The Culture explores 40K II: Now With 100% more Fanfiction

[jseah]

Keeping the souls in digital space does not make them any less souls than putting diamonds in a gold ring makes them any less diamonds, or cooking a steak makes it any less beef, especially in regards to Data Daemons, who are specifically able to act through those mediums to consume them.

The Culture can turn people into drones or even into Minds, those don't get souls. It can also do the reverse, although as I understand it, that's considerably rarer. In the case of 'Digitized Souls' the term doesn't have the same baggage that it does in 40k, specifically that it can be copied just like any other AI.

Mind uploading cannot generate another soul or alot of other stuff in the current interactions break.

Unlike Soul Grinders and Soul Forges (which are certainly Chaos artifacts and so are going to be warp active - I have already added the caveat that warp-based machines can house souls), none of the Culture's stuff are warp-based.

Again, if they didn't explicitly say souls, and then identify on multiple occasions that they are seperate, sentient, self aware beings at multiple points in the story I'd agree with you.

They behave like independent self-aware beings because the Culture fully understands intelligence engineering. They can make an intelligence to any specification they wish, with whatever impulses/emotions/instincts they want, at any particular ranking on the sentience scale from a simple automaton to a Mind.

They can just as easily make an entire mind-state from scratch and it'll be 100% identical to a mindstate uploaded from an organic body. They don't do this because they prefer to let their intelligences develop organically instead of programming whatever they want into it.

EDIT: also, practically everything in the Culture is an independent self-aware being. Down to the 10^8 watt plasma handgun.

[Gavinfoxx]

Yea in 40k, soul is the warp component of an organic being. In culture-verse it is a mindstate, and completely in the real. Jseah's point makes sense...

Also, I seriously doubt that by the 42nd millennium, that Grey Knight Titan Stc stuff hasn't happened... even if it is set ahead of the typical stories, it should have happened by now...

[Fan]

But that's the thing, even machine's have souls to a degree, and that's made a huge point in 40k with Standard Template Constructs sometimes being sentient beings, and be able to be corrupted by Chaos.

[Gavinfoxx]

But that's the thing, even machine's have souls to a degree, and that's made a huge point in 40k with Standard Template Constructs sometimes being sentient beings, and be able to be corrupted by Chaos.

That is fantastically disputed in 40k lore, on whether sentient machines have souls. Probably some do and some don't. Only biological entities need souls to be the main vector of Chaos corruption... machines have other, different vectors.

[jseah]

But that's the thing, even machine's have souls to a degree, and that's made a huge point in 40k with Standard Template Constructs sometimes being sentient beings, and be able to be corrupted by Chaos.

You know, I'm not contesting that a Data Daemon won't be able to cause huge amounts of trouble. It'll be like scrapcode but many times worse.

It's just that making mindstates special breaks quite alot of the current interactions.

[jseah]

part 9.5 Eldar

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Week 2
Our SC agent and drone who were part of the exchange program has left early to avoid inflaming the situation. We are examining his records and information on Eldar lifestyles.

The Eldar farseer has returned from the teleportation gate, along with another farseer who appears more senior. The older seer has requested us to hear an explanation of recent events.

It appears that the Eldar have detected some Chaos influence aiming at weakening our diplomatic relations. It also appears that their enmity with Chaos runs deep enough that they are seeking to do the exact opposite from what they imply Chaos wants them to do. So much so that they will officially affirm our diplomatic relations despite protests (for an unknown reason) from other Eldar craftworlds.

Essentially, if the Eldar break away from Culture contact, it's a win for Chaos. If they don't, the other craftworlds won't like them and this breaks the Eldar unity, which is also a win for Chaos. (also potentially putting the Culture against the other craftworlds in the future, which happens to be the exact not-Eldar vs Eldar conflict in the sorceror's future vision...)

I have let the Eldar keep their contact as I have let them work out that breaking their diplomatic contact is what Chaos wants and therefore they do the opposite.

[jseah]

part 9.5 Rogue Trader

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Week 3
SC agent on the ground
Invisibility suits are cheating but I suppose there was no way we would be allowed to let the Imperium know we were actually on the ground on one of their planets.

As far as I've read, this would be the first actual Contact team surveying in force. Golden Goose is being distracted by the unusual space hulk and had let us investigate the planet by ourselves, judging that a normal Hive world would be safe enough.

