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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
He'll think they're insane - democracy's no way to run an empire, it'd all fall to pieces without someone in charge - but he'll go along with it as long as he has A) a way out (or thinks he does, whether or not they know about his bug-out plan), B) the aforementioned nest egg stashed away where he can bug out and get it, and C) an iron-clad guarantee that if it all goes balls up, he'll either get to come with them or be absolutely certain the Inquisition won't come after him once they're gone. Since they can easily provide all three, they've got themselves a pocket Rogue Trader.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
What you are saying is -- they want him to flat out defect from the Imperium, yes?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kinslayer
And the profit margin, and proof to present are...?
The profit margin is infinity. He'll finish off as the commander of a fleet more powerful the everyone in the galaxy combined (minus the Culture).
Proof:
- We have tactical FTL, and so do you now
- The nanobots and mass conversions can build anything you want, we have all the plans, and it can churn out a fleet faster than you think. Like, seriously, a Lunar won't even take a day
- Your weapons travel FTL and a basic CAM launcher, which by the way is tiny compared to your honking big laser, has planet cracking power
- We won't give you gridfire but you'll have effectors and Displacers, which are arguably more useful
- If you want a demonstration, we can set up a dummy ship to let you fight a mock battle with using IoM tech and you can see for yourself how one-sided it is. (it'll fire dummy shots, you can go crazy; don't worry, you won't even scratch the paint)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
What you are saying is -- they want him to flat out defect from the Imperium, yes?
No, he'll defect regardless of whether he wants to or not. They can't let him go back to the Imperium with all that tech because it'll end up in Chaos hands. Especially not after the Chaos warband came after him yelling about the Culture. They don't want to destabilize the Imperium by letting them know there's some nigh-omnipotent aliens they can't touch sniffing around.
They'll explain it to him, rather gently, that he can defect or they'll let him set up shop in some solar system and live like a king. But he's never going back unless he agrees to help.
This also applies to the rest of his crew.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
So WHY do they want this guy to have, you know... a large part of the Imperium as his own personal fiefdom?
Seriously? He cant be the ideal person to run a Sector or something. I don't have any idea why the inevitable loss of life might remotely be a good idea. WHY do they want him to become a private warlord, able to do whatever he wants??
I get they can do it, but I don't see why they think it is a good idea!
Ah, you ninjaed me...
Also, you sure he should stumble across a Khornate group? They have the LEAST amount of future-reading and magic (Khorne hates the stuff...)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Because they need someone to go whack Chaos because they don't want to risk equivi-tech.
The IoM reform plan:
When they decide to reform the IoM, they need a puppet dictator (him) to make minimal waves. He'll strengthen central control, reduce bureacracy, crack the Ad Mech monopoly (there might be a problem with the Void Dragon around here) and generally simplify the system and make it more robust and less religious.
Then they reveal themselves when they're sure the whole thing won't just crash and burn.
So they can transition to democracy afterwards and then split it up over the course of about one generation while doing heavy social engineering. Once IoM culture is in line with something acceptable (which may take more than one generation), then they'll slowly bring up the tech level and absorb any section that wants to call itself the Culture.
Aka. something like the Azad in player of games. Or at least, how it might have gone down if Gurgeh was playing for real and shooting for the Emperor job.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Hmm he might refuse to help anyways. Most Rouge Traders are actually pretty loyal to the Imperium and the Emperor. Sure they may flat out ignore the laws sometimes but in a very real way they work to expand the Imperium and increase it's power.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
Also, you sure he should stumble across a Khornate group? They have the LEAST amount of future-reading and magic (Khorne hates the stuff...)
... *searches for an excuse*
It's Tzeentch's fault! Yes, that works. =D
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
It's Tzeentch's fault! Yes, that works. =D
Okay. That is actually a fantastic excuse (khornates are easy to manipulate!)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Tzeentch manipulated some Khornites into being unwitting sacrificial pawns for him? Sounds good to me.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Forum Explorer
Hmm he might refuse to help anyways. Most Rouge Traders are actually pretty loyal to the Imperium and the Emperor. Sure they may flat out ignore the laws sometimes but in a very real way they work to expand the Imperium and increase it's power.
There's the other line too:
"you have the chance to fight Chaos for the Imperium. You have the ability to do more than the imperial guard and space marines combined. You can be the most powerful person in the entire IoM apart from the Emperor."
I mean, they can also explain that the Culture is determined to reform the IoM eventually. He can along with their plan and the Imperium may not suffer stupid amounts of casualties, or they come in and take it over overtly like they did the Azad and it _will_ suffer stupid amounts of casualties.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
douglas
Tzeentch manipulated some Khornites into being unwitting sacrificial pawns for him? Sounds good to me.
Lol. It does give Tzeentch the chance to see how powerful the Culture is militarily. Even if he's testing the strength of a spin-off side, seeing the Khornate group get trashed ought to make some waves and perhaps bring forward the contacting the Culture schedule by quite a bit.
...
Then again, I'm being too logical about Tzeentch, aren't I? =(
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Tzeentch can be logical... sometimes... in limited subsets of his plotting. There will just be some other Tzeentchite faction with yet another scheme that happens to interfere.. maybe.
Disclaimer: I've never actually read a 40k book, but that seems to fit all the discussion I've seen.
Also, based on discussion and wiki articles, it seems to me that Chaos likely will - eventually - unite in a true concerted effort against The Culture. This will happen when the Chaos Gods become convinced that The Culture represents a genuine threat to their existence. I'm basing this on the fact that they did, as I recall, unite into a cohesive force to back Horus against the Emperor. When this happens, I would expect Tzeentch to temporarily drop the usual self-hindering portions of his scheming. This, plus the focused attention of pan-Chaos forces, should be the single greatest challenge 40k can present to The Culture. That's still a looooooooong way off, though, as it will take something on the scale of Emperor-in-his-prime-class psychic power or a feasible plan to permanently close off the Warp galaxy-wide to provide such a credible threat. As I recall, there is some indication that the Necrons might have had a plan for closing off the Warp before they lost the power to implement it, possibly involving mass production everywhere of the Cadian pylons, but that plan is of dubious canonicity.
On a random side note, the Chaos Gods draw their power and characterization from the minds and activities of the multitudes of mortals as I recall, and they all have major positive aspects as well as negative ones. It might occur to a Mind at some point to attempt to reform Chaos itself by deliberately starting and fostering an extremely large Chaos cult that is specifically devoted to the positive aspects of each Chaos God. I believe the concept of such a plan is sound, but it would suffer from enormous problems with practical implementation - the cultists might influence the Chaos Gods, but they would also be opening themselves up to Chaos influencing them, and unless the cult started out with sufficient magnitude to dominate it would quickly get twisted towards the existing dominant aspects of Chaos. The Eldar would no doubt point this out if consulted (and the Mind would immediately back down from such a risk), but it might spark some interesting discussion.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Lol. It does give Tzeentch the chance to see how powerful the Culture is militarily. Even if he's testing the strength of a spin-off side, seeing the Khornate group get trashed ought to make some waves and perhaps bring forward the contacting the Culture schedule by quite a bit.
