Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

For 'verse proposals, random ideas, musings, and brainwaves.

Moderators: Invictus, speaker-to-trolls

User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

I was really thinking of populating the galaxy with other "bystander races" that are not necessarily ancient but just got swept away by all the crazy shit going on, for better or worse (sure the Naga Aetherids are just traumatized ancients who've said "screw this nope").

I think Bragulan bioengineering - sans their Emerald Guard cybrags - is really just nondescript unless aside from those social experiment Truman Show planets (analogous to real-life Soviet Secret Cities but times a million), Brag secret planets also include freakish bio-experiments?

The degenerate exhibits is a great idea. :D
Vic wrote:I imagine the art and cultural artifacts of these bohemian psi-brags, even if their strictly prescribed cultures are subject to periodic purges, would be one of the most difficult things to find outside Bragulan space.
Holy shit, what if some IBGV people actually deliberately traded samples of those very impermanent, bound-to-be-purged social experiment results, to the Raptured Lords for contraband?
Shroom over chats proposed that the Ministry of Fate arose out of the inter-polity agency to regulate the use of the Neuromantic Nodes that the proto-NEUROM polities were fighting over, and also to regulate the use of psychic powers on humans. I think there was an idea much long ago that the Ministry grew out of the intelligence agency/government branch of one of the NEUROM polities, but it does make more sense if what would become the Ministry enforced the Neurom Pact and was the glue that held the alliance together to begin with. Of course, this doesn't preclude the Sternheim putting disproportionate investment into the Ministry to begin with, given their leadership role.
The initial, "official" Ministry of Fate would be there to ensure that the Neuromantic Nodes were just used on sub-human minds, in levels unable to effect humans. Perhaps for psi-emitters for ichor harvesters, psi-disruptors for fending off unwanted cosmozoans, some low-frequency synthetic Gaian eco-control systems... but aside from this, to detect illicit use of psionics, they would probably need a comprehensive intelligence network and vast resources since officially they would be doing this without any psionic powers of their own! They would have to be trusted by the proto-Neurom states, would comprise of specialists and movers and shakers from said member states... and be ripe pickings for the All-Father and his Kylos. :twisted:

Heck, maybe the All-Father and his minions don't even need to use any (easily detected, unsubtle and easily circumvented) neuromancer tech and the proto-NEUROM-politices' initial fracas over the nodes was a total red herring deliberately dropped to make the Sternheims and Mandras and Anethgans loose their balance... plans within plans!
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
speaker-to-trolls
Posts: 766
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 12:34 am
Location: The World of Men

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

I have many thoughts but at the moment will just post these ones on the Brags:

The BSE is the kind of place where they might also keep planets of unbyzonthinkers around so that they could use them as a training ground for their spies, or smuggle refugees out to a target planet and then invade that planet for aiding enemies of the Bragulan people, or suddenly reverse their policy of tolerance so they could use the planet as a live-fire oppression exercise for the army.

Also, this depends on your thoughts about Mighty Bragule's exact relationship with the USS, but might the Brags have a cluster of experimental unbyzonthinker planets, each of which attempts to replicate certain aspects of Sovereignty culture, so that the IBGV can get a better handle on the Sovereignty and a better idea how to destroy it or at least curtail its advances in Wildspace?

I say they could use different planets to study bits of USS life, as far as they understand it, because they can't really replicate it in a controlled environment, and if they did it could do a lot more damage than they would want to deal with. Possibly anyway.

Also, if there are Brag psychics but most of them are just suppressed through doublethink, does this mean the white Brags in Wildspace might have them?
"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."
User avatar
Siege
Site Admin
Posts: 2563
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:03 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Siege »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:
Vic wrote:I imagine the art and cultural artifacts of these bohemian psi-brags, even if their strictly prescribed cultures are subject to periodic purges, would be one of the most difficult things to find outside Bragulan space.
Holy shit, what if some IBGV people actually deliberately traded samples of those very impermanent, bound-to-be-purged social experiment results, to the Raptured Lords for contraband?
Faustian bargains! Perhaps one of the commissars tasked with purging one of these planets, overworked, undermanned, saddled with an impossible timescale and thus set up for failure and liquidation by his superiors, decided it's easier to simply sell the planet to the Raptured Lords, figuring they'll make it into a funny snow globe or whatever it is they do with the worlds they collect. The envoys of the Raptured Lord say their master accepts the bargain and sure enough the planet disappears. This is a massive coup for the commissar, whose career rebounds remarkably.

Then three decades later he's a sector general when proscribed artefacts start popping up on Sovereignty auctions, and worse, in Bragspace itself, artefacts that make the erstwhile commissar believe that maybe the Raptured Lords are now using that world for their own ulterior purposes, and when their emissaries show up telling him it's time he hold up his end of the bargain he knows that he's along for the ride now, inextricably cocooned in the Raptured Lords' web of elder chicanery.
"Nick Fury. Old-school cold warrior. The original black ops hardcase. Long before I stepped off a C-130 at Da Nang, Fury and his team had set fire to half of Asia." - Frank Castle

For, now De Ruyter's topsails
Off naked Chatham show,
We dare not meet him with our fleet -
And this the Dutchmen know!
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Meanwhile, please have a micro-setting made by implementing the wider SOTS elements discussed:

---

The Charid Spur

A remote spur at the edge of human space that once saw more settled days, this vaguely differentiated grouping of elderly stars find their distinctiveness in proximity to the holy cluster of Chari. Chari is a sacred star, revered for nurturing ecosystems of edenic fecundity, a legend perpetuated by those who claim it as their ancestral birthplace. Chari has also been long overrun by the Karlacks, who guard jealously their possession of its cluster but otherwise spawn and brood within its expanses, their actions only adding forbidding mystique to Chari’s legend. Other inhabitants of the Spur stepped uneasily around this quiescent menace, not expecting turmoil to come from the Karlacks themselves…

Dramatis Personae

Kalif-Prime Kebedon is the spiritual leader of the Socelli Repudiation, a Mandragoran nomad polity that readily lends their fleets and vat-grown soldiers for mercenary purposes, like their brothers the Fracture over. The Repudiation traces its lineage to supposed gene-vaults and clone factories upon Chari, and none are more eager than Kebedon to see the Karlack infestation eradicated from their holy progenitor-star before hereditary telomeric defects finally end his superannuated reign. Having gathered his fleets in the Spur, none are as unpleasantly surprised as Kebedon that his final crusade has been preempted.

