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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
A big fan of the Mind name A Blue Telephone Booth. :smallbiggrin:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
It's conceivable that some chapters of the Astartes could be like, 'stay away from our charges and this area of space and there won't be a problem. Go kill this thing and bring proof to get on our good side.'
More like "Go kill this thing and bring proof so that we'll defer killing you to later".
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
Oreo Xenos
Ah, the Oreo Xenos (also known as the Pick n' Mixers), one of the three branches of the Inquisition All Sorts, along with the Oreo Hereticus (aka the Hubba Bubbas) and the Oreo Malloreum (aka the Maltesers).
Ignore me, it's a Friday and I'm in a silly mood.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
The plot looks good, and I can see some funny stuff happening soon.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Selrahc
I don't think Ork tech is encoded into their genetics.
No, it most definitely is encoded into their genetics; this is canonical, just like technological knowledge is encoded into Kroot (to a lesser extent) and Jokaero (to a greater extent). I could buy that maybe some of the crazier big mek stuff is Waagh consciousness (like some of the exosuits, maybe a few of the bigger vehicles, or Gargants, maybe some parts of Roks), but a good chunk of the basic technical knowledge is from genetics...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Brother Oni
More like "Go kill this thing and bring proof so that we'll defer killing you to later".
Again, I believe that depends on the Chapter in question...
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Regarding being at Macragge... this is Kinda A Big Deal.
The Ultramarines and the body of Guilliman is there. If The Culture hasn't actually done some examination of Stasis Fields and figured out, 'wait a minute, this is a temporal distortion!', this might be a good impetus to, in order to figure out what is going on/how to scan Guilliman. And also figure out some more ways to use stasis fields and similar temporal manipulation. Like I said earlier, scanning the body of a Primarch is also a good way to get some ideas and (at least) 'minor improvements' to the genetics of their organics...
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Also, if The Culture does contact the Ordo Xenos... Amberley should totally be one of the Inquisitors they contact. ;)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Brother Oni
Ah, the Oreo Xenos (also known as the Pick n' Mixers),
I WAS TYPING ON A PHONE. You could have said, 'Gavin, you have what looks like an autocorrect typo in that post, go double check it.' Rather than making fun of me...
*sniffles*...
Sheesh.
I will go fix it now.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
No, it most definitely is encoded into their genetics; this is canonical,
Where is it defined that precisely? Orks definitely know how to make technology *instinctively*. That isn't quite the same thing.
Feral Orks can't make technology to the same extent as in a proper Waaagh. A small waaaagh doesn't create the same level of technological power as a large one. In the biggest Orkish agglomerations you get things like Stompaz, Fighta-Bombaz and Tellyportas which represent the height of Orkish engineering, but the Orks don't have the know how to build normally. To me, that suggests that the Waaagh field is what is feeding the ability to make technology. It is giving Orks instinctive knowledge.
Quote:
just like technological knowledge is encoded into Kroot and Jokaero.
Do Jokaero have technical data drilled into their genome, or do they merely have an idiot savant style creative genius instilled into them?
Kroot I'm not really sure about. I was under the impression that most of their advanced tech was based off retrofitted Ork stuff, from when Pech was under Orkish occupation. Then augmented by Tau stuff. What examples are you thinking of?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Selrahc
I don't think Ork tech is encoded into their genetics. I think all that's encoded into their genetics is the Waaaagh instinct. And then that Warplinked gestalt consciousness is what makes Orks come up with technology innovations.
It is genetically locked into them - that's how a Mek knows the basic principles of mechanics and engineering, and how to build things that go fasta and go boom without ever picking up an engineering textbook, and how a Pain Dok knows how to do the sort of surgery that involves sewing limbs back on instead of cutting them off.
The bigger the WAAAAUGH field, the more complex and impossible their creations get, but there is a certain baseline competence hard-coded into their specialists.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
It's stated in the RPG books that Kroot seem to favor their own weaponry, and instinctively know how to maintain their own weapons more than weapons based on different principles that are gifted to them. Whether or not this is from eating Orks, or more prevalent in the tribes that eat orks, is left ambiguous...
As for the Jokaero, I'll have to get back to you on that, but I know I read somewhere that they have an instinctive understanding of actual technical skill, and left on their own, they do favor certain particular types of designs and items, in the absence of other tech to make.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Selrahc
Kroot I'm not really sure about. I was under the impression that most of their advanced tech was based off retrofitted Ork stuff, from when Pech was under Orkish occupation. Then augmented by Tau stuff. What examples are you thinking of?
Kroot tech is actually half-based on retrofitted ork stuff, and half their own genetic tech.
The kroot fed on orks, and assimilated parts of their coding in order to get their own instinctual technology. That's how they originally got their ships if I remember correctly.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Except the Kroot use different tech than the Orks; it's more based on their own historic technology, so it wasn't an exact transfer...