...
Then again, I'm being too logical about Tzeentch, aren't I? =(
Tzeentch is extremely logical. It's just not always logic that a human brain is capable of following. It doesn't literally deliberately screw itself over at every opportunity. In this case, manipulating a Khornate warband into 'scouting' for it is a pretty base-level plan, so it's also likely to be straightforward in its intentions. Tzeentch likes win-win situations, and whether the Khorne-worshippers win or lose, it wins.
And yeah, Rogue Traders are loyal to the Emperor. If the whole plan is presented as an effort to reform the Imperium, bring it back to its glory days and dig it out of the quagmire it's in, he'll be cautiously on board, particularly since he gets filthy rich and powerful as a side effect. Outright telling him they plan on getting rid of the Imperium and replacing it won't go over nearly as well.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Come to think of it, what are the Eldar's attitude towards the IoM?
If the Culture ask the Eldar for their opinion on the reform the IoM plan, what are the likely responses? (which will likely be along the lines of how to manipulate it to their advantage)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
I can't help but feel that installing a puppet dictator and attempting to reign in the religious aspects of the Imperium as quickly as a single generation is a recipe for widespread civil war and the fragmentation of the whole thing.
I wouldn't claim it's not what the Culture would try, but I'm really not sure it's a plan that will avoid major casualties.
Also, installing a Rogue Trader as a puppet anything seems to be a hilariously risky and naive plan, given that they tend to be incredibly arrogant, mildly deranged space pirates (who spend their career in the full knowledge that they basically have a permission slip from God telling them they can get away with most anything).
Any plan that involves making a Space Pirate the absolute ruler of anything that doesn't end in either tears or hilarity is a plan that I feel needs looking at again because I just don't buy it.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tiki Snakes
I can't help but feel that installing a puppet dictator and attempting to reign in the religious aspects of the Imperium as quickly as a single generation is a recipe for widespread civil war and the fragmentation of the whole thing.
I wouldn't claim it's not what the Culture would try, but I'm really not sure it's a plan that will avoid major casualties.
Also, installing a Rogue Trader as a puppet anything seems to be a hilariously risky and naive plan, given that they tend to be incredibly arrogant, mildly deranged space pirates (who spend their career in the full knowledge that they basically have a permission slip from God telling them they can get away with most anything).
Any plan that involves making a Space Pirate the absolute ruler of anything that doesn't end in either tears or hilarity is a plan that I feel needs looking at again because I just don't buy it.
One way Jseah could play it is that while the Culture normally prefers to do things slow and subtle over the course of a couple dozen generations the IoM is perpetuating oppression and atrocities on a scale the Culture has never witnessed before and can't stand watching so many trillions of innocent people suffer and die while they do things the slow and steady way. Even so I agree that a puppet dictator doesn't feel like their style at all, certainly not their first resort.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Come to think of it, what are the Eldar's attitude towards the IoM?
If the Culture ask the Eldar for their opinion on the reform the IoM plan, what are the likely responses? (which will likely be along the lines of how to manipulate it to their advantage)
Stupid primitive space monkeys who play their stupid primitive space monkey games while the intelligent and enlightened races (i.e., Eldar) go about doing important things, pretty much. It's hard to understate Eldar arrogance when it comes to anyone who's not Eldar - the only time they care about anything the Imperium does is when it has a chance of threatening one of their Craftworlds or Maiden Worlds.
Quote:
One way Jseah could play it is that while the Culture normally prefers to do things slow and subtle over the course of a couple dozen generations the IoM is perpetuating oppression and atrocities on a scale the Culture has never witnessed before and can't stand watching so many trillions of innocent people suffer and die while they do things the slow and steady way. Even so I agree that a puppet dictator doesn't feel like their style at all, certainly not their first resort.
Or that their Minds have run the odds and realized they've already passed the 'crisis point' of intervention versus complete hands-off - sooner or later, Chaos will get their hands on Culture equiv-tech no matter how many precautions are taken, and if Chaos is still a legitimate military threat when that happens, the Culture has pretty much doomed everyone in the galaxy.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Come to think of it, what are the Eldar's attitude towards the IoM?
If the Culture ask the Eldar for their opinion on the reform the IoM plan, what are the likely responses? (which will likely be along the lines of how to manipulate it to their advantage)
Varies from Craftworld to Craftworld. One common unifying theme is disdain. Generally they don't like the Imperium and very much consider them a lesser civilization. At best the Eldar are reluctant teachers to the Imperium, in trying to inform the idiot humans on how to be civilized. More often the Eldar consider the Imperium to be useful if dangerous pawns to soak up damage that would otherwise require Eldar lives. At worst they consider the Imperium to be an infestation that'll one day need to be cleansed when the Eldar return to power.
They might just say the Culture is wasting their time. However if the Culture insists well they might say the most important thing to change is the anti-xenos stance of the Imperium. There isn't a good way to do that without leading to a civil war or slaughter of millions.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
The Eldar really aren't that much further from a HS than the Necrons are, in that regard. It's definitely something to make the Culture even more uncomfortable about potentially taking a side in that eons-old conflict, especially since they and everyone else involved would know they were the kingmakers.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
My personal suspicion is that it would be entirely possible to ease the Imperium of Man out of it's rabidly Xenophobic hatred of aliens.
All it would really take is encountering an alien race who didn't have designs on the Imperium's planets, who weren't happy to murder Humans when it was convenient/funny/distracting, who didn't feel the need to tell humans how to do things or have any intention of advancing their own species at the expense of humanity. Maybe this theoretical race could spend its time swooping in to particularly dire battles and aiding Humanity fend off the nightmarish forces of Tyranid/Chaos/Ork/etc without asking for anything in return.
In essence, what the Imperium of Man needs is a big hug and for it's new friend to say "It's okay to be you."
But the Culture is not the race to do this. Their first response is to neutralise humanity, manipulate it into their way of thinking, maybe install a puppet dictator so they can alter the fabric of human society at their leisure. All for the best reasons of course, but that's kind of beside the point.
After all, the most benign factions in the setting are Eldar and Tau. One of which as mentioned above, might cheerfuly go back to exterminating humanity in order to reclaim their own empire the moment they feel they have the power to spare and the other of whom, despite spouting attractive noises about the greater good is still quite cheerfully following a course of territory expansion and so on.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
The Eldar really aren't that much further from a HS than the Necrons are, in that regard. It's definitely something to make the Culture even more uncomfortable about potentially taking a side in that eons-old conflict, especially since they and everyone else involved would know they were the kingmakers.