Woseig speaks for the great feathered Parliamentarian Caste of the Uktankatan Asterbrood, a strain of Karlacks who displaced their cousins from Chari with the advantages of speed, surprise and a rare vein of sapience. She senses the value of the holy cluster to its neighbors, and has extended tentative diplomatic feelers to see what aid her brood can obtain from its position - aid that she would greatly appreciate, as the scattered bulk of the Chari Infestation slowly consolidates for a massive, instinctual counterattack.

Ibrik the Sworn is a living legend; a dread son of the fallen Earthreign who it was said awoke from the cold vaults beneath Chari Secundus itself, a prototype-soldier without equal. Once an inexplicable captive of the Chari Infestation, the ascendency of the Uktankatan Asterbrood seems to have driven Ibrik into the Spur at large, his appearances and his motives more enigmatic than ever. Nevertheless, if Chari is a holy cluster, then Ibrik remains the closest thing to a prophet in the eyes of the reverent, and his mere presence draws the allegiance of many.

The Voidine Iteration is the distributed controlling consciousness of its eponymous Kerberi clade, a self-replicating swarm of slablike terraforming machines who have long since forgotten their original objectives. The Iteration has always found its sensibilities irritated by the significance placed upon holy Chari, but all its attempts at paving the Cluster over has been thwarted. This has made the Kerberi in the Spur scarcely more popular than the Karlacks, reviled by all right-thinkers; but the Iteration has also cultivated its own Republic of Iconoclasts, sheltering a healthy population of heretics and Hybers as mortal subjects.

Independent Director Hokko-sin is the Man from Shen, sweeping periodically through the civilized parts of the Spur with a massive fleet of traveling emporia, escort warships and all-important orgone tankers, dispensing a higher class of civilization in his wake. In return he receives men, reagents and meme-tribute to feed the insatiable Shen Rhapsody, and business so far has been acceptable. Canny but conservative, Hokko rarely lends the considerable firepower at his command to any local cause. But with the tumult of Chari, even he is tempted to help plant the seeds for another orgone-burning customer.

Nightmaster Klingil is a brash new presence in the Spur, his band of elite warrior psions competing against the Socelli Repudiation as a source of protection and mercenaries. He is also a covert agent of the Ministry of Fate, a young psion groomed by the mysterious All-Father into a font of cruel talent, looking for an opportunity to advance the Ministry’s plans for humanity in the region. It would be optimal if Chari was to become a rallying point for a militant human empire, and for that empire to fall into the orbit of the vast puppet-confederation that is NEUROM.

Control Admiral Cincinnatia ‘Cinti’ Balderson represents what there are of the Shepherds' Protectorate’s scattered claims in the Spur. The scant squadron of second-rate battlestars in her command reflects the thinness of such claims, and the relative position of the Shepherds on the Spur’s astrographic totem pole. Balderson is also widely respected across the Spur as a vehement and resourceful Karlack fighter, and the only person able to lead a joint anti-Karlack front that everyone will follow. This has her wary and mystified by the Asterbrood’s overtures, even as other military leaders look to her for advice.

Qosq-Sage Juviter controls the sole functioning stargate in the Spur by virtue of being physically connected to the gate’s neuromantic mechanisms. The Qosq Stargate offers an irreplaceable trade and cultural link to the rest of human space, and Juviter’s vast leverage over is thus far unrealized in the wizened creature’s equally vast self-absorption that, to the Spur’s established powers, passes for neutrality - save for the growing fear that the Uktankatan Asterbrood may come to pass the Sage’s obtuse standards for civilization.

Sophit Vogueknight Ad-Amnion is a citizen of the United Solarian Sovereignty, part of a fact-finding mission commissioned by the Foundation for Omega Point Experimentation. She became representative of a distant hyperpower against the hard-eyed primitives of the Spur simply by turning out to be the least eccentric among her fellows, with nothing to rely on but the partially demilitarized IOU that serves as their mobile base of operations. Even so, she has little idea how she will go about substantiating the supposed Hallowlight spottings around the turbulent Charid cluster.

Rendbunker Hundredmind rose to leadership over the brutal Pyhrron pirates of the Spur over a pyramid of ambushed rivals, incorporating their augmentic implants into its own until it stands as the sole cybernetic warlord among its kind. The Hundredmind has inherited a seething cauldron of other Pyhrrons’ ambitions, ancient strategic objectives and mind-rust blurring the past and present, until nearby Chari seems no different from the holy homeworld of the Phyrronic horde, lost to another quarter and age.

Ormulu Wassail once heard a voice that she was sure wasn’t a result of rad-stroke. Her Desecrated kind once dwelt in holy Chari, themselves squatters until again displaced by the Karlack infestation, and now abide as abject void-serfs among greater powers. But the voice spoke of the irreducible strand of humanity that was her birthright, and promised her to be part of something greater, a fulcrum upon which the fate of the Spur will swing. And even that would be of little consequence, if not for an eruption of prodigious psychic powers that sees her void-clan united in wonder and alarm.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

@Speaker:
Yes! The IBGV's proxies and patsies in Wild Space, aside from serving as fronts for their covert acts, probably also serve as subjects for psychohistorian and cosmosocio-ideological researchers.

@Siege:
I am sure the Brags (or anyone really) who deal with the Hirados and Raptured Lords are gonna regret their choices... but if he sold them a planet/s with societies/samples that they might have found of use... why would he be the one who'd *owe* them? Wouldn't he get... some kind of horribly ironic "be careful what you wish for" reward?