I think the existence of Feral Orks using steam-versions of Orky tech has been downplayed in recent versions of the setting, and seems to be (at least) on the verge of 'ignore-con'. As best as I can tell, if there aren't the materials to make certain bits of technology at an area where there are Orks... 'Feral Orks' just don't make the tech; they don't make weird steam-based versions of things. I think Feral Orks are starting to be more a description of Orks that aren't mentally attuned to a greater amount of Orks, and don't have the resources to make most of their tech... after all, I am pretty sure that the larger Squig variants that were 'unique' to Feral Orks are starting to be described as no longer unique to them...
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
I WAS TYPING ON A PHONE. You could have said, 'Gavin, you have what looks like an autocorrect typo in that post, go double check it.' Rather than making fun of me...
Sorry, it just tickled my funny bone and I was in a silly mood.
The fact that autocorrect would change 'ordo' to 'oreo' is also amusing me to no end. :smallbiggrin:
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Yea, I'm slooowwllyyy training my phone in 40k Jargon from this thread...
Oh, and another thing, if/when The Culture does show themselves to The Imperium, some notes about various conspiracies that will be jockeying to get them to do this or that...
The conspiracies will likely:
-Be Conflicting in goals
-Be Competing with one another
-Not generally know about one another
-Some will be tied to Chaos relatively closely
-Some will be influenced by Chaos very, very indirectly
-Some will have nothing to do with Chaos whatsoever
-Some will be a Cult of belief or Cult of philosophy of some sort
-Some would've cooperated with others if they knew about others with similar goals, but they don't
-Several will have identical goals as other conspiracies, representing other groups, without having any idea that they share the same goals as other groups
-Some will have a meta knowledge of the patterns of conspiracies, that all of the above is true, even without specific knowledge in the particulars of what is currently going on
Conflicting conspiracies in the Imperium is... a very very messy business...
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
It's stated in the RPG books that Kroot seem to favor their own weaponry, and instinctively know how to maintain their own weapons more than weapons based on different principles that are gifted to them. Whether or not this is from eating Orks, or more prevalent in the tribes that eat orks, is left ambiguous...
Well, your descriptionb sounds pretty ambiguous to me! Surely it's pretty much automatic that the Kroot will know how to use their Kroot equipment a lot better than non-kroot equipment? How can you tell that their familiarity with weapon drill isn't cultural? I mean the Kroot use a lot of genetic-stuff, but that doesn't necessarily have to mean that they have no education or learning.
I bet a human uses a human weapon a lot more instinctively than they'd use one designed for a Kroot or Ork. Because the weapon has actually been designed for their species...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Glyphstone
It is genetically locked into them - that's how a Mek knows the basic principles of mechanics and engineering, and how to build things that go fasta and go boom without ever picking up an engineering textbook, and how a Pain Dok knows how to do the sort of surgery that involves sewing limbs back on instead of cutting them off.
But none of those Orks actually show up until the Waaagh field reaches a certain level. Before that you get Feral Ork equivalents. Pig Doks fill both roles, on a more primitive level. Then the Waaagh reaches a flipover point, and the Orks start making proper technology and become proper Orks. Then the Waaagh reaches critical mass, they start gearing up for interstellar conflict and building spacecraft.
I mean, is it ever directly stated that it is the genetics giving technological knowledge? Could it not be the Waaagh doing that? From an observational level it's almost exactly the same. Except if you're doing a detailed genome analysis, like the Culture is doing, then you won't know the difference.
I've just read lots of things that specify that the Orks have an instinctual or innate technical expertise, but I can't remember it ever being specifically called out as genetic.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Except that an Ork in isolation -- well away from a group of other Orks -- will still be able to make Orky tech, even just a Boy, and not a Mad Dok or Mek Boy whatever.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
Except that an Ork in isolation -- well away from a group of other Orks -- will still be able to make Orky tech, even just a Boy, and not a Mad Dok or Mek Boy whatever.
A feral Ork can't... An Ork boy could, but in order for an Ork boy to be created the Waaagh field has to reach a certain level.
Orkoid ecologies already respond very selectively to the Waaagh. Without a preexisting waaagh field, the only Orks that will be born will be Snotlings and Squigs. These minor, non-sentient, Orkoid lifeforms prepare the ecological conditions for Orks to grow. And generate a low level Waaagh field. But the same spores placed somewhere with a preexisting Waaagh, will just grow into Orks. As the Squigs and Snotlings generate a Waaagh field, more complex Orkoid entities start being born. Gretchens and Feral Ork boys. They start making the rudiments of Orkish society, without much tech. They also add to the Waaaagh. When it hits a sufficient level, regular Orks start being born, as well as Oddboyz and Nobz.
Feral Orks are a truly seperate genus of the Orkoid species, able to shoot straight(BS3!), and much more inclined to run away.
So an Ork boy might have the technological knowledge in his brain, because he was born into a Waaagh field which put it into him. Without anything being in his genetic matrix beyond the ability to tap into that Waaagh field...