Well according to the messed up time line we get, the Dark Age of Technology happened before the Eldar Fall. Which doesn't really make sense but okay sure. Anyways this means that the Humanity built up it's first civilization and the Eldar didn't try and wipe them out or anything like that.
Also since you sort of brought it up. Orks were almost certainly made to be a weapon. Eldar we're not sure. They share the same creator as the Orks but they may have been created first and not necessarily as a weapon.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Ok, so. Strategic Analysis time. From the perspective of the Culture and their overall goals.
"Who knows what" is not in play, I'll alter it for circumstance as proper. This is purely in terms of long term goals.
The Culture
The Culture's goals are happy fun times for everyone
- They wish to see everyone in the galaxy have a freedom-based culture where people's actions are restricted as little as possible, as long as they do not restrict the freedoms of others.
- They want nothing more than to have other people adopt a freedom-based culture and call themselves part of the Culture. But they can keep their name if they want
Misc. goal: Reduce warp sensitivity in general, propagate all methods to reduce warp exposure
Classifications and attitudes:
Chaos - High threat; steps to understand, control and neutralize will be taken; open war
IoM - Imperialistic state; behaviour and culture undesirable;
-- Situation highly fragile; target for reform, medium priority
-- Highly susceptible to Chaos, active intervention to detect and destroy Chaos intrusion in IoM recommended
Tau - Possible cooperative society; civilization and culture restrictive but acceptable
-- Situation progressive; target for reform, high priority due to anticipated ease
-- Chaos resistance
Eldar - Medium threat; high control of civilization (more than IoM);
-- Situation stable; attempt reform cautiously, low priority, possible chance of success over eon-length time frame
-- Unlikely to be Chaos vulnerable
Necrons - Medium threat; ridiculous levels of control of civilization
-- Situation stable; reform unlikely, attempt over long time frame
-- Chaos-immune
Tyranids & Orks - Low threat; HS, no reform possible; research and exterminate
Dark Eldar - Medium threat; civilization undesirable; reform unlikely...
-- borderline HS?
-- Unlikely to be Chaos vulnerable
The Eldar
Friendly initial contact
Most concerned over Culture vulnerability to Chaos
Dislikes Culture's "friendliness" to Necrons
Offended that Culture treats them as equals
Suspicious of Culture technology, or outright rejection
Wary of Culture military power
Common goal of containing Chaos
Wary of Culture's stated goal of containing the Warp
Cultural dislike of "lesser races"
Goals:
Survive unchanged for the next million years
Re-establish Eldar empire (optional)
Genocide the Necrons
Necrons
Dislikes Culture's initial intrusion
Dislikes Culture's social structure
Dislikes Culture's use of organic life
Dislikes Culture's "friendliness" to Eldar
Wary of Culture military power
Shares common goal of the extermination of Chaos, Tyranids, Orks
Aligned goals of shutting off the Warp (the Culture may help or not depending)
Aligned technological base
Goals:
Re-establish Necron empire
Genocide the Eldar
Complete Warp-separation plan
Tau (I talk in terms of what is likely to happen)
Friendly initial contact
Some shared social goals, some disagreements; likely Culture society aligns with Tau's long term social goals or sounds like utopia
Likely technological synergy (Tau warp-deadness; and imagine the speed of using Tau warp-skimming in Hyperspace... yo, I heard you like FTL, so we put an FTL in your FTL)
Wary of Culture military power - Modified for friendly stance
Share common goal of extermination of Chaos, Orks, Tyranids
Dislikes Culture "friendly" contact with Necrons
Dislikes Culture meddling
Goals:
Expansion of the Greater Good
Military power to resist enemies
Prosperity and success
Imperium of Mankind
No general knowledge of the Culture's existence
Xeno!
Wary of Culture military power
Dislikes Culture "friendly" contact with xenos
Dislikes Culture social structure
Dislikes Culture violation of sovereignty
Share common goal of extermination of Chaos, Orks, Tyranids
Goals:
Stability
Worship of the God Emperor
Expansion of Human space
Tyranids & Orks
Dies
Goals:
Waaagh!
Nom Nom Nom
Chaos
Tzeentch - Massive power boost from sudden increase in excessively complicated plots
Slaanesh - Large power boost from non-extreme hedonism
Khorne - Dislikes happy fun times, Culture surgical strikes against Orks and Tyranids are too clean and neat
Nurgle - Power drop from Culture curing of disease
All - Action in material severely curtailed
Open war with everyone
Internal war between factions
Goals:
increase warp exposure
prevent Culture from spreading independence from the Warp and propagating warp-resistance technologies
acquire Culture technology
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
part 6.5 Necrons - Fallout continued
Spoiler
Show
So Much for Subtlety indicated that the Necron history has some missing details. The Necron Lord refused to clarify for no specified reason.
Some additional details from the history were clarified however, and it appears that the Necrons are also hostile to Chaos. The Necron Lord stated that the Necrons were at war with the Old Ones, who used the Warp, and that the Eldar were the Old Ones' 'pet' civilization.
While this explained the extreme difference in character and technology base of the Eldar and Necrons, as well as most of their hostility, this did not explain how the Necrons intended to deal with the Warp.
Some common ground was found between our "war" with Chaos and the Necrons desire to see the Warp dealt with.
Would the Necrons even mention they have the ability to suppress or nullify warp connections? Especially if the Culture express an interest/common goal in reducing Chaos?
Eg. Null matrix generators, Monolith Phalanx and that sort of thing
EDIT: they clearly won't give it to the Culture, but say, if the Culture proposed a technology trade...? With some clearly valuable technology like good AI (basically, non-insane Necrons) and a more stable bio-transferance technology (Culture can convert humans to drones and back)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Nurgle - Power drop from Culture curing of disease
Nurgle is A-OK. Honestly, even if the Culture has wiped out all of it's... Native diseases, Nurgle mixes up with a bit of Warp Oomph when he wants to lay down the smack.
...
Plague of Unbelief vs. Culture. Let the trololo begin. :smallconfused:
Doubtful that Necrons would trade anything, under any circumstances.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kinslayer
Plague of Unbelief vs. Culture. Let the trololo begin. :smallconfused:
Trapdoor protocol -> Transmission of disease fails
Disease incurable by standard methods -> Reload from backup
Reload from backup alone has the ability to eliminate any disease (including those that affect the soul, since we agreed you get a new one when you reload)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Trapdoor protocol -> Transmission of disease fails
Disease incurable by standard methods -> Reload from backup
Reload from backup alone has the ability to eliminate any disease (including those that affect the soul, since we agreed you get a new one when you reload)
How does reloading from a backup eliminate the disease? As far as I understand burning the bodies doesn't do much to an actual nurgle plague.
And if the trapdoor protocol is venting it into space, what if it enters spore form before it's vented and burning it only causes the release of more spores, and it can propagate in vacuum? This is a magic disease, it does not need to follow rules.