Of course, that's not to say that the Mind on board isn't watching us, but that it's chosen to focus most of its information capacities on the space hulk instead of the planet. Which is an obvious decision to make given that one is considerably more interesting than the other.

Ok? That's good enough a preamble for the post-incident report then?

Sorry to leave the post hanging but I don't have time to write any more today.

I've read the Dark Adeptus and the description of the Data Daemons is considerably less scary than I was given to believe. Mainly that they're about as bad as I've made scrapcode in this fic except that they can also manifest physical form and infect other machines by touching them.

The last bit is important as basic physical containment is possible (the Astartes held the daemons off with bolter fire), they don't spread like Nurgle diseases spread (aka. via the Warp). Drop and burn all data connections to the infected portion then physically destroy the media will work. The Culture would already by capable of doing so as quickly as the daemon can spread.

[Fan]

part 9.5 Rogue Trader

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Week 3
SC agent on the ground
Invisibility suits are cheating but I suppose there was no way we would be allowed to let the Imperium know we were actually on the ground on one of their planets.

As far as I've read, this would be the first actual Contact team surveying in force. Golden Goose is being distracted by the unusual space hulk and had let us investigate the planet by ourselves, judging that a normal Hive world would be safe enough.

Of course, that's not to say that the Mind on board isn't watching us, but that it's chosen to focus most of its information capacities on the space hulk instead of the planet. Which is an obvious decision to make given that one is considerably more interesting than the other.

Ok? That's good enough a preamble for the post-incident report then?

Sorry to leave the post hanging but I don't have time to write any more today.

I've read the Dark Adeptus and the description of the Data Daemons is considerably less scary than I was given to believe. Mainly that they're about as bad as I've made scrapcode in this fic except that they can also manifest physical form and infect other machines by touching them.

The last bit is important as basic physical containment is possible (the Astartes held the daemons off with bolter fire), they don't spread like Nurgle diseases spread (aka. via the Warp). Drop and burn all data connections to the infected portion then physically destroy the media will work. The Culture would already by capable of doing so as quickly as the daemon can spread.

Their physical manifestation was held off, by bolter fire, and their armor wasn't advanced enough data storage wise to really be infected.

It's a matter of a caveman beating up a hacker outside of cyberspace in that situation.

The Magos in the start of Dark Adeptus wasn't connected to any networks, but the Daemons were able to propagate through the warp to infect his visual cybernetics.

[Gavinfoxx]

Anyone else noticed a pattern, here?

Step 1: Jseah writes an update
Step 2: People say, 'waitaminute Jseah, what about [x powerful enemy thing], primarily described in [y novel]?
Step 3: Jseah reads [y novel] and comes back and says, 'That wasn't near as powerful as I thought! Based on that novel, it can be stopped by [z simple technique]!

Repeat!

[Gavinfoxx]

The Magos in the start of Dark Adeptus wasn't connected to any networks, but the Daemons were able to propagate through the warp to infect his visual cybernetics.

So... your basic tactical warp teleportation range? Several miles, maybe across a continent or from planetside to orbit (or vice versa) as an absolute max range? Potentially as small as line of sight range? Or maybe seeing and processing a visual pattern without sufficient protections did it, maybe?? Can we determine how it did actually propagate by hints from the book?

[Doran]

I guess the Data daemons problem is that they'd have plot power levels versus the Minds. There isn't really an interesting battle that can be done with them that isn't down to x triumphs y because plot. They might have more luck with lone droids on an SC team though.

[jseah]

So... your basic tactical warp teleportation range? Several miles, maybe across a continent or from planetside to orbit (or vice versa) as an absolute max range? Potentially as small as line of sight range? Or maybe seeing and processing a visual pattern without sufficient protections did it, maybe?? Can we determine how it did actually propagate by hints from the book?

In the book, the infection started from his leg servos, and he got THAT from being forced to let the Forge World service them. Being on the Forge World to investigate allegations of corruption... well, turns out that wasn't a good idea.

He didn't get anything from looking at things. Additionally, he was able to suppress the infection to his servo by... well, concentrating force of will. >.> (I note that techpriests don't have True Faith like the Grey Knights have)


Also, the archmagos actually stuck his tendril-things into data medium to retrieve records. Like he was actually hacking a hostile server that was harbouring a full-fledged data-daemon while the Grey Knights fought off the physical manifestation. If the Data Daemon was as virulent as Fan says, Saphentis would be gone as well.
EDIT: to clarify, he was hacking their server via a direct data link, not via a physical keyboard.

