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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Uh, it's... hit and miss in the setting about whether machine spirits of thinking machines have a presence in the warp and such, and whether the animistic type spirits of machines exist in a metaphysical way, even for thinking machines...
I think it's pretty well understood that NON thinking machines dont have machine spirits in a warp/animistic way, but I believe the setting has gone back and forth about whether or not the AI/Expert systems / thinking ones do or not.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Doran
I thought Machine spirits didn't exist at all and were just part of the weird Technoreligion formed because they needed the tech, but science would lead them to question THE EMPRAH!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
Uh, it's... hit and miss in the setting about whether machine spirits of thinking machines have a presence in the warp and such, and whether the animistic type spirits of machines exist in a metaphysical way, even for thinking machines...
I think it's pretty well understood that NON thinking machines dont have machine spirits in a warp/animistic way, but I believe the setting has gone back and forth about whether or not the AI/Expert systems / thinking ones do or not.
Except Cogitators and a lot of other tech (especially Warp tech) can't work without Machine Spirits existing, and the existence of Dark Tech and Data Daemons all but confirms it.
The part the fluff is vague about is; how frequent/important are Machine Spirits, and how effective are the Adeptus Mechanicus's rituals. The stuff I've read goes from "it's mostly worthless ritual with a few good bits" to "PRAY AT YOUR LASGUN IT SHOOTS BETTER!"
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Doran
I thought Machine spirits didn't exist at all and were just part of the weird Technoreligion formed because they needed the tech, but science would lead them to question THE EMPRAH!
Oh they exist for sure. However how much of the techpriests prayers that are useless is unknown but it is >0
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Water_Bear
I would be interested to see a genuine match-up, but this is like Batman v Thor where the two are locked in a 10ft by 10ft adamantium vault, Batman is naked and Thor has the Red Skull's personality.
Did Batman get prep time?:smallbiggrin:
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
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Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
Did Batman get prep time?:smallbiggrin:
Batman wouldn't win even with prep time. Thor has no physical weaknesses for him to exploit like he does with Superman, or Darkseid.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Give batman some prep time, not much he can't do.
But the Hulk with Banner removed vs Thor? It was awesome and one sided in the extreme. Took Loki to take Hulk down, and we all kow what Loki is, eh:smalltongue:
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
Batman wouldn't win even with prep time. Thor has no physical weaknesses for him to exploit like he does with Superman, or Darkseid.
It was a joke, Fan...:smallannoyed:
Does Thor still lose his powers and turn into a cripple if he's separated from Mjolnir?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Grimsage Matt
Give batman some prep time, not much he can't do.
But the Hulk with Banner removed vs Thor? It was awesome and one sided in the extreme. Took Loki to take Hulk down, and we all kow what Loki is, eh:smalltongue:
Can you define how he'd beat Thor with prep time in any reasonable fashion?
Because I remember a Hulk without Banner, with a Mjolnir equivalent weapon, and with the Thing amped up to Hulk levels with a Mjolnir weapon 2 v 1'ing Thor and losing in "Fear Itself.".
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
This Hulk vs Thor. Also, it's Batman. You do not question the batman:smallcool:
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Guys, I think we should maybe get off the topic of superheroes for now?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
Guys, I think we should maybe get off the topic of superheroes for now?
That sounds like a good idea.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Yes, the question of whether Batman could or could not beat Thor in a fight is exactly the kind of debate my example was meant to inspire. :smallsigh: My money is on the Bat; even without a kryptonite factor Thor isn't anywhere near as tough as guys like Amazo who Batman thrashes regularly.
But yeah, bringing that guy up was a mistake; mentally replace with Doctor Strange in an AMF.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Urpriest
In terms of Culture vs. 40k metaphysics, ideally Culture humans should have been completely distinct from 40k humans, and soulless. They weren't established that way though, so we need a better solution.
I advocate a compromise: while Culture humans have souls, they don't rely on them to the same extent that IoM humans do. IoM humans evolved alongside the Warp, so perhaps their brains don't process emotion the way Culture humans' brains do. Specifically, perhaps the various organics of the 40k universe outsource some of their emotional processing to the Warp, while Culture humans do it all internally. So the Culture would need to rewrite the emotions and instincts of every organic in the galaxy in order to cut off the Warp without killing everything.
The warp is not just some emotional energy field. It's a fundamental metaphysical layer of reality and inherantly part of pretty much all life. Even the Tau, who were almost certainly engineered to have as little to do with it as possible, have small souls. Even the Orks who do not have souls technically have kind of souls.
Emotion usually has to do with the warp, but the warp is not emotion.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tiki Snakes
The warp is not just some emotional energy field. It's a fundamental metaphysical layer of reality and inherantly part of pretty much all life. Even the Tau, who were almost certainly engineered to have as little to do with it as possible, have small souls. Even the Orks who do not have souls technically have kind of souls.