Of course, I'd still venture that it'd require it's presence to immediately show up in a dense population area to even have a chance at mass propagation.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
The Mind can easily detect unusual biological going ons (and the citizens themselves will report it, unplanned body changes being non-existent). The Trapdoor protocol lets the Mind isolate anything in the ship it doesn't like, meaning nothing gets in or out of an area it designates.
Spores aren't something that would be missed and would be captured for analysis. Destruction is likewise simple.
Reload from backup implied a full replacement of body and mind. The Culture just builds a new body and loads the mind-backup into it. The infected body is destroyed (likely taken apart for analysis or rendered down to component elements)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
The Mind can easily detect unusual biological going ons (and the citizens themselves will report it, unplanned body changes being non-existent). The Trapdoor protocol lets the Mind isolate anything in the ship it doesn't like, meaning nothing gets in or out of an area it designates.
Spores aren't something that would be missed and would be captured for analysis. Destruction is likewise simple.
Reload from backup implied a full replacement of body and mind. The Culture just builds a new body and loads the mind-backup into it. The infected body is destroyed (likely taken apart for analysis or rendered down to component elements)
But it's a magic plague, it propagates in emotion. IF Nurgle were to unleash a plague he'd do it through one of his component emotions that were strongly present in the group.
In most cases, love of the Emperor, allowing his plagues to curse the followers of who he calls "The Corpse God", while leaving his own legion untouched by the more immediately lethal of his plagues.
Warp viruses propagate through love, and compassion, much in the same way AIDS propagates off the very thing that it meant to fight it.
However, I do question if the cloning process isn't a moving of the soul when they transfer their identity as opposed to the creation of a new one.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
Warp viruses propagate through love, and compassion, much in the same way AIDS propagates off the very thing that it meant to fight it.
However, I do question if the cloning process isn't a moving of the soul when they transfer their identity as opposed to the creation of a new one.
Description of Nurgle's viruses on the Lexicanum seems to indicate proximity causes transmission. In a biological attack, this is exactly what will not be available.
And we agreed that it's creation of a new soul since the Culture can have more than one of the same person active. The "reload" doesn't have anything to do with the body or the person who died. In essence, all citizens have a clone of their mind states (and past revisions) sitting on a Culture ship and if they need to, they can turn any one of those into a new citizen with the same personality, skill and memories as the guy had when he had the backup made.
Eg. those SC agents who died on the Necron planet? Yeah, they got reloaded even though nothing came back from the planet.
That drone who got transdimensional Maze'd? Yeah, it got reloaded too. And it'll get a reload even if it was an organic. And the original isn't even dead yet.
Yeah, they CAN make a whole army who are all the same person, network their intelligence, amalgate learned skills and memories into the same person, anything you can imagine. They just don't do it without asking because it wouldn't be ethical.
The Culture can engineer intelligence at a fundamental level. Identity is not important.
...
I have a feeling, that to the Minds, identity isn't even really a thing anymore. In Player of Games, Hub Subsection is a section of the Mind in charge of the Ringworld Gurgeh lived on. After talking with it a bit, he managed to pique its interest so much Hub Entire started to talk to him.
Both "Subsection" and "Entire" didn't seem any different and they clearly share the same memory. Dynamically changeable networks of intelligence!
Spoiler
Show
'Hub here; Makil Stra-bey Mind subsection. Jernau Gurgeh; what can we do for you?'
<...>
'Gurgeh, this is Hub Entire speaking here; not a subsection; all of me.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Well yes, they can engineer "intelligence", but is it functionally a different soul?
This is a confusing question that even 40k doesn't answer as far as I'm aware, despite their own access to cloning.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
Well yes, they can engineer "intelligence", but is it functionally a different soul?
This is a confusing question that even 40k doesn't answer as far as I'm aware, despite their own access to cloning.
Well, the question is clearly a problem of 40k's definition. What is the soul and how does it tie into something material. Can a soul even be in two places at the same time? Three? A hundred?
How far do you have to change someone until the soul that body has isn't the same soul anymore?
What impact does the soul have and how does it affect the material and vice versa?
This, by the way, is a magic system question. >.>
EDIT: in some senses, it is also a philosphical one.
Namely, the problem with identity and the Ship of Theseus.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
I think we run into the issue of there being "souls" in the 40K universe but they aren't really brought up in the Culture universe. I suspect Banks went the more "hard science" route where there is no soul and people are effectively just conscious machines.
Somehow creating a new soul after a backup seems exploitable in some way :P
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
The simple (though entirely unfounded) answer is that obviously both culture and 40k universes have comparable souls. The reason why cloning is such an issue in 40k and not in the Cultureverse is that Souls have some kind of connection to the warp.
If the warp was ever made calm again, cloning might actually be possible without horrendous, 40k-genre-appropriate consequences.
The culture's own faith in it's own science and scientific superiority stills the warp selectively, just enough for their own science to function unaffected by this, at least when they use it in their own ships and so on.
(It'd be interesting to, say, have the RT try using the culture's cloning stuff only for it all to go horribly 40k style wrong due to this vital difference).
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
I have a feeling, that to the Minds, identity isn't even really a thing anymore. In Player of Games, Hub Subsection is a section of the Mind in charge of the Ringworld Gurgeh lived on. After talking with it a bit, he managed to pique its interest so much Hub Entire started to talk to him.
Both "Subsection" and "Entire" didn't seem any different and they clearly share the same memory. Dynamically changeable networks of intelligence!
Along the same lines: The Avatoids. The personality base of a ship mind downloaded into an autonomous drone. It isn't a mind, and is in some ways distinct from the ship. But since they are essentially personality doubles with the only difference being in capabilities, the Avatoid can act on behalf of the ship in situations that are "personal" in nature. There is also regular (basically, constant) sharing of information between the two, and the mind steps in to direct control if necessary. Being an avatoid must be a really tricky personal sense of identity.
Identity is a thing though. In some sense, it's almost a fundamental thing in the Cultureverse. When a creature sublimes, it comes back to fetch every single mind state, clone and other miscellaneous copy of itself into the sublime. It erases its identity from the physical universe. That is a pretty stark indicator that identity is in some manner, objective.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
The Eldar
Goals:
To add:
-Free their captive god
-Not have their souls eaten by Slaanesh any more
Necrons
Goals:
To add:
-Some hard-to-define desire to regain what was lost (soul), with an odd tendency to seek out things which might work on that, be they biological uploads or fixing of the corruption of their digital uploads for their royalty (WARNING: Newcron weirdness; use at own risk)
Tau
Goals:
To Add:
-Bring more races into the fold of the Greater Good
-Improve their technology
So I added some things, as I saw them...!