Or the reward *is* the whole "when their emissaries show up telling him it's time he hold up his end of the bargain he knows that he's along for the ride now, inextricably cocooned in the Raptured Lords' web of elder chicanery" because the Raptured Lords were so overwhelmed with his gifts that they unilaterally decided to make him a Hirado whether he wants it or not! Because who wouldn't love to be a great Hirado? Is such a honorable place not its own reward? :twisted:

@Vic:
Add some Sardicans to that mix? :D

Wrote some new entries and edits:
Cosmozoans - The generic term for space-faring organisms that rely on biological adaptations as opposed to technological means to survive and thrive in their environments, creatures that exist in the midst of larger and similarly astrophiliac ecosystems, especially those somehow capable of supraluminal movement. Karlacks and Crysts are notable examples but every vector of the galaxy is teeming with all manner of cosmozoan varieties. The term came to be during humanity’s earlier forays into space and its initial encounters with stranger kinds of life, but other spacefaring civilizations have their own different definitions for this kind of life. Indeed, the subjective difference between “organic” and “inorganic” technology; natural and guided evolution; the existence of civilizations reliant on extreme biotech; and the acknowledged sapience, organization and civilization of certain species long considered to be cosmozoans; makes the line between “cosmozoan” and normal organisms, including civilized ones, increasingly blurry. More progressive Institutes of Cosmozoan and Karlack Studies (ICKS) acknowledge that the term is an artifact stemming from older, far more biased, speciesist outlooks on life - which conservatives and ichor industry experts deride as politically correct xenophile nonsense promoted by the Freeworld School, the Zigonist Agenda or even Cultural-Byzonism. The Apexai also have a far more derogatory equivalent of the term that includes practically every other non-Apexai interstellar civilization.
Ichor - Meta-biofluids found in Karlacks and other cosmozoans that wander across space and draw sustenance from the nectar of stars, blackhole ejectae, hyperspace bleedthroughs and other astral phenomenae (or, less efficiently, the raw biomatter of inhabited worlds) to fuel their metabolic processes and enable supraluminal movement. The most potent ichor is found in primary consumers that directly feed from these energy sources. Secondary consumers that predate on or leech from them also accumulate ichor, albeit in lesser amounts but as the fuel has been pre-processed they also no longer need the enormous digestive structures of their prey. Similarly, many interstellar civilizations have learned to harvest ichor (preferably from more-docile non-predatory bioforms) for their own ends, making the substance important in the galactic economy. Orgone is a similar substance harvested from the rare and mysterious corpses of Rhapsodite titans that is orders of magnitude more potent than standard ichor. While the Shepherds and the NEUROM primarily deal in ichor, benefiting from the abundance of bioforms in the space surrounding them and in the nearby Qirmiz Frontier, the Shen Rhapsody’s sources are far fewer but far more cooperative than planetoid-sized Karlack sun-divers. Theoretically, psychovorian creatures can also accumulate ichor-like substances from metabolized biopsionic energies or psychoplasms, but so far no known examples have been recorded by the galaxy’s leading Institutes of Cosmozoan and Karlack Studies (ICKS).
...in light of the above, I realize that maybe some of those Karlack migrations where planets full of people are devoured might be because NEUROM/Shepherds/Wild Space poachers killed a lot of the "herbivore" bioforms, forcing the starving predators to go out and eat the organic matters of inhabited planets (and the psi-potentials of their peoples?) instead.
The Swarm is vaguely guided by intelligent and extremely powerful, albeit abstract, beings called Aspects, living manifestations of the evolutionary forces governing the Swarm, which act to ensure its survival. Whether these forces have been guiding the Karlacks from the beginning of their kind or later emerged as the sheer density of life, interacting meta-biofactors and the psychic mass of innumerable minds - sentient and otherwise - went critical to produce an “oversense” is vehemently debated by the galaxy’s numerous Institutes of Cosmozoan and Karlack Studies (ICKS). Even the idea of the Karlacks being truly one kind, evolving from one point of origin, or a gradual convergence of miscellaneous cosmozoans from across space that have somehow symbionized over millions of years of existence, is up for contention. These questions not only have profound implications for the nature and definition of the Karlacks, but for the rest of galactic life as well.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:More progressive Institutes of Cosmozoan and Karlack Studies (ICKS) acknowledge that the term is an artifact stemming from older, far more biased, speciesist outlooks on life - which conservatives and ichor industry experts deride as politically correct xenophile nonsense promoted by the Freeworld School, the Zigonist Agenda or even Cultural-Byzonism.
I like you.

I suggest taking a look at the Shepherds' entry too. There might be elements that need syncing up with the new entries.


And speaking of the updates to the Kheler entries, I do have some major ideas in mind which I really ought to run by this thread first.

I want to inject more uniqueness and alienity into the Kheler, because right now they have their political history and their vague filial-collectivist tendencies, but otherwise they feel too much like just people. So I'm introducing something that forms a pretty fundamental part of Khelerene cognition, something that forms their worldview and causes their current cultural characteristics - something I call teleological symmetry.

To a Kheler, all events are symmetrical pairs. Two events separated in time are just mirrors of each other, which are reflected in their qualities (who, where, what, when, how). There is no linear cause and effect, but introduction and denouement; the future event necessitates the past event by its very (predicated) existence and vice versa. Some of these pairs lay in the past, both events having completed themselves and each other. Some pairs lie in the future. Sometimes these pairs themselves are just one half of a larger symmetry, sketching out the existence of a vast interlocking pattern across time. But what informs the motivation of a Kheler most is when they find that one event has occurred and its corresponding mirror hasn't - then in the future, it will be done. It's not that they must make all events symmetrical pairs. All events *are* symmetrical pairs.

Line up all these event-pairs as two-dimensional lines plotted on the y-axis of a graph. Find the fulcrum of each pair, the middle point of each line that indicates which stage of fulfillment the mirroring event is at, then loop a line that intersects all these fulcrums. That line is the Khelerene worldview.

