but still communing with nature.

The biggest advantage of the sapient Oolycyst walkers is their relation with living Oolycyst societies that live in harmony and alliance with the Padrycep Forests.
There's probably some deliberate and painstakingly learned effort that goes into maturing a Forest form, ensuring that its accumulated knowledge is preserved and spawning new Walkers that the Padryceps will do catastrophically without, just like if humanity forgets how to agriculture. Compounding the problem is that the primary vectors of knowledge are Walkers, who as unseemly reanimated corpses don't last very long..
Hence the importance of the living Oolycyst societies living in harmony and alliance with the Padrycep Forests. Part jungle tribe, part shamano-monastic orders, without these guys who give their dead to the Padryceps and who have created entire faiths and societies around the cyclical nature of existence based on their realizations and revelations derived from the Padrycep Forests... the Padryceps would be screwed.

Hmmm... the Oolycyst Forest-Worshippers might have shamans who make pacts with the Padryceps, the very first stage of what becomes a Walker. The Oolycyst takes magic padrycep mushrooms, gets into all sorts of trips... perhaps due to neurotoxins in the shrooms and spores, they might even access the Padrycep Forest's ANCESTRAL MEMORY. This helps them become great nature shamans (maybe even unlock psychic powers?!). And... the fungus they consumed remain in their bodies. This is their pact, when they die the Padrycep takes over, turns the bodies into Walkers, and perhaps even absorbs the memories the Oolycyst had when still alive (since it was there in dormant form before death).

There could be weird half-living Oolycysts who, in bouts of immuno-suppression (fungus AIDS!), got really sick and the Padrycep spores started taking over when the guys were still alive. But they didn't die, so the fungus didn't fully take over... but their living immune systems try to fight it off so it sucks, its some stigmata, the price for achieving an even holier state! They could take immuno-suppressant drugs to weaken the immune system so the reaction won't be so severe, while still preventing the Padryceps from fully taking over the Oolycysts before they die.

Outrageous Idea: Oolycysts infected with Karlack fungus blight might inoculate themselves with Padrycep spores, so their own bodies AND the zombie-spores join forces to fight the Karlack blight.

Maybe consuming hallucinogenic Padrycep spores, aside from introducing fungi that will zombify you after your death, improves health... maybe the Padrycep fungus cells that wait in the living body actually help fight diseases.

Like, how humans' own symbiotic gut-microbes help keep people healthy, though when a person dies and when his/her immune system ceases functioning, these same microbes contribute to the inevitable decomposition. With no antibodies to moderate them, they start eating the dying cells. This also happens when the immune system is suppressed or compromised.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Vic: Maybe the Oolycysts initially started dosing themselves with spores to fight off Karlack diseases. So the Padryceps *were* vital to their early survival! And maybe prehistoric Oolycysts did rely/heavily utilize Padryceps as culture storage, resource and religious implements (like the primitive jungle tribes you mentioned). But eventually the Oolycysts invented writing, developed their hardtech and relied less on the Holy Forests, even as conditions on their homeworld worsened (maybe to the Padryceps' detriment). And then they invented radio, started picking up wisp signals and the rest is history.

Shroom: Also, the Padryceps and the Oolycysts may have evolved in different continents, so while ancient Oolycysts who reached their version of Asia or America ended up becoming one with the nature whatevers, those in other continents, who went to Padrycep-less places, would have developed differently.

The Padrycep-spores fighting Karlack disease, plus the sheer death and crap of the end of the Golden Age, would lead to a period of Padrycep dominance? I can imagine the once munificent Padrycep rulers eventually becoming abusive, even enacting laws like mandatory corpse donations, so you can have solarist Oolycysts committing self-immolation to render their corpses un-infestable and to protest!

And eventually, I am thinking secular Oolycyst heretics to both the Wisp-Sects and the Padrycep Forest-worshippers to emerge, after being sick and tired of all this intergenerational sectarian bullshit. Sometime after the end of the Golden Age and the formation of the modern Satrapies. They condemn these feudal superstitions... be all militant atheists, burning the temples, and then get funded by the Bragulan Star Empire! :twisted:
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

God, so much stuff here, I wish I had time to respond but, honestly I don't, sorries :(

Have added Padryceps to the master list, though, so that is something.
"Little monuments may be completed by their first architects, but great ones; true ones leave their copestones to posterity. God keep me from completing anything."
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