Emotion usually has to do with the warp, but the warp is not emotion.
So is there any compromise that fits the particulars of our situation that doesn't give The Culture a huge buff in this area, and maintains respect for 40k meaning and patterns?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Other than what I wrote two pages ago? :smallsmile:
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tiki Snakes
Other than what I wrote two pages ago? :smallsmile:
Yea, cause some new ideas were presented and I wanted to see if you had any alternative ideas after reading those...
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Well, the only pertinent post I saw was that the Culture sometimes use slower cloning styles, but given the nature of their tech and their tendancy to have both failsafes and the ability to check things to the sub-atomic level, I don't see that really alters the main premise. After that you all wandered off on a big debate about dramatic tension, which is quite beside the point. :smallsmile:
Which is to say, the source of dramatic tension here, for me (only vaguely following events), is the central question; Can the Culture fix the 40k universe...without proving themselves bigger monsters than the evils they seek to cure?
And given how uncertain that is at this point, I'd say it seems tense enough. Bad End still looks really, really likely.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tiki Snakes
Well, the only pertinent post I saw was that the Culture sometimes use slower cloning styles
...
After that you all wandered off on a big debate about dramatic tension, which is quite beside the point.
There was a little bit about the soul and possibilities of the soul and how The Culture should work with regard to souls and such, you might have missed that.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Other than Forum Explorer's post,
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Originally Posted by
Forum Explorer
Well Tiki beat me to it but yeah basically this. The Culture doesn't realize what effect the Warp has and are perfectly fine without it and think it doesn't matter. But they do share the same connection to it like everything else. Their tech still works the same but if they developed a tech to cut off the warp their meat-bag citizens would likely all die.
Or to put it another way the Culture is flat out wrong that there isn't a fundamental difference between their AI citizens and the meat citizens.
which I mostly agree with*, the only other post remotely along those lines was Urpriest. Which I responded to above. If I'm missing anything else, you'll have to point it out,
*I do think that given the Minds are considered genuine Intelligent beings in their own setting, it's entirely possible that they would have more of a relation to the warp than machines in the 40k universe. It's entirely possible that True AI, if suitably advanced, actually develops some rudimentary warp presence in it's own right. This could explain why the Iron-Men and the AI of the Dark Age of Technology went Evil rather than simply abandoning their unnecessary Human masters. It could also be a theoretical hazard for the Mind's to consider or watch for.
If they do investigate the potential of cutting the warp off altogether, the ship testing it could lose all of it's Biological inhabitants to inexplicable sudden death and/or horribleness. The ships investigating what happened might find what remains of the mind/s that were present... wrong. Inexplicably foul, hollow, ammoral/immoral/abhorrent of thought and action and generally a dark mockery of what a mind understands itself to be, or simply a grey, inert and passionless machine with no remaining spark of true intelligence.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
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Originally Posted by
Fan
As for Orks, the consensus was split, and it was decided to have a full half of the ROU's / GCU's decide to wipe out the Orks. I'm pretty sure that means that they're all but gone.
The problem of Orks never existed, because it was never a pressing issue.
The tyranids were immediately answered, the IOM's governmental reform is prioritized lower than answering the threat of Chaos in the store.
The orks aren't gone. They just de-orked a few planets they ran across, and only on IoM worlds. These are the ones where the Ork-are-HS Culture ships ran across, the rest are doing fine.
The IoM reform IS a lower priority than Chaos. It's perfectly in character. I think I mentioned that the Culture dream vector only explains most of the Culture's additional rate of Chaos contamination over the IoM.
They still have contaminations and it's still forcing them to reload citizens from backup and requiring that they read their own citizens' minds to detect it. This is a big issue to them and it is the main reason why they're rushing around.
Also, the threat of warp storms is preventing them from building orbitals. But meh.
I believe I have already made my stance clear on the tension issue so here's a short summary again. (posting as just another guy from the perspective of the writer, I am not posting this with my writer's hat on, this is not a "final" thing like the "warp must have rules" part)
I view this story as mostly a vector to write about the interactions as they arise from what we agree the conditions are. I have a bias towards favouring the Culture misunderstanding things and deliberate massive understatements, but I try my best to stay true to the original premise.
(they were "unsatisfied" when we said we couldn't leave IoM space...)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tiki Snakes
And given how uncertain that is at this point, I'd say it seems tense enough. Bad End still looks really, really likely.
Correction: I still do not know how a Good End might be acheived.
Which is as close to what you said as makes nearly no difference. =D
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tiki Snakes
For my money, what you seem to be assuming is that the Culture don't have the warp, so it's not important and can be safely severed because, hey, the culture managed fine without it! Only that undermines the 40k fluff for the Warp at a fundamental level. It works much, much better and respectfully for the 40k side if we instead assume that the Warp in the Cultureverse is calm, without evil boogeymen living in it and generally not an issue, but still there and still a vital part of the metaphysical side of existence.