One feature of this teleological symmetry is that the reasons why a Kheler associate two possible events can be nigh-impenetrable to non-Kheler. Sometimes a Kith's ancient navigation logs showed that they once visited a particular planet, so the Kith must visit that planet again: it can be straightforward like that. Sometimes, something happened to them which necessitates them to do something else that doesn't seem to share any apparent qualities, and certainly may not be linked in any butterflies-and-hurricanes causal sense. Of course, to non-Kheler, this can make the Kheler come across as gnomic and prophetic, or fanatically vindictive.

One of clearer associations of teleological symmetry to non-Kheler, however, is who does the things. It's broadly accurate to say that the Myrrans did a lot to fuck over the Kheler in the olden times, so the Kheler are teleologically ordained/obligated to go fuck up the Myrrans for a good long while yet, in what can be translated as a grudge. When people share more qualities/connections, then the event-pairs that occur to them also become more inter-compatible. For example, if all Kheler unite, them one half of an event-pair associated with any Kheler can be fulfilled by any other Kheler, it makes things a lot easier for the Kheler as a whole. Which is why Kheler mate, Kiths amalgamate their immortal ancestor-minds, and the Kiths of Kheler try so hard to form a sacred political union out of all Kheler ever.

While current Khelerene orthodoxy, agreed to by the United Kiths, holds that their joining withe the Samtics is the aggregate midpoint of Khelerne history, the point dividing their BC and AD, it is relatively flexible about the smaller patterns, whether some pairings are already fulfilled and some haven't yet. Only a minority of Kheler believe that the beginnings of *all* possible event-pairings lay in the past and that literally *nothing* new can happen, only the fulfillment of ordainment. Those guys are regarded as fundamentalists.

This teleological symmetry, along with a very, very high context culture developed from maintain cultural cohesion for millennia, has done peculiar things to Khelerene language. Complete messages are all palindromes and magic squares, considered symmetrical forward and back and must be read forward and back for their full import. Statements that break this symmetry, or "halves", are either used as a provocative literary device or for oaths (and swearing). Khelerene writing is ridiculously complex, not helped by the species' incredible visual acuity - an essay would resemble something like a cross between a QR code and those circular patterns drawn by connecting straight lines, with no individual letters and no meaning in parts that can be grasped without understanding the entire thing first - and the longer the text, the more exponentially complex the overall pattern. Even the Kheler themselves use something called 'Flat' for casual communication: smaller and less dense code-patterns mapped onto less dimensions, less precise and data-efficient as a whole but which at least come in smaller discrete chunks that can be combined into bigger messages.

And while Kheler can learn and use non-Khelerene languages that don't have these features, I'm imagining a Kheler who has to compose these broken, one-way statements writing and putting away a mirror for every sentence it makes, just for the sake of its own mental balance. It doesn't even matter if these mirrors never get seen or make sense in their own language.

If this complexity implies a great deal of detrimental inflexibility in Khelerene communication, especially concerning military planning on space opera scales, it might explain why Kiths absolutely need the sheer cognitive power of amalgamated AI ancestor cores to handle high-level communications and serious institutional memory.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Vic wrote:I suggest taking a look at the Shepherds' entry too. There might be elements that need syncing up with the new entries.
Okay, I added to the Sheps...
Their societies are amongst the more conservative in the Fracture, with extreme prejudice towards espers, aliens and anyone else without the requisite firepower to “earn” the Shepherds’ respect. They have unsurprisingly become staunch allies of the Laurentian League, as both nations work to counter xenophile, inhumanist and esperist movements corrupting permissive societies like the Freeworlds; the encroachments of the distant Samtics and Solarians; Grand Auriga’s ever-present colonial ambitions; and the depredations of the NEUROM megalomaniacs and whoever is pulling their strings. Since their early years, the Shepherds have been enthusiastic Karlack hunters and ranchers, deriving a great deal of economic and military leverage out of the biological bounties that such activities generate. This has caused their rivalry with NEUROM to eventually encompass territorial disputes over lucrative cosmic ecosystems, where their navies and civilian harvest-vessels alike routinely clash amidst enviro-insurgencies secretly sponsored by both sides and swarms of vengeful yet uncannily intelligent Karlack bioforms. This state of affairs has only intensified/worsened due to competition from the Shen Rhapsody’s orgone industry, the potency of the upstarts’ product and the Fracture’s ever-growing demand for fuel sources.
I also altered the Shen Rhapsody article:
After their Institute expelled them for profiteering, the cosmo-archeologists turned tycoons founded the Rhapsodic Orgone Accumulation Corporation (ROAC), which became Shen’s de facto government, turning into an economic powerhouse in the Fracture as it sent enormous yet swift heighliners (powered by the good stuff the company reserves for itself) across space to export fuel and other products, disrupting the markets previously dominated by the other regional powers. The ROAC’s influence is only matched by the CultureCon, a collection of leading media moguls, fashion icons, artists, creatives and thinkers who shape Shen’s popular culture with their memetic-commerce, their products in a way just as vital to Shen society as the ROAC’s orgone-profits. This group is comprised heavily of the space gypsies’ descendants and, more recently, Magi esper rockstars, their combined influence making the nation as culturally vibrant as it is economically prosperous.
On the Kheler...
teleological symmetry
Maybe this arose also because the Ancestor Cores enable minds and memories to last practically for-forever, so old enough cores can notice "huh, this seems related to something I recall from centuries ago" and run computations. They probably thought they noticed a lot of these and that's how the mindset began?
And while Kheler can learn and use non-Khelerene languages that don't have these features, I'm imagining a Kheler who has to compose these broken, one-way statements writing and putting away a mirror for every sentence it makes, just for the sake of its own mental balance. It doesn't even matter if these mirrors never get seen or make sense in their own language.

If this complexity implies a great deal of detrimental inflexibility in Khelerene communication, especially concerning military planning on space opera scales, it might explain why Kiths absolutely need the sheer cognitive power of amalgamated AI ancestor cores to handle high-level communications and serious institutional memory.
Unless their communications, even military ones, are phrased as just incomplete half-somethings waiting for the results in order to complete or "answer" them. So the grammar of each statement acknowledges that it - the statement itself - is something that is still unfinished, that can only be completed by the response or the result of whatever is being discussed. If we're talking about an ambush, planning for it, the phrasing would be very... anticipatory of the results.