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
EDIT: they clearly won't give it to the Culture, but say, if the Culture proposed a technology trade...? With some clearly valuable technology like good AI (basically, non-insane Necrons) and a more stable bio-transferance technology (Culture can convert humans to drones and back)
According to the Newcron codex... Necrons are very very interested in fixing the problems with their soul / corruption / sentience issues, and that includes having compatible biological bodies... so this is something that they might trade, depending on the Nobility in question...
Of course, this would have to be a noble necron who is capable of fathoming technological trade. And some of them probably actually can't do that. In a very basic way of who and what they are and how they are programmed; the need for Necrons to be superior is tied in at a very, very, very basic level.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Just as an FYI, the current interpretation I am going on is this:
Spoiler
Show
The Warp
It follows strange physics, one that recognizes patterns. Instead of the rules operating on atoms or fundamental forces, the rules operate on patterns. Patterns are the building blocks of things in the Warp.
The soul is one such conglomerate of patterns. Patterns themselves are indivisible but they can be unraveled to release the energy contained. Aggregates of them, like a soul, are, obviously, separable into pieces. Patterns are made of Warp energy and can interact with the Warp to move or affect raw Warp energy or other patterns. Patterns can also appear from Warp energy or other patterns.
Patterns have a position in the Warp. Where a pattern is can distinguish between one pattern somewhere and another identical pattern elsewhere. These positions in the Warp correspond to positions in the Real.
The Warp is atemporal. The Warp is immutable and the passage of time in the real is not represented as changes in the Warp, but as the trajectory of patterns through it. Patterns in the future and in the past can affect the present, they are all there and it never really goes away.
Nevertheless, there are restrictions that the Warp follows with regards to time. I haven't worked this out yet, but it should line up roughly with the restrictions on time travel.
The Real
Warp phenomena happens when the Warp energy temporarily rewrites the rules of the universe. Patterns in the Warp have specific patterns of matter or energy in the Real and a very large number of them deal with organic brains. But things like lightning bolts (that aren't lightning) are generated by the Warp imposing a pattern on the Real.
Manifested Warp patterns in the Real are subject to what rules of the Real that still apply, but the more patterns that manifest, the less rules remain.
Too many Warp patterns, and bam, you have a Warp rift, a place where none of the Real's rules apply any more and the Warp enters the Real.
The Soul
Psykers and psychic sensitivity is how much of "you" is in the warp. Each person, a bunch of matter that processes other matter and energy in the real, attracts patterns in the warp as they form. By default, each arrangment of matter in the real will have a certain amount of Warp pattern associating with it, but by circumstance or deliberate control, more or less patterns can aggregate around the corresponding position of the real material.
This is highly sensitive to how the being develops and genetics, being the controlling developmental program, plays a very large part.
Organic beings have a pattern of material that affects the Warp in ways that attract patterns. Metals do not and a being made of metals does not affect the Warp. Intelligence, the ability to process information and representations of things (aka. concepts), attracts even more Warp patterns.
This conglomerate of Warp patterns is typically called the Soul.
A soul affects the body as much as the reverse. Kill the person in the real, and the patterns in the Warp will disperse. Kill the soul in the Warp, and the corresponding effects of the patterns will affect the real (usually killing the person).
In fact, in some cases, not all of a person's intellect resides in the Real, some of it is in the Warp. Souls interact with each other, usually to no major effect, but they can sense each other and communicate this to the brain in the Real.
Psychics
Psykers are organic people with a conglomerate of Warp patterns that can create other Warp patterns, including one that makes the Warp intrude into the real to impose a pattern. This may or may not be deliberately controlled, often not.
Races have inclinations (Eldars are more like to interact with the patterns corresponding to the future) based on biology that changes what patterns in the Warp are most likely to occur.
Blanks are the reverse of psykers, they have very few or no patterns associated with them in the Warp because they attracted a pattern that undoes other patterns.
Their ability to drive psychics crazy or make normals disgusted with them is because of the soul. They have none or very little to interact with in the Warp and consequently creep people out unconsciously due to the lack of that interaction.
Their invisibility to psykers, resistance or plain immunity to Chaos corruption, immunity to purely Warp effects, are all explained by this. But clearly, if you hit them with a lightning bolt, even a Warp lightning bolt, they still die.
Machines and devices that use the Warp are also possible. Those that manipulate the Warp by using arrangements of Real materials that attract Warp patterns can acheive Warp effects. (eg. Null Matrix generators, Gellar fields, D-Cannons) Copies these devices in the Real alone will work, since they manipulate the Warp for their effects.
Devices that partially exist in the Warp use both arrangements of the Real and patterns in the Warp together to acheive an effect. (eg. Eldar Wraithbone, Webway travel, Psychic weapons, Warp drives) These require both a Warp and Real construction method to make them, so it can get very complicated and often needs another Warp + Real device to do that.
You can consider it a basic framework of warp-material interaction.
This is highly based off the same solution I used to have "lifeforce" in my magic system.
I note with some satisfaction that it explains all the current interactions I have written in this fic or read about in 40k.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
part 6.5 Necrons - Closing
Spoiler
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So Much for Subtlety has left the area to move against the galactic rotation towards the Tyranids. Negotiations with the Necron Lord have been unfruitful and close attention has been paid towards his mobilization of starships around the world.
A number of remote drones were left with us by So Much for Subtlety in case we required them to track Necron movement. White Devil has been tasked with tracking him if any ships leave, Curiousity Saved the Cat will continue negotiations.
Judging from the lack of coherency in his reactions to our statements, we surmise that the Necron Lord has suffered some form of degradation to his logical circuits, specifically that of temporal segmentation. Support for this hypothesis is from an analysis of <...>
White Devil's attachment to the Necron warriors is rather unusual, it treats them almost like some sort of very silent pet, claiming that they are sentient and it is determined to make friends with them. Curiousity requested to scan White Devil's systems for Chaos corruption and found no anomalies.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
If the Rogue Trader is put in between a rock and a hard place as far as what he is allowed to do... I would suspect he would endeavor to do actions that increase the power of the Imperium in general. Winning Crusades, solving problems with Orks and Pirates and Dark Eldar and Tyranids and Rebels and such. Trying to get messages to the Imperium of the threat of The Culture. Trying to choose violent encounters that improve the status of The Imperium relatively more than they improve the status of The Culture.
He'd probably be worried about being personally smitten by The Emperor, due to the level of influence in the scope of the direction of the Imperium he is holding... and he would want to avoid that (ie, getting smitten) at all cost.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Just as an FYI, the current interpretation I am going on is this:
Spoiler
Show
The Warp
It follows strange physics, one that recognizes patterns. Instead of the rules operating on atoms or fundamental forces, the rules operate on patterns. Patterns are the building blocks of things in the Warp.
Rule 1 of the Warp ; There Are No Rules.
Rule 2 of the Warp ; Disregard Rule 1.
