Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

The perpetually infighting NEUROM factions and sub-states don't have to be Space Mogadishu (well, they could be at the recently conquered fringes!), or at least the more developed core infighting ones could resemble more like the how large, great and super-powers periodically consolidate their disparate factions before closing into one huge fist to punch their next foreign conquest in the face. The infighting bureaus of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, the triumvirs and whatnots of the Roman Empire in its various stages, the tribes of the Mongols, Eurasia-Eastasia-Oceania, all that. NEUROM would have long periods, decades-long, wherein their expansionism grinds to a halt since the constituent polities have to decide who are the Top Dogs worthy to represent the All Father. Like how Sith Lords would realistically sort it out. Behind the scenes, these would be the various Ministry of Fate Inquisitors and Ministers and whatnot, whereas publicly it would be their allied/puppet strongmen, fuhrers, dictators, autocrats and generalissimos and juntas. It would be like an extended version of the US election cycle, from the period where each party elects its own candidate, to the part where the main candidates showdown for the big election... except with more shooting and screaming and paramilitary actions and purges. :D

This plays in with the All Father's mad delusion of super-objectivity. His ideology is his, his Ministers can have all sorts of interpretations of it, and their secular pawns - their immediate Muggle flunkies and the lower, unknowing and ignorant masses of fascists and whatnot, can harbor all sorts of ideologies. So we have this huge ass mass of clashing, mutating, evolving, social Darwinisming of ideologies. It remains authoritarian and horrific, yet the... FREE MARKET-ness of it all contrasts with the heavy handed, single-minded, ultra-orchestrated nature of the Byzonism of the Bragulan Star Empire. The greatest ideology of the universe! :twisted:

EDIT:

At some degree, the separation between Minister psychic-mindfuckery and NEUROM secular regimes' conventional memetic controls would blur into an indistinguishable nightmare web of ideological bullshit. Like... would guys drinking Fox News and Russia Today and, well, the huge masses of modern day great powers require psionics to manipulate?

It might be so bad that even the manipulators, the Ministers themselves, would be clouded by all sorts of bullshit so they're also operating on all sorts of biases and delusions while feeding biases and delusions to those below them.

(Whereas in Byzonism, I don't know how self-aware the bearucrats are at the higher levels. I think, like IngSoc, Byzonism acknowledges that it is purely a power trip of might makes right on a metaphysical nightmare level.)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I was thinking if the various planets and districts and sub-states of the Shen Rhapsody would be called Stanzas by the local Rhapsodistas.

I was also thinking, would it be cool if the Kerberi and Kerberos get renamed into Xerberi and Xerberos? Would Solarians like putting "Xs" in random names, or is that too terrible? It's not a major issue and we can totally get other names starting with X later.

Hmmm... I was mulling over diversifying the Phyrron sub-populations. Sub-cultures and such. I don't want them to be too orky, but sub-groups led by guise like THE WORLD RAPER OF ANTIOCH or something would be cool.

And also Speaker, do you have any cool concepts and ideas for the Sajit?

I was thinking that maybe the Sajit could share genetic heritage with the Goroks, but managed to avoid being turned into herd-pawns by the Traumfanger. And they can represent the more sustainable herbivore phenotypes of forest dwelling mammals like deer and such, whereas the huge ass herds of the Goroks would be akin to the roving hordes of African land mammals.

I was also thinking that maybe the Sajit, with their slow ponderous quadruped-forms, could be semi-photosynthetic? They could have engineered themselves to be so, to enhance their metabolisms? Like so: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/human- ... t-sunlight

And maybe their antlers could also be prehensile? Imagine a reindeer or a moose but with pseudo-rigid, pseudo-tentacly antlers. They could be biohacked and enhanced to denote privilege and such. The superior technologist Sajits could have the most intricate antler-manipulator devices. Biomechanical like, with tendors AND micro-servos?

And I wonder how prevalent are weirdo random biotech creaturoids, like non-Karlack but Karlack-ish creatures? Could ships that hit random hyperspace hazards risk getting its passengers devoured by space-sharks if it drops into the wrong ends of realspace?

Solarian Independent Offensive Units (IOUs), unmanned CI-controlled strike-craft, could be like doing drone-strikes around Wild Space, exploderizing pesky Gamma Sigma Calibrationist extremist groups! :D
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Shen Rhapsody monolith

I wonder if NEUROM would be territorially contiguous. Then again the map is meant to be like a metaphor of spheres of influence, not too literal.

There should be some non-phyrron weirdo immigrant native injun alienoids in the Fracture.

Phyronnic culture, hurgh. Could they even retain slaves? Maybe the higher ranking phyrron warmasters have. Slaves become commodities to be bartered, status symbols to show how badass they are. They can afford to keep shitbeaten enemies around as ornaments and not food. Cultural idiosyncracies of long-term not-killed phyrraxes! As they individualize depending on their circumstances and develop more behaviors aside from their kill-eat-conquer-repeat imperatives. Evo-psych! The perpetually-assaulted, and sardican-jihaded phyrrons of the green sea and the free-roaming basterds south of the Nexus and Auriga with their massive holdings and the nomadic piratic guys marauding the frontier and the malnourished groveling mercenary phyrraxes marooned in the K-Zone just struggling to get by and not get bragnuked or Solarian-dronestriked.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

A sudden non-speculative, not-too-vague addition to the Master List due to a really quick convo with Vic. I guess one of my more definitive, less ambiguous/hesitant/meandering ideas in the recent months. :P