So the acknowledgement of the uncertainty, incompleteness and the necessity of waiting for something to be determined might mean that... Khelerene conversations might have lots of words for blanks, rhetorical "___________" blanks in a statement that is waiting to be filled in.

Man what a headache.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

(EDIT: Guys, what do you think of renaming the Laurentian League into the League of Laurentian Republics? For more Spacemericaness. Right beside the FREEWORLDS!)


Species idea:

Falqowice: Otter-type mammal creatures that were contemporaries of the Earthreign and maybe even before the 'reign. While they are smaller than humans, their ottery build optimizes them for the spacer lifestyle, they relied on advanced-for-the-time technologies instead of numbers and they were able to establish sizable holdings in the Fracture, equivalent of what the humans had back then. Things broke down between the Falqowice and humanity, a big war occurred, hell maybe some of the pre-/non-Earthreign humans sided with the Falqow. I am thinking that their technological advantage translated to robotics and AI, drone armies and fleets, and maybe even mass-defections of human-made robbits that led to the human empire's increasing reliance on biotechnologies - eventually the Mandragorans and Anethgans.

Anyway, the Falqowice got smashed really bad, they became the poster child of Earthreign-purged xenos. A lot became hybers, some fled, either became forgotten and went native in backwater nowheres, got admitted as refugees (and eventually members) in the Samtic Nexus and the (Aetherid? Xetherid?) Obscurocracy, became Tree Walkers. There are also, overhanging the Fracture, few Falqowice fortress-systems, ENCLAVE-ARCHIPELAGOES with ultra-dense defense grids protecting remnant singularity-level human-hating Falqows with biodigital cyber-skins or even liquid metal T-1000 otters. :twisted:

The fortress-systems are probably unknown to mainstream humanity, though maybe historically some Aurigans tried to get the xenos but got their ass kicked and decided to keep mum about it after establishing non-aggression packs. The Samtics probably have relations with them but keep it quiet to prevent humanity from freaking out? Or maybe they would be publicly known but officially neutral to both humanity and the Samtics... yet their presence would threaten some of the guiltier factions. :D
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Maybe this arose also because the Ancestor Cores enable minds and memories to last practically for-forever, so old enough cores can notice "huh, this seems related to something I recall from centuries ago" and run computations. They probably thought they noticed a lot of these and that's how the mindset began?
And because their confirmation of teleological symmetries require records going as far back in time as they can. They two probably grew together. (And the longevity might also have grown out of the simple drive for life-preservation technology as space nomads.)
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Unless their communications, even military ones, are phrased as just incomplete half-somethings waiting for the results in order to complete or "answer" them. So the grammar of each statement acknowledges that it - the statement itself - is something that is still unfinished, that can only be completed by the response or the result of whatever is being discussed. If we're talking about an ambush, planning for it, the phrasing would be very... anticipatory of the results.

So the acknowledgement of the uncertainty, incompleteness and the necessity of waiting for something to be determined might mean that... Khelerene conversations might have lots of words for blanks, rhetorical "___________" blanks in a statement that is waiting to be filled in.

Man what a headache.
Even so, that's probably the more nuanced reality. Symmetry is demanded of messages over a certain degree of formality or meaningfulness, yes, but I also like anticipatory half-messages that while not entirely allowing for an uncertain response (it's still half of a symmetry), but at least acknowledge the incompleteness of events that have yet to occur. Of course, statements that leave lots of context blank also tend to be a feature of high-context cultures anyway (they assume you understand all the references already!)

Or since communication is also an action, a half-message can potentially be used to complete a symmetry. Something that the Kheler cannot accomplish? A well-worded something might be enough to substitute its place as a reflection, even if just to mend cognitive dissonance.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Also... unless the belief system is somehow hardwired into their biology or *that* psychologically crucial as to turn all of them into psychohistorical-Cassandras... it's still a belief system. Having it being this interconnected to their language might be too much, it's like fundamental born again Christians communicating with words from the King James Bible, with the thous and thines, or hardcore Catholics speaking in latin. Though I am sure their legalese uses this heavily. Trials without computer-assistance can go on for eons!

And even if it really affects their communications, that doesn't mean each statement has to be a correct symmetry or even an anticipatory one awaiting a symmetrical "response" or with a blank space to be filled. Projections could be wrong, could be entirely subjective if the speaker/writer is not using computer-assistance, the references and footnotes could be inaccurate. This can result in all sorts of arguments and psychohistorical-grammar nazism! :o

EDIT: But sure, spending centuries or millennia as space refugees in space-ark-fleets that turned into formidable techno-societies capable of self-defense means that most Kheler are by default technologically and scientifically well-apt, like a combination of Starfleet and Battlestar Galactica personnel, so their familiarity of technical jargon and the filing of crucial status reports probably both seeped into their language, psychology and their ideology (even before their data-storage devices developed into immortal ancestor-prophet-engines).
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Also... unless the belief system is somehow hardwired into their biology or *that* psychologically crucial as to turn all of them into psychohistorical-Cassandras... it's still a belief system. Having it being this interconnected to their language might be too much, it's like fundamental born again Christians communicating with words from the King James Bible, with the thous and thines, or hardcore Catholics speaking in latin. Though I am sure their legalese uses this heavily. Trials without computer-assistance can go on for eons!
Nope, it's not a belief system. It's literally how their brains are wired to think. Their belief system is what they use to deal with this.

Of course given SOTS science, some Kheler offshoot must have re-wired the Khelerene brain at some point so it isn't. And some other Kheler offshoot somewhere else must have developed highly divergent belief systems that transform this mindset into...something with very different consequences. Though in the eyes of the United Kiths of High Kheler and their orthodoxy, that's all basically heresy.