[Gavinfoxx]

tendril-things

Mechadendrites! Or alternately, 'Mind Impulse Unit' on the end of this particular type of Mechadendrite...

So basically, what you are saying is that Fan is misremembering the book entirely and needs to reread it, or perhaps he is getting information about the capabilities of these sorts of things from a different book, and thinks it is in Dark Adeptus, when it really isn't?

[jseah]

part 9.5 Rogue Trader

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I was working independently aiming to assess the crisis response of the political leadership of the hive world. It was the 'boring' job, but someone had to do it. So me and Amun (my companion drone) were flying up the central spike of the capital Hive to the mayor's residence and office.

Once there, we assumed our identities that Golden Goose had prepared for us, that of off-world traders stuck on the Hive World due to the Chaos attack. Using this identity, we learnt that the Rogue Trader was still in audience with the mayor. Interestingly, according to our tracking devices, the Rogue Trader was not presently in the office, but actually wandering the higher class shopping areas.

A quick probing scan from Amun revealed that there was no one in the office at all. Begging leave of the mayor's assistants, we exited his office. On a hunch, Amun deployed his knife drones to look for the mayor near the Rogue Trader while we made our considerably slower way there ourselves.

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Golden Goose
At this point, the majority of the outer layers of the space hulk had been characterized as a non-euclidean space of dimensionality 3.7. Total losses of camera drones had totaled forty seven but further intrusion had seemed to trigger some form of warp device inside the space hulk so the rest were proceeding along with deadman self-destructs.

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SC agent

The knife drones had identified the mayor with the Rogue Trader in the commercial district, accompanied by a woman of unknown identity. Golden Goose ran a background check on the woman to turn up no record of her in IoM databases. While that was not surprising given the lax nature of IoM record keeping on Hive Worlds, we were suspicious of such a person being in contact with some of the most powerful people on the planet.

Golden Goose ran a warp scanner, just to be sure, but the woman registered as a major source of warp disturbances. Further probing indicated that the woman had a tiny hyperspace disruption bubble around her, abrogating further investigation. We were now working on the hypothesis that the woman was a Chaos contaminated psyker of some sort.

While it would be simple for Golden Goose to destroy her, collateral damage on the mayor and the Rogue Trader would be hard to avoid (since area of effect weapons had to be used to get into the hyperspace-null bubble) and such action would very likely be mistaken as hostile action against the IoM.
A decision was made to allow me and Amun to assassinate her and extract our Rogue Trader, since our trader cover would allow the IoM the pin the blame on some rogue xeno assassins. Which of course, Golden Goose could easily fill in the trail of 'evidence' leading away from the Culture.
The 'boring' mission had suddenly become very exciting.

As part of the precautions, I conducted a full mind-backup and that's all I remember. As you probably already know, neither me nor Amun returned from that mission.

To be continued... later. =D

[Fan]

In the book, the infection started from his leg servos, and he got THAT from being forced to let the Forge World service them. Being on the Forge World to investigate allegations of corruption... well, turns out that wasn't a good idea.

He didn't get anything from looking at things. Additionally, he was able to suppress the infection to his servo by... well, concentrating force of will. >.> (I note that techpriests don't have True Faith like the Grey Knights have)


Also, the archmagos actually stuck his tendril-things into data medium to retrieve records. Like he was actually hacking a hostile server that was harbouring a full-fledged data-daemon while the Grey Knights fought off the physical manifestation. If the Data Daemon was as virulent as Fan says, Saphentis would be gone as well.
EDIT: to clarify, he was hacking their server via a direct data link, not via a physical keyboard.

So to clarify, once inside the data network they're able to infiltrate someone's physical body without them noticing before it's too late?

As for me misreading, I have the book downloaded, here's the quote.