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
What I am saying is that a lot of the info you are describing on Feral Orks is getting ignore-conned....
When was the last source that REALLY described them as separate in the technologies they use and their kulture? And using steam tech and such? What source was it? Was this mentioned anywhere else?
More recent depictions of Feral Orks doesn't have them as like what you are saying, I mean. They are just Orks that don't use high tech stuff cause of lack of resources, not orks that use a totally different set of technologies.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Re: Ork 'pets':
Spoiler
Show
I suspect Large Stick Speaks Softly will discover that while Orks can be made to *respect* a non-Ork that displays sufficient strength, it would be near-impossible to get them to actually *follow* any being that was not part of the Waaagh loop; such a leader would not be sufficiently Orky on a very fundamental and basic level. Even if the ship created an Orkoid-body plan drone to be its avatar to the Orks, they would likely respond to it similarly to how IoM humans respond to Blanks; the artificial 'Ork' would not have an Ork soul.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tyckspoon
Re: Ork 'pets':
I suspect Large Stick Speaks Softly will discover that while Orks can be made to *respect* a non-Ork that displays sufficient strength, it would be near-impossible to get them to actually *follow* any being that was not part of the Waaagh loop; such a leader would not be suffiicently Orky on a very fundamental and basic level. Even if the ship created an Orkoid-body plan drone to be its avatar to the Orks, they would likely respond to it similarly to how IoM humans respond to Blanks; the artificial 'Ork' would not have an Ork soul.
Maybe, but that route does not lead to hilarity.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
Maybe, but that route does not lead to hilarity.
And I support a route that leads to hilarity 100%!
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tyckspoon
Re: Ork 'pets':
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
Maybe, but that route does not lead to hilarity.
Spoiler tag that perhaps? =P
Hmm, time to think up a twist now.
RE orks & genetic technology:
Lets say the orks have basic technical expertise in their genome (they have engineering or physics instinctively) but they get ideas from the warpfield that lets them build the bigger stuff. But orks on their own can take other people's ideas and apply their in-built knowledge.
That short story about the ork warchief rebuilding a centrifuge in IoM custody can be explained this way. They know how to build many things, but don't get the ideas to do it until the Waagh starts. Then the Mekboys start appearing.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
That story I linked to with the centrifuge was 100% fanfic, just saying...
But, as far as I know, that's a workable interpretation you have there!
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
part 7.5 Chaos Encounter
Spoiler
Show
The development of the warpstorm was observed at a range of 10 lightyears (roughly twice the distance between inhabited stars in this region of space) and was visible in long range hyperspace sensors.
While data was gathered by a GCU currently in interstellar space, a Chaos fleet dropped out of warp in an IoM held system near the edge of the storm that the GCU Sufficiently Advanced Technology was currently scanning.
Data on scrapcode from Golden Goose's battle had been used to harden computer systems since then but no risk was taken. All data channels to the Chaos fleet was scrambled by an effector field that enforced pure static in virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum. While this had the effect of announcing the GCU's presence and jamming all IoM non-Astropathic communications, no risks were to be taken with respect to Chaos.
The Chaos fleet itself was destroyed by intense CREW bombardment and a displaced nanohole (Schwarzschild hole, lifetime ~1s, total explosive power: 2 x 10^5 kg). The resulting gamma ray burst was shielded by the same jamming effector field, Sufficiently Advanced Technology positioned itself to cover the IoM world as well.
The fragments of the Chaos ships were then destroyed by CAM elimination.
For the next 24 hours, the GCU stayed in orbit to assess any damage that might have leaked through the shield and the IoM's reaction to the event. While the IoM reaction was within societal models, contact was not opened with the planet due to the following event.
A number of IoM citizens and GCU organic citizens were somehow subject to a strange infectious disease. While the affected citizens were restored from backup and all organics in the ship was scrubbed down and quarantined, the plague was not interfered with on the IoM world for two days due to this matter.
-- Addenum: This writing GCU observes that reloading from backup of the various citizens should not have taken more than a day, and during that time, there should have been more than enough time to intervene in the resulting plague on the IoM world.
-- Addenum 2: Sufficiently Advanced Technology would like to note that the plague appeared more virulent than expected and had apparent warp traits. Infection of citizens continued despite no apparent vector until areas that infection occurred in were completely rebuilt. This GCU would like to note that further warp infections appear to be able to linger in areas even without physical cause and recommends destruction of infection sites by CAM.
The plague appeared to convert IoM citizens into mindless zombies that attacked other citizens. Citizens that became part of a Chaos cult and pledged alliegance to a Chaos god called Nurgle were seemingly immune. After watching the plague progress for an additional day, Sufficiently Advanced Technology concludes that this plague has HS-like properties and is probably employed as a weapon by Chaos, probably by this Nurgle god.