Hybers - Also known as ghost nations. Catch-all term for societies that have lain dormant for various reasons - i.e. to avoid or wait out cosmic calamities, genocidal wars, and such - using various technological means to hybernate and re-emerge eons later, to more favorable climes and continue their existences. Many of these Hybers remain in hiding and are subject to spacer lore and myths of lost techno-treasures, while others have emerged from their vaults to pursue dreams of conquest, only to have their obsolescent legions crushed by the modern powers. There are those that, after decades of adaptation, have managed to re-integrate with cosmic civilization as either independent states or protectorates. Some Hybers, neither cryptic nor adaptive, are left as relict ‘aboriginals,’ marginalized ‘others’ seen as curious novelties either consigned to reservations or neglected and left in squalor to be exploited by criminal elements.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Some explanation on the changes made to the Master List and what we've done to the ongoing civil war in the Cascade and the Isopterids' involvement, which is going to be a recap of Shroom and my IM conversation last night and some further elaboration from me:

All American Civil War allusions aside, the divide between the Cascadian Freeworlds and the Laurentian League went way back when the proto-Laurentians were founded as resource colonies for the Cascadian homeworlds, and growing inequality and exploitation compelled the Laurentians to secede and form the League. This is still largely true in the current version, except the Isopterids are now involved.

When the first settlers came into the region of the Cascade that will be known as Laurentia, the Isopterids were already there, hip deep in their own colonization efforts. The Isopterid effort likely consisted of many sub-groups, considering that any species (particularly the subaltern, technologically primitive ones) can adopt isopterid biomorphs and start identifying themselves as Isopterids (and be indistinguishable from the outside), but there was at least something of the usual guild structure in charge*. They helped the inexperienced humans in establishing self-sustaining colonies and adopting Isopterid biotech, but didn't really reckon the sheer speed at which the human settlements started overtaking theirs. Maybe this branch of the Isopterid diaspora was slowly cultivating their colonies for sustainable, long-term development, while the humans prioritized short-term resource gains, and had a whole nearby interstellar empire to subsidize them and crack the whip at their backs. Anyway, regardless of prior gratefulness and treaties, the Laurentians on the whole started to displace the Isopterids, plundering their laboriously gathered resource sockpiles and the fruits of their long-term terraforming to satisfy their own economic imperatives. Military conflicts start to ignite between the humans and the Isopterids, even as relations between the colonists and the homeworlds begin to sour.

Instead of being some clear-cut thing between the tolerant and progressive Cascadians and the conservative and xenophobic Laurentians, we already begin to see many dimensions here. Despite the continuing disdain and economic imperialism heaped on the Laurentian colonists, the Cascadians did send military aid to help battle the Isopterids, which created a whole new dimension of bad blood between them and the humans who could claim to be innocent. Plenty of Isopterid groups had their territorial treaties respected and never went to war with their human neighbors, and trade carried on between the old and new colonists at all times. The cosmopolitan tolerance that defines Cascadia was largely fueled by wealth they extracted from the Laurentians, which they may have obtained through trade from the Isopterids. And the Cascadian homeworlds certainly weren't very tolerant initially when the brushfire conflicts got bad enough for Laurentian refugees to start fleeing back, only to get sent to refugee camps as FOOKIN PRAWNS when they had been so hybridized and adapted over the generations that the homeworlders barely recognized them.

Meanwhile, things got worse on both sides. The insidious influence of the Fracture creeps in, calcifying the Laurentian colonies so that couldn't move beyond being resource extraction states (externally imposed as it was), and the grinding brushfire conflicts slowly stripped away all goodwill for the Isopterids and leaving a xenophobic resentment against all outsiders. The number of refugees in Cascadia swelled (and many of them may even be non-human Isopterids, looking for shelter anywhere) until even the ruling Guilds in Laurentia started getting concerned. This triggered reforms on the Cascadian end which in turn sparked the beginnings of true multispecies tolerance, and eventually the Guilds and the Cascadians even made a historical agreement to treat all Isopterids with full rights and accommodations, in return for the Guild taking sides with Cascadia over all conflicts in the Laurentian region. This naturally outraged the Laurentians, who saw it as their two enemies teaming up against them, and declared full independence from Cascadia. Concurrently, many Isopterid tribes and groups who never felt the brunt of war or never liked the dominance of the Guilds over their affairs also jumped ship and sided with the newly established Laurentian League. And while the Cascadian Freeworlds at this point had a well-established enough economy and trading network to survive the loss of resources from Laurentia, there certainly would have been a lot of people who enjoyed the status quo. And both sides have their Isopterid influences.

*The Isopterids are scattered in space and technically comprise of many disparate species, but retain organization and continuity through the genetic memories that permeate the lineages of their utility bio-morphs. And these genetic memories tend to call back to the original Isopterid guilds of their lost homeworld, based on specializations of function. But while scattered, the Isopterids tend to be too successful to be counted as Hybers, and in fact are disliked by certain Hyber-conservationists for their tendency to erase the cultural and biological distinctiveness of disadvantaged species who accept their biomorphs and join them.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Minor note though, I originally conceived the genetic memories as actual... DNA-encoded wikipedias and Encartas for the original, "true" scattered Isopterid colonists, memoirs of their lost home and such. And their guild-castes wasn't an original trait existing in the homeworld's days, but evolved later on due to the necessity of terraformation and bio-augments. Terraformer Isopterids would have to specialize in professions, and these would be reflected in the biomorphs they used, and these would be passed down to the next generations - like family businesses, or doctor/lawyer/whatever families.