On the other hand, in my rush to get all my thoughts to post I failed to emphasize one important point: that due to the way they think, every Kheler basically keeps a whole imaginary reverse-history in their minds, to mirror their actual memories and experiences. But the point is it's imaginary, and when things change the Kheler will probably revise or re-arrange the whole thing without even being conscious about it. What teleological symmetry does allow for, when a predicted mirror event turns out to be wrong, is for the Kheler to simply admit that they got their associations wrong, and that Event A should be linked to Event C instead of B (which was a bust). They are capable of applying different levels of symmetrical rigor to, say, scientific experiments and casual everyday actions.

The average Kheler would still come off as scary intense by human standards though.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:And even if it really affects their communications, that doesn't mean each statement has to be a correct symmetry or even an anticipatory one awaiting a symmetrical "response" or with a blank space to be filled. Projections could be wrong, could be entirely subjective if the speaker/writer is not using computer-assistance, the references and footnotes could be inaccurate. This can result in all sorts of arguments and psychohistorical-grammar nazism! :o
Khelerene communication would have gotten more 150% Kheler, which is to say more psychohistorical high church grammar-nazi formal-for-its-own-sake, the more technological aids they have access to and the the less concerned they have to be for sheer survival, yes.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:EDIT: But sure, spending centuries or millennia as space refugees in space-ark-fleets that turned into formidable techno-societies capable of self-defense means that most Kheler are by default technologically and scientifically well-apt, like a combination of Starfleet and Battlestar Galactica personnel, so their familiarity of technical jargon and the filing of crucial status reports probably both seeped into their language, psychology and their ideology (even before their data-storage devices developed into immortal ancestor-prophet-engines).
Kheler probably are remarkably fast technical learners because highly developed mirror neurons something something space opera biology
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

So your birds are freaky, just like real glass-eyed-staring birds. :D

Maybe that's how it was in real evolution, zany fun and sometimes-feathered tongue-wagging REPTILIANS and DINOSAURIANS with their LIZARD FACES, who rip their feathers off to reveal A LIZARD, eventually turning into these beaked, dead-eyed, intensely-staring creatures. Gasp.

So perhaps the Ancestor Cores and their shared histories provide some kind of bonding, some kind of emotional connection, that would counter the intensity of their symmetrical contemplations.

Also, some more name suggestions:

Diadem Enclave-Archipelagos - for the Falqowice remnant states separated from the rest of the fracture by lightyears of dead space, with once-habitable worlds grey-gooed to exterminate human squatters during the early Fracture, freaking the fuck out of humanity just in case it forgot how the Earthreign tried and failed to get rid of these guys. Vast automated defense grids commanded by psychotraumatized immortal post/trans-nano-otters surround the cores, where the aforementioned ancient Falqows are trying to recreate idealized nostalgia-bait lower-tech societies.

League of Independent Laurentian Terranates - because TERRANATES sounds cool. And I guess because of their segregation of the true Isopterids remaining there.

Eirenic Inheritance of Anethga (or the Eirenic Inheritance of the Hume-Anethgae) - I think the various Earthreign clades prefaced their names with "Hume." So Hume-Anethgae and Hume-Mandragorae.

(The) Unyielding Mandragoran Principalities

Joxndra - Another mid-carder alien race. In the Fracture region or in refuges in the Samtic Nexus or the Cascade and the K-Zone (Samtic-supported Cascade colonies? That piss off the Laurentians and motivate the Samtic to engage with the Freeworlds to make sure things don't boil over?). Possibly caravans in and out of the place, frustrating more xenophobic human societies. Their pilgrims can visit shrine-worlds, places lost to the Earthreign and humanity in the distant past. Makes for a lot of awkwardness.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

New in the Google Doc. I also edited the Google Doc's formatting, gave it a table of contents thinggy because scrolling up/down was too tiresome (especially when the net is slow, it becomes way slower than MS Word).
Eirenic Inheritance of the Hume-Anethgae
A federation born from the Anethgan colonies that survived the Reignfall by leveraging their expertise in colonial and terraformational logistics to prosper and gradually incorporate their neighbors (peacefully or otherwise) into a larger and stable polity. Their orderly approach allowed them to develop defenses formidable enough to fend off the gene-tyrants, humanist pogroms, esper and xeno assaults that plagued the early centuries of the Fracture - adversities that also gave rise to the mythic Lady Anethga figures. After a cabal seeking ancient Earthreign psyk-tech nearly plunged the Inheritance, the Sternheim and the Mandragoran Principalities into a great war, the three powers established an uneasy peace with the New Remembrance Accords and founded the Trilateral Ministry of Fate-Preservation made up of their best and brightest to watch out for further destabilizing influences. Eventually this fragile non-aggression pact would become the alliance known as the NEUROM when the three powers could no longer ignore the encroachments of Grand Auriga, the alien Samtics and the Magi witches. But even after their hard-fought victories and conquests, the allies continue to vie, conspire and sometimes even war against each other in the hopes of holding sway over their supposed equals. To survive in this doghouse, the Anethgans must play the game as best they can and rely on their strengths as builders and maintainers, in contrast to the raw ambition and aggression their partners embody.
Hume-Anethgans
A gene-clade designed during the Earthreign to be the civilian counterpart of the Mandragoran armies, fulfilling non-martial aspects of the great regime’s expansions and to serve its pure-gened citizenry. Anethgans came imprinted with the genetic memories to make them the perfect builders and maintainers of terraformational and colonial infrastructure, organizers of logistical systems and other vital rear echelon duties. Moreover, instead of the Mandragora frontline rapid spawning systems, the Anethgans were engineered with partheogenetic, intersexual and hermaphroditic capabilities, making them the designated gender-fluid anti-eunuch functionaries of ancient Earthreign society. After the Reignfall, the Anethgan populations that did not succumb to various calamities, purist-humanist pogroms, or assimilation into larger heterogeneous gene pools, were able to use their maker-given tools to become successful prospectors, colonists and pioneers. Their tendency towards sustainable, systematic and orderly development even making them surprisingly capable in combat. The Eirenic Inheritance of the Anethgae is the most prominent examples of these populations.
Unyielding Mandragan Principalities