The soul is one such conglomerate of patterns. Patterns themselves are indivisible but they can be unraveled to release the energy contained. Aggregates of them, like a soul, are, obviously, separable into pieces. Patterns are made of Warp energy and can interact with the Warp to move or affect raw Warp energy or other patterns. Patterns can also appear from Warp energy or other patterns.
But a Soul can be torn apart. Not sure what "Patterns" are supposed to indicate other than that, so far.
Patterns have a position in the Warp. Where a pattern is can distinguish between one pattern somewhere and another identical pattern elsewhere. These positions in the Warp correspond to positions in the Real.
Noone has identical souls in 40k, aside from the HorrorStory PsykerTwins in a sideblurb. But they're horrifying psyker twins, who disappeared from reality, taking a Blackship with them. This, if following your theory, is likely the cause of Clone Hate in 40k.
The Warp is atemporal. The Warp is immutable and the passage of time in the real is not represented as changes in the Warp, but as the trajectory of patterns through it. Patterns in the future and in the past can affect the present, they are all there and it never really goes away.
Nevertheless, there are restrictions that the Warp follows with regards to time. I haven't worked this out yet, but it should line up roughly with the restrictions on time travel.
But... You can have warp entities that retroactively exsisted for millions of years, causing thier own creation. Tzeentchian demons can create permanant real-world time loops of events, while things interact with them. It still goes back to the same loop. You can also arrive in time to kill your past self, before going to the past, and continue exsisting. On the other hand, you can also go back to the past, kill yourself and paradox out of exsistance.
The Real
Warp phenomena happens when the Warp energy temporarily rewrites the rules of the universe. Patterns in the Warp have specific patterns of matter or energy in the Real and a very large number of them deal with organic brains. But things like lightning bolts (that aren't lightning) are generated by the Warp imposing a pattern on the Real.
Manifested Warp patterns in the Real are subject to what rules of the Real that still apply, but the more patterns that manifest, the less rules remain.
Too many Warp patterns, and bam, you have a Warp rift, a place where none of the Real's rules apply any more and the Warp enters the Real.
Eh, sure. It follows your theory perfectly, but not nessecarily 40K's exsistance, in that the Astronomicon and Terra aren't the universe's largest puncture hole.
The Soul
Psykers and psychic sensitivity is how much of "you" is in the warp. Each person, a bunch of matter that processes other matter and energy in the real, attracts patterns in the warp as they form. By default, each arrangment of matter in the real will have a certain amount of Warp pattern associating with it, but by circumstance or deliberate control, more or less patterns can aggregate around the corresponding position of the real material.
This is highly sensitive to how the being develops and genetics, being the controlling developmental program, plays a very large part.
But Psykerism has never been a genetic thing, it's entirely decided by your soul, as far as can be told. Navigators are one of the few exceptions in that when breeding with each other they end up with Navigators, still. Psyker + Psyker can equal anything, human, psyker, or even possibly Blank, though Blanks have been shown to also move genetically.
Organic beings have a pattern of material that affects the Warp in ways that attract patterns. Metals do not and a being made of metals does not affect the Warp. Intelligence, the ability to process information and representations of things (aka. concepts), attracts even more Warp patterns.
This conglomerate of Warp patterns is typically called the Soul.
The soul continues exsisting without the mind, though. Inanimate objects can, and do, exsist in the Warp. They do not have any deciding power in how the Warp works
A soul affects the body as much as the reverse. Kill the person in the real, and the patterns in the Warp will disperse. Kill the soul in the Warp, and the corresponding effects of the patterns will affect the real (usually killing the person).
In fact, in some cases, not all of a person's intellect resides in the Real, some of it is in the Warp. Souls interact with each other, usually to no major effect, but they can sense each other and communicate this to the brain in the Real.
Eh. Souls can exsist without a living person, though. Thus the daemon's constant threats of eternally torturing your soul, and bringing you back to life, without needing a body.
Psychics
Psykers are organic people with a conglomerate of Warp patterns that can create other Warp patterns, including one that makes the Warp intrude into the real to impose a pattern. This may or may not be deliberately controlled, often not.
Continues following your theory, which if valid, works.
Races have inclinations (Eldars are more like to interact with the patterns corresponding to the future) based on biology that changes what patterns in the Warp are most likely to occur.
If it was simply Biology, the Imperium would be mass producing psykers as weaponry, pilots, etc. The Old Ones, and one Emperor-related gizmo, are the only things ever shown to be able to imbue Warp-presence. And the (maybe) Emperor-related one was ripping the soul out of an already-psyker to power it.
Blanks are the reverse of psykers, they have very few or no patterns associated with them in the Warp because they attracted a pattern that undoes other patterns.
Their ability to drive psychics crazy or make normals disgusted with them is because of the soul. They have none or very little to interact with in the Warp and consequently creep people out unconsciously due to the lack of that interaction.
Their invisibility to psykers, resistance or plain immunity to Chaos corruption, immunity to purely Warp effects, are all explained by this. But clearly, if you hit them with a lightning bolt, even a Warp lightning bolt, they still die.
Continues following theory. Having patterns in the warp aside from daemons that follow the Big 4 following the Big 4's MO are still nonexsistant.
Machines and devices that use the Warp are also possible. Those that manipulate the Warp by using arrangements of Real materials that attract Warp patterns can acheive Warp effects. (eg. Null Matrix generators, Gellar fields, D-Cannons) Copies these devices in the Real alone will work, since they manipulate the Warp for their effects.
Devices that partially exist in the Warp use both arrangements of the Real and patterns in the Warp together to acheive an effect. (eg. Eldar Wraithbone, Webway travel, Psychic weapons, Warp drives) These require both a Warp and Real construction method to make them, so it can get very complicated and often needs another Warp + Real device to do that.
The Webway exsists entirely in the Warp, as a solid in the Warp. The Gates only exsist as exits, as far as we know. Warp Drives also only exsist in the Real, D-Cannons only draw and focus psychic power from the Eldar, because all of the triggering and mechanics of it are psychic. It's more of a prism/generator than a gun. Wraithbone is also Real but has Warp applied to it by Singing, it just happens to be the most receptive material to this sort of tampering.
Replies in bold.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Trapdoor protocol -> Transmission of disease fails
Disease incurable by standard methods -> Reload from backup
Reload from backup alone has the ability to eliminate any disease (including those that affect the soul, since we agreed you get a new one when you reload)
Plague of Unbelief spreads by lack of (TRUE!) Faith, while having "faith". (In the Emperor is the only thing we have shown). It has no vector aside from a Nurglite being anywhere near a planet, at some point, and the population not being actually faithful. It can have a delayed reaction time of... Unspecified time. It's almost entirely, or entirely, in the Warp. You can't stop Warp infection vectors with SCIENCE! (Or, not the SCIENCE! the Culture currently has.)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
The perfect separation of the Warp from reality is presented as a very bad thing. It would basically reduce everyone to the level of Necrons and would likely entirely wipe out the Eldar race. (Oldcrons used to have zero free will and no personality. Newcrons don't actually want to separate the Warp from Reality.)