It'd be a evo-psych thing, playing with the cliches of a "bug hive caste race" and explained it as having come about due to the diaspora and the Tough Things they had to do to survive, etc.

Modern Isopterid societies have holdovers of this, but even their current caste-guilds are radically different cultures from those of their original settler-ancestors.

Who knows what the Orb Weavers and the Nexus Isopterids are like. I think the Orb Weavers are more purist, whereas the Nexus Isopterids - genetically, species-ally fluid biomorphs + the wanton symbiotics of the Samtic alliance? That's gonna be insane. Even Cascadian Isopterids with their inter-species transgenics would consider their Nexus kin to be overly liberal. :D
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Minor note though, I originally conceived the genetic memories as actual... DNA-encoded wikipedias and Encartas for the original, "true" scattered Isopterid colonists, memoirs of their lost home and such. And their guild-castes wasn't an original trait existing in the homeworld's days, but evolved later on due to the necessity of terraformation and bio-augments. Terraformer Isopterids would have to specialize in professions, and these would be reflected in the biomorphs they used, and these would be passed down to the next generations - like family businesses, or doctor/lawyer/whatever families.

It'd be a evo-psych thing, playing with the cliches of a "bug hive caste race" and explained it as having come about due to the diaspora and the Tough Things they had to do to survive, etc.

Modern Isopterid societies have holdovers of this, but even their current caste-guilds are radically different cultures from those of their original settler-ancestors.

Who knows what the Orb Weavers and the Nexus Isopterids are like. I think the Orb Weavers are more purist, whereas the Nexus Isopterids - genetically, species-ally fluid biomorphs + the wanton symbiotics of the Samtic alliance? That's gonna be insane. Even Cascadian Isopterids with their inter-species transgenics would consider their Nexus kin to be overly liberal. :D
That's entirely right.

But the Orb Weavers - purist? Fiercely independent, sure, both from their former Myrrani masters and the earthbound traditions of mainstream, 'Masonic' Isopterids. But they do team up with the 'pure' Crysts, and those guys are hardly the most accommodating bunch out there, considering that their defining event in history was to launch a genocidal campaign on a bunch of other Cryst who didn't evolve 'right'.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Okay, we'll suss the details out of the Tapestry and detail it beyond [shroom]"cool, crystal bugs and squishy biomorph bugs join forces because... bugs!"[/shroom]

The pure original Crysts only became genocidal when, to their point of view, the Samtics were infecting and mutating the crystalline essences of their un-uplifted kin. The Orb Weaver Isopterids don't do that, so they don't constitute a threat, and also assisted them against the mutual threat of the Myrran.

Their social dynamics beyond combating the Myrran and hyperspace construction projects (Cryst arrays, hyperspace crystal-coagulation, and Weaver hypersilk-roads) need detailing.

By "purist" I meant, maybe the Orb Weavers' populations are still mostly of original Isopterid genetics. But I see holes in this now since the Myrranni plantations could incorporate other species toiling alongside the Isopterids, and the proliferation of Isopterid biomorphs (nice term!) could have enabled the disparate races to come together and contributed to the eventual revolt. The Orb Weavers could be purist if there were no other species enslaved in that area by the Myrran.

This brings the possibility of antisocial, individualistic middle-class Myrran being assimilated into the Orb Weavers and the Tapestry through the biomorphs which could somehow cause their socialization - either by choice or forced upon them by the Isopterid and Isopteromorph/biomorph rebels.

So different peoples utilizing the biomorph could actually be unified in an emancipatory way, almost akin to the Samtic Nexus' symbiotics - except the Isopterids' biological transformations don't involve sentient components, but rather non-sentient biomorph augments that turn folks into terrafoming Guyvers (as Vic puts it).
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Hmm, I do take your point on the unifying, empowering effect of Isopterid biomorphs (though I didn't come up with the name, it's what the 40K Tyranids call their living wargear) and how it can theoretically be adopted by any other species. There is a bit of similarity to all the other varieties of biotech out there, but I guess it's a big and busy galaxy. Myrrans would certainly not be exempt. Though if biomorphs are generally non-sapient and those ancestral memories are little more than the equivalent of technical databases, I'd also say that just putting on Isopterid Guyver-suits provides no inherent unifying effect - the modern Guilds form because their hosts decide to accord significance to the lineages of their tools.

As for the nature of the Tapestry...I can tell you about the images I currently have of them, but I want to presage that with just how weird they're going to be. The Crysts are like partially-psychic, potentially non-discrete entities that live in crystal tree networks, which aren't even necessarily motile. And between them you've got bugs wearing other bugs that live in hyperspace. They might just be the most alien society in SOTS so far - even the Karlack swarms just go by RULES OF NATURE and the Kerberi live for single-minded imperatives over everything else.

That said, I did kind of picture the Tapestry as this highly regimented place where everything is configured for maximal defensive value. They lack the expansionistic ambitions of other second-tier alien powers like say the Goroks, but they're also undertaking cosmic engineering on a scale that not even the Nexus contemplates. I had this idea that the very presence of their hyperspace webs casts a shadow over neighboring space, disrupting all FTL travel and hyperspace use. Sure, both constituent species share this ground state of just wanting to be left alone to build and drift in peace, but both species have also 'lost their innocence' in a way. The Orb Weavers have split from their kind and escaped Myrranni servitude, while the Cryst almost lost themselves to becoming nothing more than living weapons. They know they can't afford to just chill around spreading good vibes by playing psychic resonance-melodies off cosmic hyperstrings.