After the Reignfall, the liberated Mandragorans formed their own societies, havens outside the prejudices and boundaries of the baseline humans and gene-tyrants alike, who the engineered warriors regarded as either past oppressors or victims - sometimes even both. They built worlds with order and discipline in place of chaos and confusion, but with the Fracture being what it was, their newfound peace was fleeting. Most of these fledgeling states failed - descending into warlordism, falling victim to their own hyperspecialization, succumbing to pogroms or assimilating with their neighbors either peacefully or forcefully. Only a few did not yield, the strongest of the Mandragan nations with the hardiest populaces, ones that had not neglected civilization’s other non-martial facets. Out of necessity, they banded together and from the inevitable infighting emerged their new leaders who proclaimed themselves the Princeps who would lead their people to their destined greatness. It was during this resurgence that they crossed paths with the Anethgan Inheritance and the Sternheim. The peaceful builders who the Mandragorans tried to reintegrate into their hierarchy proved to be far from defenseless and the nascent reich boasted a surprisingly formidable military. A narrowly-avoided great war and the suppression of esper revanchists seeking forbidden Earthreign psionics led to the New Remembrance Accords, which over the centuries became a dysfunctional alliance as the members worked together to repulse mutual enemies. Nevertheless, the Mandragorans refuse to play second-fiddle and the Princeps remain ever vigilant of the others’ machinations - and any chances to assert their rightful place as the warmasters of NEUROM.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:EDIT: But sure, spending centuries or millennia as space refugees in space-ark-fleets that turned into formidable techno-societies capable of self-defense means that most Kheler are by default technologically and scientifically well-apt, like a combination of Starfleet and Battlestar Galactica personnel, so their familiarity of technical jargon and the filing of crucial status reports probably both seeped into their language, psychology and their ideology (even before their data-storage devices developed into immortal ancestor-prophet-engines).
By necessity, yes, and helps suggest the failure modes that might result in the kind of technological decline that ends Kiths. While the immortal Ancestor Cores are in theory responsible for the most important stuff, they absolutely need the support of a technically literate and proficient society. Their substrate systems need external maintenance, and they need the crew of the starship they're in to know what they're doing just so to ensure that they're even receiving correct input from meatspace. A kith-ship that degenerates into a crew of neo-savages blindly carrying out the directives of their god-ancestors is eventually going to fall apart. And the pre-Samtic upload technology that the nomad Kheler used might be imperfect enough that Ancestor Cores can't keep going without an influx of fresh minds, in which case a steady influx of technically illiterate Kheler would make even the Ancestor Cores forget what they're doing.

(And they can't even RTFM, because paleo-Kheler spacecraft would all be ancient, one-of-a-kind constructions kept functional by an organic process of rebuilding, modification and jury-rigging, so there's no substitute for having a institutional memory in the form of a skilled crew)

Conversely, a kith that retains a technical base but loses its Ancestor Cores loses its history and thus the essential Kheler-ness that mainstream Kheler takes so seriously, and becomes the kind of ubiquitous second-rate scrub mercs that Shroom once mentioned. The long perspective that Ancestor Cores can provide may work to moderate the Khelerene cognitive demand for symmetry simply by showing them that they're part of a much larger and more complex pattern than they can conceive of, which ironically gives them more leeway to act freely. Without the long view, such Kheler are much more likely to seize upon immediately courses of action to see their cognitive bias fulfilled, and do much worse in the long term for it.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
speaker-to-trolls
Posts: 766
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 12:34 am
Location: The World of Men

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

It's actually quite neat how the ancestor-cores and the living populations complement each other, it's another layer of that symmetrical dualism. As such losing one side, either to death or decay of some kind, would leave the remainder spiritually scarred, they might see themselves as an incomplete sentence and desperately try to connect themselves to something else, anything else, to make sense of the universe again.

I suggest that such broken communities or minds should be called Unkindnesses.
"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."
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

What would the Kheler do to these heterodox kiths and other degenerates? Try to reincorporate them? Just let them malinger in squalor?

The variety of potential heterodox kiths! KURTZ CORES that just beam out "THE HORROR! THE HORROR!" in subspace while being adulated by its degenerate technobarian khelerene subjects. Coreless space pirates. Or deranged cores that try to turn its subjects immortal, nano-robotifying them into cyberkheler, but something goes wrong!
the kind of ubiquitous second-rate scrub mercs that Shroom once mentioned.
What?
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
speaker-to-trolls
Posts: 766
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 12:34 am
Location: The World of Men

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

I had the idea, might be abusing the whole symmetry thing here, I don't know, that the craziest bereaved cores could form Cyclical Suicide Cults:

The core decides that since its charges died but it remembers them, and it absorbed the consciousness of the last ones, now it needs to die and leave it's memories with a new generation of live Keeler. This will hopefully close the circle so they can build a new core and be normal, and the lifetime of their new kith will mirror the life and death of the old one. So it clones or abducts a bunch of Kheler and shoves it's memories into them, then blows itself up.

Then the plan backfires HORRIBLY, and the new generation decides it must build a new ancestor-core, then all die and be reborn entirely into it, which will mirror their own creation. And so on...
"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."
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

They live, they die, they live again! :o
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

speaker-to-trolls wrote:It's actually quite neat how the ancestor-cores and the living populations complement each other, it's another layer of that symmetrical dualism. As such losing one side, either to death or decay of some kind, would leave the remainder spiritually scarred, they might see themselves as an incomplete sentence and desperately try to connect themselves to something else, anything else, to make sense of the universe again.