The infected areas were sterilized by Pancaker at 1 million gravities to liquiefy all organics then 1 million negative gravities to send the affected planetary surface to orbit where the chunks were displaced into a single solid mass before destruction by complete antimatter annihilation.
The relatively small area of the planet that was affected did not significantly affect the planet's orbit or broader ecosystem although local damage was severe.
A 1 second lifespan blackhole radiates about 10^22 joules of energy. Or about as much as 24 hours of sunlight on earth concentrated into a single explosion. And nearly all of it as ultra-high energy gammas.
That was kinda unexpected.
Still, it's just a bigger boom. Not that important in the grand scheme of things.
So Sufficiently Advanced Technology rips a small chunk of a planet out to rid a Nurgle plague, being unable to reload IoM citizens.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
I think some ship scale blackhole/gravitic weapons are known in this setting. Rare archeotech and xenostech mostly...
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
I think some ship scale blackhole/gravitic weapons are known in this setting. Rare archeotech and xenostech mostly...
There might be some gravity weapons but I've never heard of a black hole gun in the 40K verse.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
I think it's more in the scale of 'interfere with targeting or systems, or damage an area of a ship' rather than 'annihilate a ship in one burst' sort of thing. You know, knock weapons off course, interfere with sensors, maybe damage an area or prevent crew from moving, stuff like that.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
There's the Nova Cannon, but that's more 'really big boom' than 'gravitic'...still the most destructive ship-to-ship weapon.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Also, another thing to remember about Orks... a Waaagh isn't just a 'war'. It's a 'migration' and 'destructive rampage'. Orks instinctively leave a path of destruction wherever they are going, when they are on a Waagh, whether wherever they are is their goal or not...
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
You know, humanity's Psykers are capable of seeing the future to a limited extent and those abilities are likely recorded in the stuff the Culture already scanned in the IoM archives. Now that they've witnessed hard evidence that the Warp screws with temporal mechanics and know that the Eldar know things that they couldn't possibly know from conventional intelligence resources, deducing that the Eldar have a very refined form of future-sight seems like a no-brainer for the Minds at this point.
Learning about Tzneetch's capabilities could make them super paranoid. An entity that's probably at least as smart as a Mind with Future Sight even better than the Eldar. A Mind or two could end up in a "he knows that I know that he knows..." loop.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Well, there is game theory that deals with the 'he knows that I know he knows' thing. It comes down to make an educated guess at how many levels your opponent is effectively operating at, and acting accordingly.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Gavinfoxx
Well, there is game theory that deals with the 'he knows that I know he knows' thing. It comes down to make an educated guess at how many levels your opponent is effectively operating at, and acting accordingly.
All according to plan. :smallwink:
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
you know it occurs to me that a lot of the information kept by the Inquisition and the Grey Knights is on paper and in books.
This inefficent method is actually more or less deliberate because they don't actually want people to access it plus it's harder to make physical copies compared to digital ones.
Not all information of course and the libraries themselves are organized with a digital catalog. (Likely)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Speaking of which, I haven't yet heard any particular theories of time travel yet. A friend tells me that in RT, you can make a warp jump and it has a certain probability of you ending up in the past.
Which means that if you get multiple ships and get them all to make warp jumps, you become more likely to have one going back multiple times... (ending up further and further back in the past)
How many ships were there in the Imperium now?
...
How likely is it that at any one point in time, there is a ship going back in time twice? Three times? ... Four?
Currently, I am running future sight as a mix of NSCP time travel and branching time lines.
But this compromise cannot work for actual physical time travel, which so far, I have taken it to be NSCP time travel.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
Speaking of which, I haven't yet heard any particular theories of time travel yet. A friend tells me that in RT, you can make a warp jump and it has a certain probability of you ending up in the past.
Which means that if you get multiple ships and get them all to make warp jumps, you become more likely to have one going back multiple times... (ending up further and further back in the past)
How many ships were there in the Imperium now?
...
How likely is it that at any one point in time, there is a ship going back in time twice? Three times? ... Four?
Currently, I am running future sight as a mix of
NSCP time travel and branching time lines.
But this compromise cannot work for actual physical time travel, which so far, I have taken it to be NSCP time travel.
The problem is that there is an equal chance that you'll end up in the future. So it evens out really. Significant time travel is the exception not the norm.
As for the travel itself it's apparently paradox proof as proven when an Ork went back in time and killed his double in order to have two of his favorite gun.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Forum Explorer
The problem is that there is an equal chance that you'll end up in the future. So it evens out really. Significant time travel is the exception not the norm.
I don't care about the ones that end up in the future. =P
But there exists a few ships in the IoM that DO end up quite far back in the past. Which the Culture can potentially find and use to transmit messages to the past.
The Culture with time loop logic... >.>
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
You know, if there is a non-zero chance... couldn't the culture just replicate ,say, 10 billion tiny message capsules with warp drives and send them all on random jumps until one ends up in the past with the intended message?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Eldan
You know, if there is a non-zero chance... couldn't the culture just replicate ,say, 10 billion tiny message capsules with warp drives and send them all on random jumps until one ends up in the past with the intended message?