Or is that what they're doing :o
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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The Orb Weavers could mod biomorphs to resocialize Myrranni.

I was thinking that even amongst the Weavers of the Tapestry (ooh that has a nice ring to it), there would be more socialized Isopterids who deal with Zigonian circuses, rogue traders and even harbor refugees or whatever, and they get lots of monies from selling their super-exotic hyperstrings. This would contrast to more paranoid Weavers who just want non-Tapestry folks to GET OFF MY LAWN.

I really don't know how Crysts would be like in everyday life, when they don't have to act like menacing dread-crystal-arrays to Myrranni threats (and Samtics they dislike), how they'll get along with Isopterids and potentially others in the Tapestry state. They'd listen to the universe, transmit and receive weird ass signals... shepherd hyperspace dolphins?

(Also, Shepherd space-creature ranchers vs. Meropian cyber-barons!)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

To address Shroom's question to me about the Sajit:

I haven't really got much beyond the tagline in my head: 'not Tech Priests but Tech Brahmins'. Unfortunately I know nothing about Brahminism, so all that has got me is a vague idea that the Sajit have a belief in some kind of mathematical mysticism and a sort of artificial transalien system of reincarnation, along with an artificial system of karma.

To explain: The Sajit have worked out what they believe is a mathematical system for morality, and have installed karma calculators to work this out for tjeir people. Your karma calculator basically defines what kind of being you should be, and this actually lines up with what an individual wants for themselves a lot of the time since this isn't just a matter of working out if a little elephantoid has been naughty or nice, it weighs up stuff like desires and personal proclivities and social context into the mix.

Most Sajit begin life as biological baselines and progress through life going from one mechanical body to another, their personality changing as they grow. I also had the idea that though the calculators work out how and if they can advance, Sajit expect to design their next body or body modification as a right of passage.

I haven't worked out all the kinks in this idea, not by a long way. What I know is that a lot of Sajit have basically uploaded themselves to spend all their time contemplating ultramathemystics, the ones out plying the cosmos as Space Pikemen are outliers, but generally they believe this too is part of developing their karma.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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That is incredible. Holy god.

Maybe there is a council of karmic judges with the Sajit, comprised of the ultra-contemplative ones, those who won the karma-tests and attained the higher states, linked to freakish Orwellian observation arrays or extrapolating from the inborn karma-meters grafted onto each Sajit.

With or without these councils, there are grading periods for when generations of Sajit are judged, when they thus undergo transubstantiation, transmutation, the next stage of post-Sajit upgrades (or downgrades) bestowed upon them meritocratically (at least in intent).

Dissidents of the philosophical criteria of karmic judgment, lawbreakers, and those fearing karmic failure, could flee the mainstream Sajit societies, or form the untouchable underclasses, or gravitate towards alternative Sajit countercultures proposed by deviant, divergent Sajit buddhas or some such.

For the sake of fairness, ordinary Sajit citizens have to make a choice to become subject to these insane karmic cycles of uplifting? Though in some Sajit societies, due to social pressures and prejudices, opting out of this way of life might not be an option.


Suggestion:

Perhaps, in some heretical nightmare legend, it is said that the very first karmic judges were not even Sajit at all, but mysterious unknown uplifters, and the original Sajits were Goroks who attained enough merit (or demerit) to be turned into the present Sajits.

In other, more accepted amongst the meaner more racist Sajit sects, the Goroks could have been Sajits but for their mistakes they were degraded and turned into a whole different species after karmic assessment. :twisted:

But there's no reason why Goroks and Sajits could be related at all aside from being neighbors due to close proximity and rivals of the Bounty region. Sure, they both have horns, but hey.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

I am not sure about the idea of Karmic Judges because I imagined the Karma system as being kind of...

OK, I am not sure how karma is actually supposed to work or if there are supposed to be gods who hand out the karma, but I have always got the impression that it is meant to be an entirely impersonal, almost mechanical, force, a kind of moral gravity. So, my idea was that the calculators run on a system which, while originally designed by Sajit mathsages in eons past, does not, in theory, need to actually be administrated by them in the present. The system is meant to be perfect and perfectly able to work on its own to regulate the proper placement of an individual in life without outside interference.

This is also based on some discussions I have had, years ago now, with mathematicians and their insistence that mathematics is perfect despite being created by imperfect beings (this was also used as a counterargument against some argument for the existence of God, but I can't remember the details of the For argument so I won't get into that). In practice the system is probably far from perfect when dealing with actual people (Sajit), but for the people creating it the criteria had moved from functionality to elegance some time ago, so they missed a few things.

I am not trying to insult mathematicians, by the way, this is just where my thoughts wandered.

ANYWAY.

There would definitely be like... ruling councils in the Sajit Ranges (the name for a Sajit polity, by the way, is a Range, the Ranges are not united but are cordial with each other) but I'm not sure what their roles would be exactly. My thought is that a Sajit is kind of only allowed to improve themselves in a certain way if the calculator allows, so other Sajits would judge people based on what their calculators allowed or disallowed them to do or how it allowed them to be incarnated.