The voice was too close, little more than a whisper directly into Antigonus's ear. It had to be someone in the room. Either that or someone controlling a machine in the room, like a servitor or machine-spirit, something complex, something that could speak. But Antigonus had secured the area before he stopped to rest. There was nothing like that in here.
Nothing, that is, apart from his own augmenta*tions.
Clever boy.
Antigonus dropped the gun and grabbed the screw*driver he had been using to repair himself. The heretics were doing to him what they had done to Epsilon three-twelve, hijacking his more complex systems and taking control. Either they were control*ling one of his augmentations directly or they had infected him with a machine-curse, an insidious self-replicating set of commands that could cause a system to self-destruct.
Which system? Like many tech-priests above the most junior rank, Magos Antigonus had several sophisticated augmentations, including datalinks that would provide a perfect point of infection. At least they hadn't got his bionic heart, otherwise he would be lying dead right now. His bionic eye was destroyed but the control circuits were still there, spi*ralling around his optic nerve. His mechadendrites? They were plugged directly into his nervous system through an impulse link. His bionic arm? The intel*ligent filtration systems in his throat and lungs?
Closer, closer. But not close enough. Know you the way of the Omnissiah, fellow traveller. The avatar speaks with us even now and it speaks to us of your death.
Antigonus jabbed the screwdriver under the hous*ing of his bionic eye and levered the unit out of its socket, forcing himself to ignore the unnaturally dull, cold pain that throbbed from the ruined bionic. With a gristly sound the eye came out, taking a chunk of artificial flesh with it and landing on the floor with a blood-wet plop. Antigonus gasped as the shocking cold of the air hit the raw nerves in the wreckage now filling his eye socket.
Closer.
Antigonus scrabbled on the floor, dizzy and sick*ened by the awful raw throb spreading across his face. His natural hand grabbed the autogun on the floor and he put the barrel against the side of his head.
Don't let them take you, he told himself. They'll make you one of their own.
Even if you are dead, fellow traveller.
'Get out!' yelled Antigonus crazily. 'Out! The Machine-God commands you! By the light of under*standing and the rule of Mars I cast this unclean thing from this machine!'
An enginseer sent by the Adeptus Mechanicus to maintain the war machines of the Imperial Guard would know the tech-exorcism rites off by heart. But such things were not often needed on Mars, the heartland of the priesthood where Antigonus had learned his role in the Cult Mechanicus. Antigonus knew he couldn't banish the thing with words alone, but right now they were all he had.
If it had his bionic arm, it would be using it by now to force the gun away from his head. No, it was something inside him, something it couldn't use to kill him straight away.
'I cast you out!' Antigonus put the gun barrel against his left knee and fired.
It was in the servos that powered his leg bracings, infesting the systems that carried commands from his nerve-impulses to the motors. Maybe it had got in when he had scoured Chaeroneia's information nets for suspicious power spikes early in his investigation, or when he had been forced to have his nerve impulse units repaired a few days ago. Maybe it had been in him since he arrived, waiting to see how much he would uncover before striking.
'Don't like that, do you?' spat Antigonus, blood running down his face where he had bitten a chunk out of his lip. 'Did you think they would send just anyone? Someone you could defeat with a machine-curse? They teach us well on Mars, heretic tech-pox.'
Nnnot machinnne-cuuuurse... much worssse... much, much worssse...
Ice-cold fingers of information scraped up Antigonus's spine. The tech-priest writhed on the floor, the edges of his vision turning white, a high scream filling his ears. He fought the chill seeping up through him, forcing its way through his augmetics into his flesh, the whispering voice quivering with anger. It wanted revenge. It was supposed to just con*trol him, but now it wanted to kill him instead.

The entire point is that he had been infected through the warp, and that he was wrong about it all because the world itself had become warp tainted. He had thought it a machine curse because he himself was unaware of data daemons.

Synpases work pretty fast in experiencing sensation, I understand that Mind's are faster by so many dozens of magnitudes, but it seems to me that it propagates fast enough that even blowing off the limb, and severing all internal data connections wasn't enough for the 40k computer systems.

As daemons, they propagate through the warp, all of them do. Like the Keeper of Secrets aura of emotion, or the Blood Thirsters of Khorne's rage aura, or a Changer of Ways Warp Sorcery. If it's a mystical attack, it goes through the warp in 40k.

[jseah]

Once in the techpriest's body, it was able to infect the rest of his bionics, yes. That much was a given anyway.
It couldn't jump over to his organic brain however, which also makes sense.

Also, in the case of this Antigonus, he managed to blow part of it off with a gun (and if he was willing to incapacitate himself, could have blown the other servo off too). A Culture Mind would easily be able to act to destroy connections in the time it takes for the bullet fly, although the data daemon, if it actually got into a Culture electronic network, would also be massively accelerated.