Warp drives need psykers to run. Until the Culture has Warp engineering, they're not going to be able to even make a Warp drive, much less an artificial psyker.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Warp drives need psykers to run.
Hmm. They actually don't. Just to steer.
Tau warp drives work perfectly well without psykers, it's just that without them they have to limit themselves to short skims so they don't get lost.
Of course it isn't just the act of entering and leaving the warp that causes time dilation. It is travelling through it. The craft will need to go on journeys, which means some form of navigation.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
part 7.5 Tau
Spoiler
Show
Week 3
ROU Gunboat Diplomacy to GCU Peacemaker
Tyranid hive fleet sighted around IoM system, proceeding along standard engagement protocol.
... Hive fleet destroyed. No Tyranid prescence on IoM world detected. IoM fleet seems to be inoperative. There is an unidentified ship at the edge of the system, was being chased by a small force of Tyranids that have now been destroyed. The ship is remaining still, no signs of detection of this ROU has been found.
Effector readings of the ship are as follows. Preliminary identification: Tau scout ship, Messenger Class (IoM name), confidence level 88%.
Should I open direct contact?
...
Request to await your arrival is acknowledged.
Two days later
GCU Peacemaker
The Tau ship has jumped out of the system while the GCU Peacemaker was on its way. The loss of this chance at contact is disappointing but Gunboat Diplomacy's scans of the IoM planet has retrieved an approximate map of Tau space in the local region.
This GCU will head to the nearest Tau-held planet to analyze and possibly make contact with the Tau. The ROU will remain with one Contact citizen to continue investigations into the Astartes chapter in this space.
The GSV to arrive in a week's time will establish a presence in this local region of space. As imperialistic patterns go, the IoM does not appear to be an exception to the distance problem. This far from Sol, we may be able to find peaceful contact.
A general question:
How does 40k treat things like black holes and neutron stars? Are there anything special near them or does basically everyone avoid them because there's nothing special to see and they're actually kinda dangerous? (pulsars are... rather unhealthy, and neutron stars have a stupidly strong magnetic field, which is also unhealthy; but it also makes them incredibly scientifically interesting)
Tau: When the Messenger gets back and reports about this, what might the likely Tau reactions be?
(this update is not over, direct contact happens before this ship returns, so the question is really, how would the Tau view the Culture when the report of the Culture's military capability reaches them)
More interestingly, given the size of the milky way (100 thousand lights in diameter), even if we say Macragge is only halfway across the galaxy from Sol, there's no way the Culture could actually have gotten here this fast.
But... *handwaves* never mind that.
I've been reading about this Guilliman guy on the Lexicanum. I note that he doesn't appear to be psychic (nothing of psyker powers were mentioned of him), is that correct?
And the other thing is that he appears to be frozen in time right as he was fatally poisoned. Which means he isn't actually dead.. right? Just poisoned by something the Imperium can't cure.
There might be a very good chance the Culture can actually save him if only they could poke at the body. The problem being that it's in a stasis field which abrogates poking and even if the IoM could be persuaded to turn it off, that'll just kill the guy anyway. (and it's not like the Culture has a backup of him) So it might not be possible until the Culture learns to poke into a stasis field.
The other thing is that very little is written about his attitude towards xenos. While his obsession with information and organization does mildly align him towards the Culture (this is not a man to miss what the Culture means for the balance of power in the galaxy), I do not know how he might react.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
The problem being that it's in a stasis field which abrogates poking and even if the IoM could be persuaded to turn it off, that'll just kill the guy anyway.
Wait, why does turning off the Stasis Field kill him?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
More interestingly, given the size of the milky way (100 thousand lights in diameter), even if we say Macragge is only halfway across the galaxy from Sol, there's no way the Culture could actually have gotten here this fast.
Hum. Yeaaaah....
There are probably faster ships around now than in Excession. In Excession a super fast ship was running at 240 kilolights. Surface Details imply that the new gen ROU's developed in the time since(50 years? More?) are even faster. Hydrogen Sonata states that ships can go beyond their "maximums" if they're willing to suffer engine degradation. So a long range hyper tooled exploration vessel going flat out, accepting engine degradation that will need to be fixed and which makes the trip dangerous.
Call it half a million lights as a theoretical maximum? Double the maximum in the days of Excession... Even that won't get them there in under a month. And of course, why are the Culture beelining so ferociously for the Tau with what has to be a few custom built ships? I guess they could just be intrigued by what they heard about the Tau.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kinslayer
Wait, why does turning off the Stasis Field kill him?
Because he was fatally poisoned, and if he's removed from stasis, it would finish killing him, possibly instantly?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Selrahc
Call it half a million lights as a theoretical maximum? Double the maximum in the days of Excession... Even that won't get them there in under a month. And of course, why are the Culture beelining so ferociously for the Tau with what has to be a few custom built ships? I guess they could just be intrigued by what they heard about the Tau.