Nurgle plagues are literally insane and can infect pretty much anything. Yes, even machines. Nurgle is actually a big threat to the Culture in that he and Tzeentch are really the only ones who can directly target a Mind. He always has a cure though, but that cure may not make sense either.
Eldar have lots of personal freedom in that they can choose whatever Path they like. They are encouraged by society to make sure that they don't get stuck on any one Path but it still happens and those Eldar aren't punished beyond what their life has now become. (Exarchs; Eldar who have gotten trapped on the Path of War, become incapable of normal peaceful interaction with other Eldar. They've lost interest in normal things and only care about war.) If the Eldar in question rejects the idea he is free to take the Path of the Outcast, where he may travel wherever he wishes and act however he wishes (outside Eldar society.) However he lacks the protection given by the Eldar paths and is vulnerable to corruption and destruction by Slaanash.
Dark Eldar can't be considered an HS. They don't actually conquer, just various degrees of raids and enslavement. They also don't care what the slaves actually think or do. Can they be reformed? Perhaps. It's not unknown for a Dark Eldar to make their way to a Craftworld and join the Craftworld relatively peacefully. (They'd be mistrusted and watched.) It is however very rare.
Right now the Culture doesn't know about the Dark Eldar unless the Eldar have told them. The Imperium doesn't bother to tell the difference between the different groups of Eldar. Not in anything but obscure Xenos research anyways.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
There are several aspects of Eldar society I would be quite interested in the culture's reaction to. Spirit stones and wraith guard, obviously, but also the use of exarchs and exarch /phoenix king armour, which is psychic and effectively overwrites a good part of the wearer's mind with a composite of former wearers of the armour.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
The Phoenix King armor is HIGHLY revered though, to the point of it's use being considered an absolute last stand, it's also entirely voluntary.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Rule 1 of the Warp ; There Are No Rules.
Rule 2 of the Warp ; Disregard Rule 1.
I really have to make a stand on this one. I have stated before that I am interpreting the Warp as running on it's own rules. I find it impossible to write about something that isn't coherent even by its own measure. (level of detail I have gone into the Warp-as-patterns theory is what I would consider an absolute minimum level of detail; anything lower than that, I can't write)
I'm sorry but that's how I'm writing this fic, the Warp here has its own rules and is understandable, just not with a framework of what we commonly call physics.
Some of your other points are valid, I'll think about it and tweak as necessary.
part 6.5 - Misc. unrelated Eldar
Spoiler
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Week 2
An IoM merchant ship from outside our surveyed area dropped out of Warp near an IoM minor fleet base with a report that a Chaos warband had been sighted in the near region. Despite the sketchy evidence and hearsay, an IoM recon in force of nearly two thirds the defending fleet warped out with a stated destination of a mining world we had not reached yet.
The GCU in the process of scanning the fleet base decided that observing the IoM's protocols in fighting Chaos was more important and headed to that system.
Week 3
GCU arrived a day before IoM fleet. System has an Eldar teleportation gate. No hostiles, only IoM merchant traffic spotted.
IoM fleet has arrived. They communicated with the mining world to confirm no reports of Chaos were there. They decided to stay for one day.
A band of Eldar emerged from the teleportation gate. Since they did not attempt to initiate the standard protocol for contact with us (tight beam laser aimed 30* off the ecliptic if angle is clear and free), we assumed that they did not expect us to be here or they were from a faction that was unaware of us.
Ships of the Eldar were slightly less well maintained than the standard. The Eldar fleet appeared to remain undetected but then proceeded to swing around the IoM fleet on a course for the mining world.
The IoM fleet managed to see the Eldar on their sensors when the Eldar were just about to pass them (we tapped their systems) and proceeded to maneuver onto an intercept course despite recognition among the command heirarchy that the Eldar were not the Chaos warband they were looking for.
The Eldar proceeded to attack the IoM fleet with hit and run attacks, utilizing their much superior ECM and stealth capabilities to inflict damage on the IoM fleet. Neither side inflicted any significant loss on each other.
Communications between the IoM and Eldar appeared to indicate that the Eldar were attempting to raid the IoM planet.
At this point, the GCU Peacemaker decided to intervene to prevent the loss of life on either side. Using its Displacers, minor plasma charges were used to overload key shields and then Effectors were employed to hack into the power grid and shut down the IoM shields and engines. IoM efforts to restore function were easily overridden.
The Eldar ships were contained from the IoM ships by forcefield walls projected by effector marked by visible light radiation. While the Eldar ships could potentially force their way through the fields as the GCU's effector arrays were overstretched, they only tested the boundaries warily before retreating.
That's an Eldar pirate fleet (not Dark Eldar).
I had an idea for Tzeentch where he arranges for an IoM fleet to conflict with Necrons or Eldar to damage the Culture's impression of one of the three races. Or force a Culture contact of the IoM.
And then I wrote it and realized that it just wasn't going to work, there is absolutely no reason why the Culture GCU would proceed with contact when it could just shut down the IoM fleet (coz those guys are uncontrollable) and present unfathomable phenomena to chase off the Eldar. So I guess not all of Tzeentch's plots work.
But in this case, the IoM has another data point of 'weird things' and the Eldar faction probably are going to be mildly annoyed at the Culture's willingness to defend the IoM against the Eldar. Even if it's a minor Eldar pirate faction. So I guess it wasn't a pure waste of effort.
part 6.5 - Rogue Trader
Spoiler
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Week 1
GCU Golden Goose
Aisha Meiro's handling of the Techpriests has left the Rogue Trader slightly unhappy but his recruitment of mercenaries has left him well enough equipped. The Rogue Trader has only managed to acquire construction plans for non-critical and baseline-technology equipment. His request to purchase a Lunar was finally declined.
Nevertheless, his profit margin is at least two orders of magnitude over that of the Forge World. His continuous sale of various goods by both legal and covert means has attracted some attention from the Mechanicum in charge of the Forge World. We were unable to warn him of this threat as Aisha Meiro was never allowed off his ship and had no plausible reason to know about it.
A battlecruiser and escorts of the Ad Mech maneuvered into an intercept course with his ship when he returned from last delivering a sale and with a shuttle full of rare elements in critical shortage. The Rogue Trader evaded action and the mercenaries jumped out of system towards an agreed rendevous while he outran the Ad Mech by travelling sublight beyond the sensor range and going into hyperspace when no one could notice.
His escape was helped by our subtle interference with the Ad Mech sensors.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Really, the Chaos is completely random is, in my opinion, overstated. Yes, it's very random, but only if you try and impose a viewpoint grounded in modern physics on it. Really, the pattern stuff seems very similar to what we find out when 'experts' on the Warp and Chaos(Navigators, Psykers, etc) talk about it.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
I think what is going on is that the sources say, all the time, that The Warp doesn't follow rules and is completely random, or whatever.