You could definitely be downgraded for bad karma, and offshoot species being the result of karmic punishments is a distinct possibility. There could be whole planets or habitats of demoted Sajits and their offspring kept as Dalit vassals by their karmic betters who are kind of caretaking them until they redeem themselves (as they see it).

I am imagining there could be a way to cheat the calculators somehow, or disable them, and some Sajit sects or subcultures would aim to do just this, and exile themselves or be exiled, to the Sajit mainstream they would be untouchables but to themselves someone who broke away from the tyranny of karma would be a Buddhaphant to be revered.

But some would want to bring these wayward heretics back into the fold of the algorithms and become missionaries, maybe.

-This is a lot longer than it was intended to be

On the Gorok and Sajit being related... if you think it would work, but it isn't necessary. Also, Sajit horns are, as mentioned, kind of biological trumpets, their windpipes run through them... not sure if Gorok horns are the same :P
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I was wondering, maybe the start of this techno-karma system was when an ancient pre-karmic Sajit society did something really really bad and so because of this boo-boo, Sajitkind voluntarily enter a CYCLE OF REPENTANCE putting their entire species or something to atone for their sins and make themselves worthy of regaining whatever cool shit they have.

The mechanism of techno-karma could be a psycho-historical computator or something, an algorithm, like if the hologram of Hari Seldon was some kind of llama. A whole moral system based on a steroidified, esoteric mysticalized version of the Seldon Plan. This would be how the Sajit transcend their own faults, their equivalents of Fracture (in some respect, they might see the human Fracture as a super-stroke of super-bad karma... which it kind of is, if you think about it).

"Punished" Sajits forming Dalits that are super-shunned because instead of working "up" to restore karma,they instead work down through further defiance or work sideways and sidestep the whole karmic system, with the emergence of buddhas and whatnot, could manifest as the transformation, transmutation of baseline Sajits and degraded Sajits into all sorts of other variable forms.

If we go with the Goroks being a mutated, extremely radically altered Sajit offshoot that renounced the karma... this could be why they're not so elephant sized, but they evolved to be totally bipedal and their horns hardened into fighting appendages. A ritualistic "deformation" of the Sajit form which, by Gorok standards,would be their version of "transcendence." The Traumfangers could be further incorporated as the demon deities that led these ex-Sajits off the path of the karma.

But this is really too much, I have a bad tendency to want to connect things with each other. This is unnecessary.

What is cool though is for lower-tech completely non-Sajit societies to become vassals/allies/partners whatever by subscribing to the karmic system and thus gaining karmic rewards for good behaviors, namely lots of augments and cool as toys. Just like how in ancient times, religious conversions and such of whole societies and nations were due to geopolitical necessities, trade and the need to get cool shit (being peddled by say the Christians or Muslims) in order to crush other people nearby who they didn't like.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

RE: Techno-Brahmin Sajits

I think the idea of the Sajits as the arbitrators of a paradigm that weds pan-transhumanism to assessments of moral merit, both relying on an external system of high technology, is v. tight and makes for a sound foundation on which to build the rest of the landscape of the Bounty on.

As I briefly mentioned in the Master List entry, the Bounty is really, really lousy with sapient species for some reason. This obviously means that more civilizations from the region manage to make it into space than usual, but this also means that they all give a leg up on each other. Higher civilization density means it's easier to find space neighbors and exchange culture and technology through trade or war. A preponderance of indigenous life with potential for sapience means a particularly advanced civilization doesn't have to look particularly far or try as hard to uplift themselves some client species to share stuff with. And if you're an an up-and-coming tool-using species who is looking to the stars, it's certainly more likely (and less effort) that you'll leapfrog by importing technology and social principles from the starfarers who're already out there rather than reinvent the wheel on everything.

What I'm getting at is that with its species density the Bounty ought to be a milieu, a place where everyone rubs elbows with everyone else, where fundamental precepts of technology, perspective and mores are taught rather than invented and have been transmitted from older to younger species since time immemorial (or at least, from what is definitely some other species' brain at some point in the past), and everyone is linked by chains of patronage and seniority and every conceivable shade of colonialism and diplomacy into what looks very much like a single web. It's definitely not some untouched wilderness of primitive talking animals (like a certain expanse of SDNW4 NPCs) that was only shaken out of its tranquility when the Myrran Nation attacked. There was plenty going on before that.

And the Sajit were, until the Goroks happened, on top of that.

If the Sajit have amassed a hierarchy of clients by dint of seniority and technological attainment, their karma system could serve as a useful backbone for their hierarchy. Having a universal, highly meticulous, impartial and mathematical (or at least technically - nothing is ever as fun with fantastic moral systems as academics wrangling millennia of baroque precedent and exegesis) set of rules that everyone lives by is also more interesting than the canard where the empire measures worth by how much like the rulers the various subjects are. Its legitimacy would only be enhanced if the Sajits themselves only (or claimed to have) inherited the system, thus proving that it favors no-one (but also that the Sajit are totally worthy rulers because the system put them on top anyway).

And with this karmic system in place we don't even need to have other species be able to transmigrate into superior Sajit with enough merit, or different species having different mandated social roles and stuff (though making each reproductively incompatible species its own caste-equivalent does fit). The Sajit are the Brahmin, the priests and the holy assessors to whom everyone must turn to for guidance, and that's plenty enough to keep them in charge over a loose but diverse hierarchy where authority is mostly derived more from legitimacy. Their profitable setup can even be seen as a culmination of Bounty-as-milieu, a system which allows everyone to coexist.

But the Goroks just don't do coexist.