They have taken 1 and a half months to get there (6 weeks actually). Which, if we assume the distance is 50k ly, is a speed of roughly 400 kilolights.
Well... hrm, let's just say the GCU and ROU were having a race. XD
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kinslayer
Wait, why does turning off the Stasis Field kill him?
Because he's fatally poisoned/wounded, and the stasis field is the only thing keeping the poison and bleeding out from running their course.
Curing him wouldn't necessarily require a way to poke around inside an active stasis field; curing the poison (and healing the neck wound) quickly enough after shutting it off should suffice. Against any known ordinary poison, I imagine Culture tech would be easily up to the task. The problem is that the poison in question was from a fallen primarch who acquired it from Chaos while in the Eye of Terror. Warp phenomena may be involved in how this poison functions, and that puts it beyond the Culture's present understanding.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
Because he was fatally poisoned, and if he's removed from stasis, it would finish killing him, possibly instantly?
Or at least fast enough that the Culture can't save him. The Primarchs aren't really human remember? So they can't use a human model and they have no idea what the poison is doing until they can analyze it.
Which will take time, especially since it's a Warp-based one.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kinslayer
Wait, why does turning off the Stasis Field kill him?
Because he's been horrifyingly poisoned, by a stab to the throat I believe for good measure, and he's frozen in the moment of death, according to Lexicanum.
It's probably not exactly a normal poison anyway. Fulgrim (one of the Daemon Primarchs) stabbed Guilliman with it, so the poison's probably all kinds of warp powered.
I believe he's also something of a museum piece in the Temple of Correction, which is noted as being one of the holiest places in the Imperium, so removing him from that, on the hunch of something that might cure him, but also might actually kill him just by removing him, is something of a no-no.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
I can't remember - someone who's read the Heresy novels remind me, was Rowboat Girlyman the Diplomat or the Strategist? That'd affect if awakening and curing him would be a good plan or hilariously horrible plan for the Culture.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
It appears, based on reading the Lexicanum entry on Guilliman, that Stasis Fields do actually permit some things to happen inside. The article makes it clear that viewing Guilliman's body, and in particular the current state of the mortal wound, is possible. Thus, at the very least the stasis field allows light to enter, interact with his outer surface, and exit. If it did not, the only thing pilgrims would see is total blackness filling the entire field.
This, and potential explanations for it, might open the door to Culture investigation.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Oh, and the notion of the Culture armed with stable time loops came up a bit ago, via using the Warp to throw messages backwards in time. Fun idea, but I wouldn't worry about it being used with any practicality.
Firstly, it's random, and incredibly rare, the sort of rare that would be like throwing a message in a bottle into the Atlantic Ocean and hoping it reaches a specific small island in the Pacific Ocean. So to have it occur with any consistency would require a massive brute-force approach involving millions or billions of copies of the message scattered across the warp, hoping one makes it to where it needs to go, and leaving the rest to be lost or possibly found by someone else.
Which leads to the second issue...trusting the message's reliability. The warp changes things, that's just its nature. Imagine playing the children's game 'Telephone', where player A whispers a message to Player B, who whispers to C, so on all the way down the line to Player Z, who then announces the message to everyone. Anyone who ever played that knows how easily it is to get a garbled end result - this represents the Warp's inherently tumultous and chaotic nature when left to its own devices.
Now, alter the game - Player A, in addition to whispering to B, whispers his message to a random player between C and Z, but you don't know where the message was 'reset' back to 100% accurate. Additionally, one player between B and Z is a compulsive liar - neither you nor A knows who it is, but they will pass on the direct opposite of the message. So at some point during the line, before or after the reset, the message will be definitely fouled. With that in mind, how certain can you be that Z's spoken message will match what A originally whispered?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
I can't remember - someone who's read the Heresy novels remind me, was Rowboat Girlyman the Diplomat or the Strategist? That'd affect if awakening and curing him would be a good plan or hilariously horrible plan for the Culture.
Looks like primary strategist to me, judging by Lexicanum. Still, he's described as ridiculously intelligent and would have personal memory and knowledge of the Emperor's original policies. I think he'd at least give the Culture a chance to explain themselves, and seeing how closely their beliefs align with the pre-Heresy Imperial Truth he might ally with them.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
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Originally Posted by
douglas
If it did not, the only thing pilgrims would see is total blackness filling the entire field.
You really mean that it would appear as a perfectly reflective surface. Black means it absorbs light, so when a stasis field is turned off, everything inside would be destroyed by millenia of light all compressed into a single instant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
So to have it occur with any consistency would require a massive brute-force approach involving millions or billions of copies of the message scattered across the warp, hoping one makes it to where it needs to go, and leaving the rest to be lost or possibly found by someone else.