But when they actually show what it does, how it does it, what it can't do, who can do what with it, etc. etc. ...
It very obviously follows rules. Hence the disconnect.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
RE: Nurgle plagues
While most of the plagues originate from the Warp via a negative emotion vector like you mentioned, apart from initial infections, they were all described to spread by close contact or described to have physical vectors (viruses, pus, etc.)
Also, I didn't come across one that affected machines.
So far, I've read the Vile Savants, Nurgle's Rot and Zombie plague. Judging by the pattern of names and descriptions, the rest of the examples in the Lexicanum that just had names didn't appear like they would affect machines.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Also, I like the idea that it is biology influencing a (typically) years-long process. So it isn't JUST biology, but it is influenced by biology.
And the reason that the Imperium doesn't mass produce psykers is because outlaws research into psykers and genetics of psykers... why do they do that? Probably because they got burned a lot of times. It's a thing that Chaos does lots of, ending with people who research into this stuff falling to chaos or whatever, or that ends up with a lot of high power uncontrolled psykers and some megadeaths. So of course research into the genetics of psykers is overtly forbidden.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Personally, I like the Warp As Patterns concept. It might not entirely mesh with the 40K party-line that One Cannot Understand The Warp Without Being Driven Mad, but I mentioned numerous times in the first thread that one of the biggest problems that vs. threads tend to develop is when you take two settings with completely disparate underlying themes and run them together...something has to give unless you just want to go nowhere. Here, we have Cultureverse's SCIENCE!! against 40K's GRIMDARK and Unknowable Mysteries. It's entirely possible that the Warp does run on patterns, ways that are predictable yet unknowable to mortal men (hence why Tzeentch's plans are incomprehensible, because it understands the patterns we don't). Or, equally possible, the act of bringing the Culture to 40K has imposed a meta-order on the Warp, allowing the underlying truths of Cultureverse to be overlaid into the outward appearances of 40K with minimal disruption.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
RE: Nurgle plagues
While most of the plagues originate from the Warp via a negative emotion vector like you mentioned, apart from initial infections, they were all described to spread by close contact or described to have physical vectors (viruses, pus, etc.)
Also, I didn't come across one that affected machines.
So far, I've read the Vile Savants, Nurgle's Rot and Zombie plague. Judging by the pattern of names and descriptions, the rest of the examples in the Lexicanum that just had names didn't appear like they would affect machines.
I believe Fan was going for the Obliterator Virus. It's a very specific one, and has more to do with merging machinery in an unholy mess than infecting people.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kinslayer
I believe Fan was going for the Obliterator Virus. It's a very specific one, and has more to do with merging machinery in an unholy mess than infecting people.
And I'm not sure it's strictly a Nurgle Virus. It's technically a Nurglish creation because he is the God of Disease, but you actually see more Obliterators and their unique techno-virus in non-affiliated legions like the Iron Warriors.
EDIT: Also, there is one small benefit to adopting those Two Rules on a case-by-base basis...some things in 40K related to the warp simply don't fit. Untouchables, for instance - effectively super-Blanks,like you described them but anathema to the Warp to such a degree that their touch burns Daemonflesh, and a 'Warp Lightning Bolt' would disappear out of existence if it got close to them. So have the Warp-As-Patterns theory, and stick to it when you can, but if you run into something irreconcilable, use it as-is and say 'the Warp makes its own exceptions'. It's basically a blank check, justified by canon, to break your own rules whenever you feel like it.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
That'd still be interesting to see, an Obliterator who merges with a mind in a ship, that'd be about the only way to prevent a self destruct too.
Scary stuff.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
That'd still be interesting to see, an Obliterator who merges with a mind in a ship, that'd be about the only way to prevent a self destruct too.
Scary stuff.
It would require physical access to the Mind's material component, though, and I doubt they give that out to just anyone. So very scary, but almost indescribably difficult to pull off.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Yea, your theory needs more room to describe the super-blanks, the most strong types of blanks...
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
And if he doesn't want/have time to make those elaborations, he can legitimately say 'Because Warp. Shut up."
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
If the Warp truly had no rules, no one would be able to use it for anything with any significant degree of reliability. Including psykers, navigators, the Eldar, and even Chaos. This is clearly not the case, so the Warp must have rules. Not necessarily simple rules, or rules that would seem at all reasonable to a modern physicist, but rules nonetheless.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
An extension of the theory with regards to superblanks and Necron Null Matrix:
The Warp has a pattern that describes the Real. When manifested in the Real, nothing overt appears to happen as the rules it overwrites... it overwrites with the same rules that we are familiar with in the Real.
Superblanks do this by imposing the rules of the Real around them (the pattern is part of them). Necrons do it by building devices that by structure attract that pattern and impose it (which explains everything from Gellar fields to monolith Nodal Grids to Cadian pylons)
Aka. this is the Warp's equivalent of anti-magic field. A strong Daemon or psyker may be able to power through it, but they'll have to fight to impose their patterns' rules instead of the reality-enforcing pattern's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
One Cannot Understand The Warp Without Being Driven Mad,
Now, my personal epileptic tree theory RE maddening knowledge. I am not using this for the fic, this is just a personal comment.
So far, this applies to the Warp and to Lovecraft's stuff. I haven't found any other fiction with "knowledge that drives you mad".
The theory here is that the it's not the knowledge that drives you mad. It's the definition of mad.
If you had someone walk down the street and told you the stars aligned and some outer god was going to eat all your souls and you can't feel it because you can't feel your soul... what do you think of him?
But what if he's right? To him, he's not mad, he's right and you are just unenlightened. He's seen the evidence and worked out the theory, which could be wrong. And if tearing down the street while wearing pyjamas, burning incense and playing the flute really DID avert the aligning of the stars (whatever that means), you'll never see the evidence for why he believes what he does.
You just call him crazy.
The joke's on you when you get eaten by giant space hamsters.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
And the reason that the Imperium doesn't mass produce psykers is because outlaws research into psykers and genetics of psykers... why do they do that? Probably because they got burned a lot of times. It's a thing that Chaos does lots of, ending with people who research into this stuff falling to chaos or whatever, or that ends up with a lot of high power uncontrolled psykers and some megadeaths. So of course research into the genetics of psykers is overtly forbidden.
But then people like Fabius Bile, on Team Chaos would be happily using Construct-Your-Own-Psykers, rather than looting humans from colonies. I would quote the Eldar as being able to do it if it were possible, as well, but they're all born psykers, if not nessecarily strong ones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
The joke's on you when you get eaten by giant space hamsters.
But the joke is on him, in 40k. Because he'll probably start withdrawing into himself the further he learns, circular logic drawing him in, each secret pointing toward the next, until a daemon bursts from the back of his skull, or he decides that Enuncia is a great plan.*
*It's not.