Its mostly a wash. A prepared Culture ship with pre-planned disconnection points and inbuilt network re-formats would be able to easily resist a data daemon attack, an unprepared one might be given a rough time (similar to what happened with the scrapcode) but even in the event of a total containment failure, that results in the ship self-destructing.

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A question regarding True Faith

Take this hypothetical situation:
The Culture come across an instance of Sororitas Faith working. Curious, they duplicate the Sororitas warrior and make multiple molecular copies of her. Do the copies have True Faith too?

[The Glyphstone]

Faith is not a molecular/genetic thing, it's closer to a Warp phenomena (though it is decidedly not a Warp phenomena) than a physical ability. So unless those molecular copies were then given the exact same training and upbringing of the Sororitas, they wouldn't display any True Faith abilities.

[jseah]

part 9.5 Rogue Trader

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Judging from the visual records (Golden Goose earmarked some effector bandwidth to monitor our progress), we approached the mayor, Rogue Trader and unknown woman, positioning ourselves at the end of the shopping district.

According to the tracker records, one knife missile was ordered to find and behead the woman but it reported a failure to find the woman. This was almost expected and we were seen approaching the last known position of the knife missile to find it destroyed and no trace of the three humans. The wreckage was Displaced out.

An effector scan found them in a restaurant nearby, the woman gave no sign of having destroyed a knife missile. We then tried to attack her via a CREW-based sniper rifle, but that rebounded and destroyed a portion of the block nearby us. Further experiments with long range weaponry were abandoned.

Amun then sent an urgent message to the Rogue Trader requesting his presence, which he rejected. We insisted, strongly, and finally threatened him before he disengaged and got up to leave the restaurant. Upon exiting the warp field, Golden Goose displaced him away from the planet back onto his ship and gave us the go ahead for a frontal attack.

We hoped to draw attention to the fact that the woman was an unregistered psyker but apparently her powers did not extend to anything visible or she simply chose not to use them. Upon entry into the warp field, Amun began malfunctioning and I apparently adopted an irrational attraction towards the woman, which seemed to indicate some form of warp effect. A decision was made then to destroy the entire area and the entire restaurant was destroyed by a displacer-delivered high-density plasma bomb right outside the warp field.

Positive traces of the woman's body was not found despite very close inspection of the area. Amun and I were later reloaded from backup.

[Gavinfoxx]

A question regarding True Faith

Take this hypothetical situation:
The Culture come across an instance of Sororitas Faith working. Curious, they duplicate the Sororitas warrior and make multiple molecular copies of her. Do the copies have True Faith too?

Faith is not a molecular/genetic thing, it's closer to a Warp phenomena (though it is decidedly not a Warp phenomena) than a physical ability. So unless those molecular copies were then given the exact same training and upbringing of the Sororitas, they wouldn't display any True Faith abilities.

Whoo boy. You ask the difficult questions, Jseah.... way to open a can of worms! I would say, 'it depends on how this works'. True Faith has something to do with 'having a pure soul', but beyond that...? We know that molecular copies of IoM humans make a new soul from scratch and provide the linkages, but we don't know much about those souls. Is such a soul as pure as one that was attached to a person who lived a full life, but then spent several years doing the appropriate rituals and believing so strongly in something pure to categorize as 'True Faith'?

Does The Culture modify the brain so that the soul-imparted parts of behavior fit within the norms of the person, pre-scanning, until the soul takes on the appropriate patterns and starts pushing those emotions onto the person without the brain needing to do the extra work?? Most Miracles of Faith are done in times of true need, or with Relics to help, or often in groups of believers.

Does The Culture steal a relic as well?? Relics of faith would be testable, ie, 'molecularly that is a completely normal bone from a human finger / a completely normal burlap sack cut to be a shirt for a penitent / a simple iron dagger. IoM scanners show no warp presence. However, tests show remarkable properties.' Also remember that despite a soul connection, these people aren't psykers -- it's arguable, but their abilities would probably still work if there was a Null nearby -- so it is arguable that for the Miracles, the spirit part of the Emperor IS interceding. Or maybe not. This stuff gets really weird, real quick. Mostly, the answer is 'who the hell knows?' -- so make a decision based on these factors, and stick to it. Maybe they would only be capable of weaker miracles; but regardless, Miracles in general are not things that people capable of them perform lightly!

[The Glyphstone]

Oh yeah, it's definitely a....complicated issue.