This is fair enough, it gives the Culture a free wedge into Warp manipulation but if the Warp is affected by their organic citizens, it's unavoidable. Anything that results in Culture organics requiring to be part Warp would give them that wedge through organic interfaces.
Still, I can accept that with some modifications that I'm still working through. (the primary one of which is that in Culture-verse, the warp is dead. As in, nothing lives in it)
So I'll go with that as the interface between Culture and 40k unless someone can think of a better idea. That better idea? You've got until part 8 before I run with this.
The great thing about doing this on a forum is that one has just to post that some problem is insoluble and proposals immediately pop up all over the place. (see Reforming IoM, the Warp, etc.)
It's almost like cheating. =D
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
This is fair enough, it gives the Culture a free wedge into Warp manipulation but if the Warp is affected by their organic citizens, it's unavoidable. Anything that results in Culture organics requiring to be part Warp would give them that wedge through organic interfaces.
Still, I can accept that with some modifications that I'm still working through. (the primary one of which is that in Culture-verse, the warp is dead. As in, nothing lives in it)
So I'll go with that as the interface between Culture and 40k unless someone can think of a better idea. That better idea? You've got until part 8 before I run with this.
That's pretty much the definition of a Calm Warp*, so you're actually right in step with Tiki.
*Technically, even a calm warp still has native entities (there are things living there besides demons), but they're almost exclusively non-hostile, and/or only concerned with each other. If the Cultureverse is calm-warp, and their FTL doesn't interact with the warp, then for all intents and purposes they have no warp and wouldn't ever know it was there.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Still, I can accept that with some modifications that I'm still working through. (the primary one of which is that in Culture-verse, the warp is dead. As in, nothing lives in it)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
That's pretty much the definition of a Calm Warp*, so you're actually right in step with Tiki.
*Technically, even a calm warp still has native entities (there are things living there besides demons), but they're almost exclusively non-hostile, and/or only concerned with each other. If the Cultureverse is calm-warp, and their FTL doesn't interact with the warp, then for all intents and purposes they have no warp and wouldn't ever know it was there.
Yes, I agree with the above.
Note - As much as, say, Slaanesh can be directly blamed on the Eldar, I wouldn't be surprised if the state of the warp is also someone's fault, if you go back far enough.
A breif google brings this to my attention;
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lexicanum
By the time the Old Ones marshalled their forces, there were only four C'tan in existence but much of life in the galaxy had already been extinguished.[1d] Eventually, the hot-blooded Young Races were unleashed which sent the Necrons reeling as the power of the Warp was an anathema to them and they struggled to contain the advance of this new offensive. In response, the C'tan unified for the first time in millions of years and began the great warding which was to seal the Empyrean from the material universe forever thus countering the magicks of the Old Ones. However, a seemingly unforeseen side effect of the Old Ones began to manifest in this era as the Young Races growing pains disturbed the Warp itself with this formless energy coalescing and older warp entities become predatory as the Empyrean began to become a more hostile environment. From cracks in reality, the denizens of the warp sought entry into the material universe which forced the Old Ones to bring about the emergence of new species to defend their last strongholds. Among their creations included the greenskinned hardy Krork and the technology mimicking Jokaero. However, it was too late by this point with their intergalactic network being breached with their greatest works and places of power being overrun by the horrors of the warp created by their own creations. Among the most insidious of these entities were the Enslavers who dominated the minds of the Young Races in order to create portals for more of their kind. The Enslaver Plague became the final blow for the reign of the Old Ones who scattered and forever broke their power.[1c]
From what I can see and understand from a quick skim, essentially the first two ascended races of the 40k universe faught a terrible war and broke it through their dickery. Clearly, the cheif difference is that this hasn't happened in the Cultureverse and it's all still working as intended.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
So, not knowing this history, and in fact no one knowing this history..
Would the Culture not ultimately attempt the same, and have the already brokenish verse completely crack?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
So, not knowing this history, and in fact no one knowing this history..
Would the Culture not ultimately attempt the same, and have the already brokenish verse completely crack?