<...>
With that in mind, how certain can you be that Z's spoken message will match what A originally whispered?
The exact plan goes as follows.
Have a GCU or drone or something that can monitor IoM traffic going through a system. This needs to be able to identify ships and scan things on board.
Plant one in every single IoM system.
Hypercomm reports from all the systems are tallied and any duplicate entries are further investigated. This investigation confirms that the ship's manifest, captain, crew and other identification markers are the same, and then the ships are dated by radiometric dating.
This gives you a pair of ships in which one is a future copy of the other.
After that, you read whatever message you want on the ship from the future and then plant it on the ship about to leave. (note the order, important!)
This generates a closed time loop, which, you can use for its duration (ie. before the 'present' ship leaves).
Since the Culture's strategic messaging speed is <1 day to cross the entire galaxy and the time jumps are easily a week or more (and that IoM ships do stay for significant lengths of time in a system), closed time loops can be set up for nearly every occasion.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
You really mean that it would appear as a perfectly reflective surface. Black means it absorbs light, so when a stasis field is turned off, everything inside would be destroyed by millenia of light all compressed into a single instant.
The exact plan goes as follows.
Have a GCU or drone or something that can monitor IoM traffic going through a system. This needs to be able to identify ships and scan things on board.
Plant one in every single IoM system.
Hypercomm reports from all the systems are tallied and any duplicate entries are further investigated. This investigation confirms that the ship's manifest, captain, crew and other identification markers are the same, and then the ships are dated by radiometric dating.
This gives you a pair of ships in which one is a future copy of the other.
After that, you read whatever message you want on the ship from the future and then plant it on the ship about to leave. (note the order, important!)
This generates a closed time loop, which, you can use for its duration (ie. before the 'present' ship leaves).
Since the Culture's strategic messaging speed is <1 day to cross the entire galaxy and the time jumps are easily a week or more (and that IoM ships do stay for significant lengths of time in a system), closed time loops can be set up for nearly every occasion.
That relies on the duplicate in time thing to be anything more than a centennial rarity though, even with all the IOM's traffic it is horrifically rare for a closed time loop to happen.
Meaning, sure, if they waited 100 years they could get lucky and find that one off provided they're monitoring every ship in the Imperium of Man (not impossible for the Culture, and pretty likely.), then yes, they would for the duration of the closed time loop be able to send messages during the time loop provided it doesn't end the moment the warp rift closes.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
He's also the kind of frothing lunatic who looks at the aftermath of something like the Horus Heresy and says to himself, "What we should do is exactly what I say, regardless of authority, and if we don't do it my way I'LL KILL YOU ALL."
You know, the whole nearly instigating a second civil war right after the Heresy was resolved, thing.
He's exactly the kind of person who it might seem a very good idea to cure. And who it would probably actually be a massive mistake to cure. (Both in and out of universe. He didn't earn the nickname Rowboat Girlyman out of fan affection.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jseah
You really mean that it would appear as a perfectly reflective surface. Black means it absorbs light, so when a stasis field is turned off, everything inside would be destroyed by millenia of light all compressed into a single instant.
The exact plan goes as follows.
Have a GCU or drone or something that can monitor IoM traffic going through a system. This needs to be able to identify ships and scan things on board.
Plant one in every single IoM system.
Hypercomm reports from all the systems are tallied and any duplicate entries are further investigated. This investigation confirms that the ship's manifest, captain, crew and other identification markers are the same, and then the ships are dated by radiometric dating.
This gives you a pair of ships in which one is a future copy of the other.
After that, you read whatever message you want on the ship from the future and then plant it on the ship about to leave. (note the order, important!)
This generates a closed time loop, which, you can use for its duration (ie. before the 'present' ship leaves).
Since the Culture's strategic messaging speed is <1 day to cross the entire galaxy and the time jumps are easily a week or more (and that IoM ships do stay for significant lengths of time in a system), closed time loops can be set up for nearly every occasion.
My point is more that the Culture is likely to end up waiting years or decades between successful time-loops, because it's such a freakishly rare occurrence even with the volume of traffic across the entire Imperium. Success rates would be further degraded by the chance of a message being corrupted 'en-route' - meaning the message they read was false or inaccurate, causing them to place a false/inaccurate message to later read.
The only defined example of physical time travel in 40K lore is actually of an Ork Waaaaugh, that went into the warp and came out to find themselves at a planet being attacked by Orks...their own past selves. The Warboss in charge promptly launched an attack so that he could kill his past self and have two copies of his personalized custom weapon. He succeeded, and didn't erase himself from existence, nor did he have that second copy before he killed his back-time duplicate. Everything else is in-setting conjecture, rumor, and 'I know a guy who knew a guy who said he met a guy who saw this happen'.
Quote:
He's exactly the kind of person who it might seem a very good idea to cure. And who it would probably actually be a massive mistake to cure. (Both in and out of universe. He didn't earn the nickname Rowboat Girlyman out of fan affection.