Again, it doesn't matter whether the Sajit and the younger, more belligerent Goroks are evolutionary offshoots or not, since under my model of the Bounty they'll end up sharing a lot of history anyway. Mere belligerence shouldn't have been enough to upset the Sajit's meta-karmic hierarchy, which is old and already has survived a lot, but the Goroks have, as natives of the Bounty do, absorbed their own ideas. It's only that these ideas come from outside the Bounty entirely, being radical Byzonism fed by expert Bragulan agitators, taking root in a particularly blunt and toxic form that's being implemented with the zeal of the convert. And if our own history is any judge, sweeping totalizing ideologies tend to trump those that centralize power less determinedly...

And that's not getting into the psychic parasites who are literally riding herd over the Gorok collective unconsciousness, pumping whatever they are pumping into their psyche.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Oh right, I forgot to pitch the chat-originated idea in here, wherein the Gorok Phalanges could have originated as a bunch of despots motivated by Bragulan advisors, who convert Byzonism into their own ideology, like Maoism was derived from Stalinism. Their Byzonism could involve grotesque agriworld-formation, like how Maoism wanted to turn the whole nation into farmer peasantry. So the Sajit engage in huge world-wrecking agri-forming projects. They might even have strategic weapons resembling Genesis Devices and Virus Bombs, except it turns normal habitable environments into nothing but fertilizer for Gorok agriformers.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

VIC:

I like the idea of the Bounty being a close-knit ecosystem of civilisations, each one feeding off each other from an early stage so that species getting into space of their own accord would be abnormal rather than the rule (to be honest I always thought this was a much more likely way for a galactic milieu to work, rather than every species climbing all the way up from Kardachev 0-2 on their own). I also did imagine the Sajit as the elder statesmen of their own United Federation of Planets and the approach you suggest is a good way to enact that without having it necessarily be literally true.

To make sure the karmic system is, as I said, not just judging if you have been naughty or nice, maybe there are vast cognometric-mechanical-whatevery processes continuously working out a community-planet-system-species' place in the world, where they fit in and what they are good for, and in paralell to this each individual is being judged according to their own actions. And the end result could be, as you said, each species or community or whatever being nudged along its own path into a particular role, while individuals can sometimes break out of this, or become extraordinary leaders, or transmigrate to other species, these would be the exceptions, for the most part a species would stick to its niche.

There could be a disingenuous habit among the Sajit of claiming everyone is Separate But Equal, and we all have different roles to play. Our role is keeping the entire system of moral science that underpins civilisation itself running, but your role of dredging hyperspace canals is just as important :P

So, are we now thinking the Gorok Wars are the thing that shattered the Sajit's hold on the Bounty and the relative peace that entailed? With the Myrrans just taking advantage of the chaos? Or might there be something a little less obvious at work.

PS: SHRUM:

I tried to think of a character who was some kind of herd leader to name Gorok Byzonism after and I remembered Colonel Hathi from the Jungle Book, what do you think; Hathinism? Hatheyism?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

SPEAKS:

I understand what you mean by galactic milieus and how they provide shortcuts to the development of any fledging species, though I assumed that on average, species in SOTS didn't run into each other until they've managed to develop spaceflight on their own, and then maybe they form cordial neighbors or integrate or wipe each other out, as lots of examples in this universe illustrate. Unlike the Sajits' karmic federation or their relatively close neighbors the Samtic Nexus, there's no central authority to enforce a formal framework for mentor and client relationships between species so they just do whatever.

I should also clarify that taking off from your example of species pulling themselves up the Kardachev scale, my idea is that every species that comes out of the Bounty have the potential to do that on their lonesome - but the sector is crowded enough that they've learned to benefit from living with each other anyway. Again contrast the existing members of the Samtic Nexus, who were either spacefaring civilizations of their own or were biologically uplifted by the Samtics from base stock that never had the potential for civilization. The Vorri are the major exception to that, but the Vorri practically count as a Bounty émigré anyway.

And regarding the potential technical and ecological niches that the Sajit sort everyone else into: the Goroks are terrific context-wreckers on that front as well. They demolish landscapes and ecology with their virus bombs just as readily as they devastate populations. Only that I think the Gorok threat is a relatively recent one, just explosively expansive. The Myrrans on the other hand have been nibbling away at the Bounty for a long time now - I imagine all their conquests being rather desultory in a way. A lot of things went into catalyzing the Gorok Phalanges into existence: their escape from Myrrani captivity; their resentment at the Sajit system; the Traumfanger infestation; Byzonism happening to take seed; even the recent aggressive moves by the Nexus to more firmly incorporate the Vorri in response to setbacks in the K-Zone. The Goroks are in many ways the perfect shitstorm.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Hathists?

I don't know how to chronologically align the Cthonemesis, the Myrranni invasions of the Bounty, and the Goroks' emergence.