Yes, and it shall be freaking awesome:smallbiggrin:
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Well, the bulk of that paragraph is invalidated by Newcron fluff - the Old Ones were wiped out by the Necrons and the C'tan, not the Enslavers...but it's still possible that the War in Heaven is responsible for the messed-up Warp.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
I think they would probably (eventually!) figure out that:
-Certain types of brains are more resistant to chaos, or fall to chaos in ways that are less crazily destructive as the human way, and less beneficial to the forces of chaos in general
-Dull souls gives a large amount of resistance to chaos in particular
-A wider variety of brain architecture amongst sentients in the galaxy means there is less focused thought/emotional/conceptual energy for chaos entities to feast on (ie, the more variety there is in this, the less powerful one particular pattern is)
-The warp has gone through periods where it was calm, and periods where it was disruptive, like it currently is
-Souls in this galaxy tend to offload either a certain amount of emotional processing into the warp, OR the warp is responsible for enabling the expression of emotions in general, so that completely removing access to The Warp is a really really bad idea
-Further, lots of life in general interacts with or requires the warp, and cutting it off would be a bad idea
-Those pylons (and similar technologies) can be tweaked to do several different things, including make the crossover more difficult, lower the expression of the warp into reality, and calm the warp in the area around them... without cutting off the warp in particular
-Most non-biological life (as far as brain activity goes) is highly resistant to the warp
-It would thus probably be a good idea to combine several initiatives in this galaxy:
1.) Encourage the adoption of machine intelligences as an option
2.) Encourage biologicals to follow a pattern that causes them to have dull souls in general, with biological and technological ways to mitigate the side effects that this would have, due to the offloading of emotional and creative potential to the warp
3.) Encourage the types of neurological and brain architecture where if the individual DOES fall to the warp, it isn't so catastrophic and they don't start to do sorcery and such
4.) Encourage diversity, overall, in brain architecture, so that one type of brain and thought isn't dramatically more dominant than others (though it might be a good idea to keep human type brain architecture 'in the lead', so that daemons don't get more versatile than they are, and undo point 3)
5.) Encourage the construction of machines that calm and stabilize the warp and reduce --without destroying or blocking it off completely-- its power and its overall effect on reality
6.) For civilizations that have a strong psyker tradition and which are all psykers, or which will not 'dull' their souls, or even families or individuals which want psychic capability, have a part of the galaxy devoted specifically to them, and strongly encourage lifestyles and technologies that mitigate and reduce the chance of falling to chaos in this area of the galaxy, and encourage the use of soulstones so if they die, they do not feed daemons.
and ultimately:
7.) Starve daemonkind, to the point where it is possible to rescue the benign gods that are trapped the warp, and the other innocent entities that are trapped there as well. Once you have some capital g-Gods on your side and helpful... things get easier. Maybe help the Eldar with that Ynnead plan of theirs. But definitely rescue Isha.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
That's the thing about the Empyrean though, you either cut it off completely, or it finds a way through the people's expressed emotions.
Blanks and Nulls are beings born without a soul, that isn't something you can clone, and has been established as such. Establishing Diversity means Change, and that empowers Tzeentch far above the rest of the Gods. Literally the worst god out of the 4 you can empower.
And again, closing real space to the Empyrean is what caused the cracks to form as the panicking daemons smashed into the walls of the Materium / Immaterium to feed.
The collective will of the Gods, and the birth of a Chaos God is enough to rip light year spanning holes in reality, and again, the Warp is a two way feed. While Tzeentch feeds off schemes, and knows all plans in the future, it's kinda difficult to get the drop or slip this kind of thing by him.
He literally has a library that shows him EVERY PLAN before it's made, perfect future site until the end of the galaxy.
That's going to be tough to trump, and I think a threat like The Culture would bring Tzeentch to broker an Alliance of Chaos Undivided.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
On the other hand, if you had to pick a Chaos God that was the closest to benign, it'd be Tzeentch. Change for the sake of change is chaotic and tends towards destructiveness, but it's not irreconcilably evil the way Violence, Death, and Excess are. The Culture's ubertech makes bloody violence irrelevant or impossible, they've basically conquered entropy - no one fears death in the Cultureverse, and the ultra-freedom of Culture citizens means there's no illicit pleasure from hedonism, and their near-immortality means anyone will eventually get bored. So if it comes to a War against Chaos, it wouldn't be inconcievable for Tzeentch to openly take the Culture's side, knowing that crushing the other three Powers from existence combined with the very nature of the Culture would leave him utterly ascendant, and cause the least amount of damage to the Materium in the process. And if anything can truly kill a Chaos God, it's another Chaos God.
Just another story route to consider for 'endgame'.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
The Culture lives in perpetual excess though, so I see the other two being squashed while the Prince of Pleasure, and The Changer of Ways get greatly empowered if the Culture truly control the galaxy.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
The Culture lives in perpetual excess though, so I see the other two being squashed while the Prince of Pleasure, and The Changer of Ways get greatly empowered if the Culture truly control the galaxy.
Excess is very subjective, though - the Culture's baseline for 'normal' is so much higher than the average IoM human citizen, so its defintion of hedonism would be proportionately higher and less frequent. Slaanesh will definitely get more powerful, but I think Tzeentch would ultimately have the upper hand when it came down to a clash between the two. Nurgle would go first, followed by Khorne (the Culture's style of violence is too clean for him to draw strength from), and finally Slaanesh, leaving Tzeentch Ascendant.
Maybe it's already started planning this outcome in-story...