Not least because of any living being in the entire 40K universe, he would be the only one with a legitimate case of having the ability to devise even semi-effective counter-tactics against a Culture military force using IoM technology levels. He was that good.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
The Glyphstone
My point is more that the Culture is likely to end up waiting years or decades between successful time-loops, because it's such a freakishly rare occurrence even with the volume of traffic across the entire Imperium. Success rates would be further degraded by the chance of a message being corrupted 'en-route' - meaning the message they read was false or inaccurate, causing them to place a false/inaccurate message to later read.
The only defined example of physical time travel in 40K lore is actually of an Ork Waaaaugh, that went into the warp and came out to find themselves at a planet being attacked by Orks...their own past selves. The Warboss in charge promptly launched an attack so that he could kill his past self and have two copies of his personalized custom weapon. He succeeded, and didn't erase himself from existence, nor did he have that second copy before he killed his back-time duplicate. Everything else is in-setting conjecture, rumor, and 'I know a guy who knew a guy who said he met a guy who saw this happen'.
Not least because of any living being in the entire 40K universe, he would be the only one with a legitimate case of having the ability to devise even semi-effective counter-tactics against a Culture military force using IoM technology levels. He was that good.
Also one of the only one's able to physically punk a SC agent, and likely to slam him / her into the stasis field he was just healed from in order to interogate the person for later (Suicide is quite the common option in the IoM.)
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
My point is more that the Culture is likely to end up waiting years or decades between successful time-loops, because it's such a freakishly rare occurrence even with the volume of traffic across the entire Imperium. Success rates would be further degraded by the chance of a message being corrupted 'en-route' - meaning the message they read was false or inaccurate, causing them to place a false/inaccurate message to later read.
RT actually provides a method by which it can occur. Ships with tempermental warp engines either add or subtract 1d5 weeks from their journey time, so on a short journey the ship will have a chance of arriving before it leaves.
EDIT:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fan
Also one of the only one's able to physically punk a SC agent, and likely to slam him / her into the stasis field he was just healed from in order to interogate the person for later (Suicide is quite the common option in the IoM.)
Hum. Depends on if the agent is tooled up. If Guilliman just gets moved out of punching range and stripped naked with a displacer, then caused to levitate helplessly by a gravitic generator he is screwed. It doesn't really matter how physically impressive he is.
And SC agents get their neural pathways redesigned to be at superhuman levels of reaction times, and might(depending on the mission profile) be wearing armour that goes beyond even that.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
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Originally Posted by
Selrahc
RT actually provides a method by which it can occur. Ships with tempermental warp engines either add or subtract 1d5 weeks from their journey time, so on a short journey the ship will have a chance of arriving before it leaves.
RT is also very much almost 20 years old though, and sources have come out since demonstrating it's rarity in fluff.
I'd say Fluff provided in tabletop Codex's > Most things, especially when outdated.
Which the Rogue Trader RPG is on premise of them being allowed to sell Xeno Technology on TERRA of all worlds, something in the opening description.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
RT is also very much almost 20 years old though, and sources have come out since demonstrating it's rarity in fluff.
No... RT the 2009 RPG Corebook.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
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Originally Posted by
Selrahc
No... RT the 2009 RPG Corebook.
Oh, you mean the one that Fantasy Flight games bought the license for.
Yeah, no.
None of those books are really canon, because Fantasy Flight paid for the ability to make them, and contracting the license to make something rather than being contracted implies creative control in the hands of Fantasy Flight rather than Games Workshop.
Still, Codexes and Novels > The RPG's.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
Oh, you mean the one that Fantasy Flight games bought the license for.
Yeah, no.
And you're basing that on?
EDIT: Right, okay. You're saying they aren't as definitive as a Codex or Novel? Well can you point to a definitive statement that would contradict it?
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Selrahc
And you're basing that on?
My previous experiences with Fantasy Flight games and how they handle adaptations, the creations are still the property of Games Workshop, but ultimately they allow creative control.
Good story actually, I met one of their lead product designers when I was up at Egyptiancon in Carbondale when they were running through their "Only War" book.
It's well designed, but ultimately all writing decisions aren't in the hands of Games Workshop story wise.
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Re: The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fan
Oh, you mean the one that Fantasy Flight games bought the license for.
Yeah, no.
None of those books are really canon, because Fantasy Flight paid for the ability to make them, and contracting the license to make something rather than being contracted implies creative control in the hands of Fantasy Flight rather than Games Workshop.
Still, Codexes and Novels > The RPG's.
As it's been pointed out previously (and repeatedly) over a few different threads...that's just your personal ranking. GW has nothing similar to the Lucasfilm Canonicity Pyramid - everything and nothing is canon, and the only hard rule they seem to actually follow is 'new > old'. This includes the FFG material, the Black Library imprint, and the Codex fluff; the only 'this is unambigiously accurate' material they print is the game rules.