I suggest that such broken communities or minds should be called Unkindnesses.
Ooh, I have a punnier suggestion: the Kindless.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:What would the Kheler do to these heterodox kiths and other degenerates? Try to reincorporate them? Just let them malinger in squalor?
My idea about the grand Kheler reunification back then was it was largely voluntary, and most of the wandering kiths they managed to tracked down joined because the Khelerene belief in reunification was just that strong. But now with the Khelerene mentality pinned down, I think we can go for something more nuanced. I mean, the reunification-pursuing Grand Hunters absolutely don't want to get into any violent coercion attempts on their own kind (and even the really lost and regressed Kheler can be rehabilitated by being adopted into a proper kith), but what if they really came across an offshoot so heterodox that they recoiled in horror? Like, well, the examples below?
The variety of potential heterodox kiths! KURTZ CORES that just beam out "THE HORROR! THE HORROR!" in subspace while being adulated by its degenerate technobarian khelerene subjects. Coreless space pirates. Or deranged cores that try to turn its subjects immortal, nano-robotifying them into cyberkheler, but something goes wrong!
I forgot to mention in my last post that yes, with enough cybernetic hookups an Ancestor Core can control a spacecraft without the need for any mortal crew, barring the slow degeneration of the Core itself. That's your haunted ship. (I suppose modern Ancestor Cores are a lot more stable and resilient)
the kind of ubiquitous second-rate scrub mercs that Shroom once mentioned.
What?
You posted a while back:
Shroom Man 777 wrote:Does this mean that Khelere "antitribu" can recur regularly in the wilderspaces of known space? Roguish perhaps piratical but probably jobber equivalents to their Myrrani-fencing Nexus-member kin-kiths? So we can have heel Kheler jobbers in the K-Zone, the Frontier and what have you?
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Would there be Cores or Khelerene that disagree with the orthodox symmetries, or those that think that the orthodox symmetries are lies to keep the people down, or something-something stick it up to the man and break the cycle? If the symmetrical-perspective was something evolved, could some deliberately try to un-evolve it? Asymmetrical Emancipation!
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Hmm, I never really thought of paleo-Kheler uploading technology as being versatile enough to do all these things. It's more or less able to upload a biological mind into a mainframe whole, and that's it. I don't even think Samtic technology is good enough to do this when they first joined the Kheler, and all that developed later as they built the Nexus and got to study other aliens, and by that time, the Kheler were already bound by the orthodoxy of High Kheler. So, deranged KURTZ CORES, ghost ship EMPTY BOWERS and other such non-crossloading required failure states definitely existed and made it into Khelerene legend (and black ops methodology). Symmetry-erasing CYCLEBREAKERS of the non-genetic modification kind are also just a matter of ideology, but probably not cyclical suicide cults. Unless they were relatively modern breakoffs.
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
speaker-to-trolls
Posts: 766
Joined: Thu May 22, 2008 12:34 am
Location: The World of Men

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

Various points to Vic:

A)Kindless is a much better name, I agree.

B) wouldn't Cyclical Suicide Cults be possible if the core wasn't cloning but just abducting other Kheler, or even aliens, and just brainwashing them more conventionally rather than actually downloading it's thoughts into them?

Or a modern one could probably develope somewhere in the war against the Myrran, if it got cut off from everyone and everything else.

C) would asymmetrist Kheler be trying to rewrite this neurological quirk, or more focussed on getting rid of the symmetry based institutions like the Great Hunt or their vendetta against the murdercats? The first one would be a lot harder, but in the Nexus of all places it should be feasible, like get a Samtic brain-module extension to counter symmetrical thinking or some such.
"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."
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

[quote=""Speaker"]B) wouldn't Cyclical Suicide Cults be possible if the core wasn't cloning but just abducting other Kheler, or even aliens, and just brainwashing them more conventionally rather than actually downloading it's thoughts into them?[/quote]

Vic did contemplate Kheler that abducted endangered Bounty species and others amenable to REVENGEANCING the Myrran.
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
User avatar
Invictus
Posts: 1306
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 11:44 pm

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Invictus »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:[quote=""Speaker"]B) wouldn't Cyclical Suicide Cults be possible if the core wasn't cloning but just abducting other Kheler, or even aliens, and just brainwashing them more conventionally rather than actually downloading it's thoughts into them?
Vic did contemplate Kheler that abducted endangered Bounty species and others amenable to REVENGEANCING the Myrran.[/quote]
The REVENANT AUXILIA.

You wake up in a body you don't recognize, in a bio-tank onboard an anonymous, entirely automated stealth-ship parked in the middle of nowhere. You get the sense that you have died a whole bunch of times before. In the dark, there is an archived message for you. A vaguely avian silhouette, giving you your next mission, couched in terms of cryptic prophecies and inevitable destiny. You disposable kit is already waiting.

That is, if they even let your downloaded mind remember. Manchurian candidates in customized bodies, infiltrating societies or making deniable raids. This way, the Kheler exert their influence without risking their own assets (and their valuable symmetries) and without even revealing themselves. Basically Samus Aran, if the Chozo were actually a bunch of hidden terrorist ringmasters.

Of course, the above working relies more on advanced mind-editing technology than regular indoctrination. Some kiths without access to this technology might try it psychically, too.

Speaking of psychic surgery, a while back we were discussing Apexai psi-Hybrids and how they might attempt to genetically modify psionic potential into other species. And then I thought, why would Apexaia at its most golden have needed to resort to something as crude as messing with the flesh? Wouldn't they, like, fire up their Oversoul and make direct modifications to the collective psyche of the species, with changes rippling psycho-platonic-infometrically back into the physical or something?
"This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function. This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
-
REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 1 - Rey Quirino Versus the Dark Heart of the Philippines
"...a literary atrocity against the senses..." - Ford

REBUILD OF COMIX STAGE 2 - Advent Rey Returns: REVERGELTUNG
Coming NEVER
User avatar
Shroom Man 777
Global Mod
Posts: 4637
Joined: Mon May 19, 2008 7:09 pm
Contact:

Re: Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

REVENGEANCENANTS! REVENGEANANTS! etc.

Sure the Solarian Human-Apexai Hybrids were probably down and dirtier than what the Apexai could have originally done with Oversoul-manipulations (I wonder how the Apexai would have handled the Earthreign's neuromancer networks... now that would be savage), but I think such is the potency of the Oversoul manipulation that artificially boosting psi-potential would inevitably still have genetic effects? It will bleed through into the physical plane. And if we go even kookier and suggest that Apexai SUPERIOR DOMINANT GENES are partly psionic then... :o
Image

"Sometimes Shroomy I wonder if your imagination actually counts as some sort of war crime." - FROD
Post Reply