There is a linear progression of the Gorok's emancipation from the Myrranni (due perhaps to the Ascendancy's chaotic state during the Chtonemesis), perhaps due to Byzonist revolutionaries exemplified by the Hathi, then the infestation of the Traumfangers, their Gorok-Bragule Split*, the consolidation of the Phalanges and their dominion over their corner of the Bounty after repulsing Myrranni, Sajit AND Samtic influences, perhaps due to the conflicts/tensions between the three... enabling the emergent Goroks to leverage them against each other. (*Bragulan advisors who survived the sudden Gorok purges would return to Bragule and babble about ghost-daemons and dream-devils assisting the Goroks in their conquests, and the IBGV would have them sectioned as ideologically impure lunatics succumbing to ridiculous feudal superstitions :P )

But the Chtonemesis might have happened multiple times, the conflict could be a recurring one, while there was a First Chtonemesis to see the emergence of the Chtonemesis, there might have been succeeding Chtonemesis (events) caused by the Chtonemesis (noun, political entity). And the resulting chaos of each Chtonemesis would A.) distract the Myrranni Ascendancy from its subjugation of Myrranni and non-Myrranni subjects (such as Goroks, and the Isopterids of the Tapestry + their Cryst allies, enabling aboriginal revolutions... it would also B.) enable other Myrranni aspirants and rogue houses to break off from both the Ascendancy's hierarchy and the Chtonemesis' control to either join the FERAL CONSTELLATIONS or to begin a conquista to push into the Bounty and establish a fief there.

And this is not even going into the Khelerene, Talonworld standoffs with the Myrranni before, during and after the Khelerene's incorporation into the Samtic Nexus.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

So essentially the Bounty is paying for the weakness, or absence, of the Myrran central government. Harsh :P

I am rethinking my original conception of the Bounty as completely balkanised and the Sajit as aggressively isolationist. Maybe the Sajit Ranges really are refuges where the people of the Bounty can find succour against the encroaching hordes, with the Sajit letting them come in to develop their karma and try to re-establish their karmic alignments. Only high class types who can demonstrate their karma has not been contaminated by derangement of the warzones would be allowed on Sajit habitats or planets proper, but there would be refuge planets which could become thriving cosmopoli in their own right, centres of order and safety and commerce. And those wandering Swiss Pikesajit could be more of a concerted effort to re-establish the old order and hold the fort against the invaders, warrior-guru-scientists trying to bring hope to a universe beset by darkness.

Of course I want to be careful about this because the Bounty should still be a complex place rather than a simple beleagured siege state.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Oh, you can definitely have your cake and eat it. The Sajit Ranges, little fortress-states filled with multispecies refugees, can be quite fragmented and isolationist - when compared to what they were before the Gorok advance. Inside the Ranges the metakarmic hierarchy functions on, albeit reduced in scale and warped in its purpose: it's struggling to properly judge species who are themselves struggling to find new niches; the Sajit themselves are struggling to compensate for their own active hand in protecting their charges, while at the same time trying to patch the fallout that resulted from morally writing off large parts of the universe; and most insidiously, the karmic metrics of these multiple isolated states are diverging now that they can no longer calibrate against each other.

On the other hand, the Goroks haven't grown far enough to menace the whole of the Bounty, and it wouldn't be the case that various other parts of the sector can't mount their own semi-successful defenses against the Phalanges.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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There could be non-Sajit proponent/missionaries of the metakarmic system, guise who've taken Sajit blessings and run away with it and use it for their own ends to become regional despots. Isolationist Sajit would have to get off their butts and rectify this, if they wish to.

Could there be other Traumfanger cults in other races? Could it be so bad that the Traumfangers actively breed and cultivate their hosts (like the Gorok civilization) and pit them against each other, to ensure the survival of the fittest host-society-organism, either for the good of all the remaining Traumfangers or maybe its a winner takes all thing and the losing Traumfangers can die with their loser societies or be relegated to the petty local leaders of their marginalized host-societies, under the thrall of the Traumfangers and their host Goroks?

(Also, in this case, how similar would the Traumfangers be to the Overlords, then?)
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

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Invictus wrote:Oh, you can definitely have your cake and eat it. The Sajit Ranges, little fortress-states filled with multispecies refugees, can be quite fragmented and isolationist - when compared to what they were before the Gorok advance. Inside the Ranges the metakarmic hierarchy functions on, albeit reduced in scale and warped in its purpose: it's struggling to properly judge species who are themselves struggling to find new niches; the Sajit themselves are struggling to compensate for their own active hand in protecting their charges, while at the same time trying to patch the fallout that resulted from morally writing off large parts of the universe; and most insidiously, the karmic metrics of these multiple isolated states are diverging now that they can no longer calibrate against each other.
Yes! Thank you, this is what I had been looking for in terms of an effective 'space as savannah, war as drought' metaphor. More fundamental than commerce being cut off (since a star system can probably be self-sufficient at a push) the chaos means the metakarmic system breaks down because it doesn't have access to the full range of information. It's a spiritual, psychological process of entropy.
Invictus wrote:On the other hand, the Goroks haven't grown far enough to menace the whole of the Bounty, and it wouldn't be the case that various other parts of the sector can't mount their own semi-successful defenses against the Phalanges.
I had been thinking a bit about the other species too. I don't have a name for them yet, but I imagine a species that could be belittled by the term 'warrior race', who could be some kind of vegetable people. Not sure about the details exactly, something like Triffids with spaceships, and also with some kind of latent psychic ability because I like the image of them growing a special telepath caste to make 'psychic gardens', maybe to act like pitcher plants and lure enemy ships into traps. I imagined them initially as filling the hyena role in the Bounty-as-savannah idea, skulking around in elephant graveyards (in this case abandoned Sajit habitats) and preying on shipping lanes, but I am now thinking that this would only be true of certain degenerate factions. Some of them would be the Kshitrayas to the Sajit Brahmins, warrior kings and defenders of Bounty civilisation.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:There could be non-Sajit proponent/missionaries of the metakarmic system, guise who've taken Sajit blessings and run away with it and use it for their own ends to become regional despots. Isolationist Sajit would have to get off their butts and rectify this, if they wish to.
I think this would need to happen if the Sajit are not able to provide their services across the whole region any more, you would end up with the other races trying to establish their own version of the system, which would by necessity limited, not just because of their lack of expertise but because of the whole loss of calibration in a fractured universe issue. I had an idea that some of the hyper-enlightened Sajit could actually be a weird paralell to the Myrran Ascendants, being completely disconnected from the universe around them and lost in Infinite Meditation Space, meaning that they only come out to help the world at dire times when righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases, but maybe that's just piling too many problems on this unfortunate region.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Could there be other Traumfanger cults in other races? Could it be so bad that the Traumfangers actively breed and cultivate their hosts (like the Gorok civilization) and pit them against each other, to ensure the survival of the fittest host-society-organism, either for the good of all the remaining Traumfangers or maybe its a winner takes all thing and the losing Traumfangers can die with their loser societies or be relegated to the petty local leaders of their marginalized host-societies, under the thrall of the Traumfangers and their host Goroks?
Do the Traumfangers need to have a purposefully Darwinian ideology like this? I think it works just as well if some are just trying to establish their own realms away from the centres of power.

I am indecisive about how psychically tuned in the Sajit and the whole metakarmic system ought to be, and how it should be affected by the Traumfangers, any ideas?
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

speaker-to-trolls wrote:I had been thinking a bit about the other species too. I don't have a name for them yet, but I imagine a species that could be belittled by the term 'warrior race', who could be some kind of vegetable people. Not sure about the details exactly, something like Triffids with spaceships, and also with some kind of latent psychic ability because I like the image of them growing a special telepath caste to make 'psychic gardens', maybe to act like pitcher plants and lure enemy ships into traps. I imagined them initially as filling the hyena role in the Bounty-as-savannah idea, skulking around in elephant graveyards (in this case abandoned Sajit habitats) and preying on shipping lanes, but I am now thinking that this would only be true of certain degenerate factions. Some of them would be the Kshitrayas to the Sajit Brahmins, warrior kings and defenders of Bounty civilisation.
Maybe this voracious Triffid species must be pruned in order to function as a productive member of the Sajit order? They function like plants more than animals with very vague ideas on when to stop growing, are obligatorily predatory and have dangerous psychic powers bent towards this sole purpose, but are still sapient enough that the Sajit must try to enlighten them into productive citizens of the Bounty, whereas in another part of the galaxy they would have been treated like vermin. It would highlight the pros and cons of the metakarmic hierarchy that it really does try to find a place for everyone, even if its intervention stunts any progress towards maturity or responsibility that a species must find on its own.

Anyway, let's come up with more Bounty species here. I've personally had an idea of a species of avian swarm-minds, its components being tiny hummingbirdoids that communicate via semaphoric movements and glittering light signals off their iridescent compound eyes. They can be messengers? Intermediaries? for the Sajit, specializing in tasks that their bulky bodies are ill-suited for.
speaker-to-trolls wrote:I think this would need to happen if the Sajit are not able to provide their services across the whole region any more, you would end up with the other races trying to establish their own version of the system, which would by necessity limited, not just because of their lack of expertise but because of the whole loss of calibration in a fractured universe issue. I had an idea that some of the hyper-enlightened Sajit could actually be a weird paralell to the Myrran Ascendants, being completely disconnected from the universe around them and lost in Infinite Meditation Space, meaning that they only come out to help the world at dire times when righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases, but maybe that's just piling too many problems on this unfortunate region.
There are more reclusive Sajit to be sure: hermits, theorists and heterodox shaivists who are generally left to explore and enrich the system as a whole. But are they actually that disconnected from the universe? To be sure, any ideology or system can become disconnected from reality to its detriment and this is one of things happening to the Sajit metakarmic hierarchy here, but that isn't the same thing the kind of science-fiction-elder-species vanishing up yonder own asshole kind of disconnection that you seem to be suggesting.

And in this case I would have to disagree with the idea. I think the Sajit are perfectly engaged; they're just not succeeding. They're the latest managers in a rather small pond, and I don't feel that thematically they deserve the kind of privilege to be the kind of elder-species disconnected. The Sajit just aren't in the same league as the Randian demiurgic stellar engineer 0.1% or the million-year old robot bodhisattvas literally made of miracles.
speaker-to-trolls wrote:
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Could there be other Traumfanger cults in other races? Could it be so bad that the Traumfangers actively breed and cultivate their hosts (like the Gorok civilization) and pit them against each other, to ensure the survival of the fittest host-society-organism, either for the good of all the remaining Traumfangers or maybe its a winner takes all thing and the losing Traumfangers can die with their loser societies or be relegated to the petty local leaders of their marginalized host-societies, under the thrall of the Traumfangers and their host Goroks?
Do the Traumfangers need to have a purposefully Darwinian ideology like this? I think it works just as well if some are just trying to establish their own realms away from the centres of power.

I am indecisive about how psychically tuned in the Sajit and the whole metakarmic system ought to be, and how it should be affected by the Traumfangers, any ideas?
At least to me, the Traumfangers are parasites on complexity - as much curse as organism. They aren't capable of that kind of long-term planning.
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Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Maybe the Traumfanger behaviors are just an inadvertent result of their functions rather than a deliberate Master Plan?
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