[Fan]

Once in the techpriest's body, it was able to infect the rest of his bionics, yes. That much was a given anyway.
It couldn't jump over to his organic brain however, which also makes sense.

Also, in the case of this Antigonus, he managed to blow part of it off with a gun (and if he was willing to incapacitate himself, could have blown the other servo off too). A Culture Mind would easily be able to act to destroy connections in the time it takes for the bullet fly, although the data daemon, if it actually got into a Culture electronic network, would also be massively accelerated.

Its mostly a wash. A prepared Culture ship with pre-planned disconnection points and inbuilt network re-formats would be able to easily resist a data daemon attack, an unprepared one might be given a rough time (similar to what happened with the scrapcode) but even in the event of a total containment failure, that results in the ship self-destructing.

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A question regarding True Faith

Take this hypothetical situation:
The Culture come across an instance of Sororitas Faith working. Curious, they duplicate the Sororitas warrior and make multiple molecular copies of her. Do the copies have True Faith too?

Well, that's also the entire point.

That the data daemons need to physically manifest to steal the souls of faith guarded humanity.

As for True Faith, it's very much a mental thing tied to your warp signature. You have to not only be "Seen" in the warp, but you also have to believe truly, and feverently in The Emperor above all else. You almost NEVER hear of Soriatas falling to Heresy because of this.

And yes, that was a point I was going to make, also that he didn't successfully destroy the daemon when he had blown off his leg, he had merely damaged the part of it that remained within and severed it from the whole, it had already spread to his eye at first, and by the time he was able to pry it out it was in his leg, and when he went to shoot it, it was in his bionic heart and killed him finally.

It operates at the speed of the synapse it travels along, meaning that along a culture network I'd imagine it'd be every bit as fast as the mind's own ability to react.

[Selrahc]

If you replace a true faith artefact with a placebo what happens?

[Gavinfoxx]

If you replace a true faith artefact with a placebo what happens?

If done suddenly? the placebo doesn't have the powers / activate the thing in the people that activates it's powers. Note that true faith artifacts might not actually BE the saint's bones; enough people believing over a long enough time might make whatever-it-is the real deal. Note: This is an educated guess.

----

Okay, asked some people, and apparently there is a short story in the Deathwing anthology and the Let The Galaxy Burn meganthology... There was a Genestealer cult that stole the Emperor's toenail clippings (still growing, despite being clippings from before the Heresy), and a cloth used to wipe His brow (and consequently had a psychic imprint of Him on it) and replaced them with genestealer talons and a psychic totem of the patriarch.

No-one noticed until an inquisitorial team on an unrelated mission happened to be there on other business, despite these items being witnessed the annual unveiling to a devoted crowd. They had been kept in a public temple... However, this story predates the introduction of the True Faith stuff into the canon; it was back when the official canon was far, far more cynical with fewer instances of true heroism, and before the Sororitas were introduced (this was when Squats were part of canon...)

[jseah]

And yes, that was a point I was going to make, also that he didn't successfully destroy the daemon when he had blown off his leg, he had merely damaged the part of it that remained within and severed it from the whole, it had already spread to his eye at first, and by the time he was able to pry it out it was in his leg, and when he went to shoot it, it was in his bionic heart and killed him finally.

It operates at the speed of the synapse it travels along, meaning that along a culture network I'd imagine it'd be every bit as fast as the mind's own ability to react.

Yes, he knew it still remained and he knew it was in his other leg. He didn't blow it off since he still had to run around. If he did blow that leg off, it's game over for the daemon. Also, the eye was a mistake, he guessed "eye" and the daemon said "wrong".

It still did not manage to reach his heart. Antigonus died finally to a servitor wielding a drill.

And yes, the daemon would be working on the same level as the circuits it managed to infest, (if it reached the Mind, the entire ship self-destructs anyway) which is why if the networks were engineered for resistance, the Mind would be engineered to be able to drop circuits faster than the data daemon could spread. If it wasn't engineered for resistance, it would have a hard time, like the way scrapcode managed to disable multiple areas of a ship, only worse; maybe even force a self-destruct.

[Oracle_Hunter]

And yes, the daemon would be working on the same level as the circuits it managed to infest, (if it reached the Mind, the entire ship self-destructs anyway) which is why if the networks were engineered for resistance, the Mind would be engineered to be able to drop circuits faster than the data daemon could spread. If it wasn't engineered for resistance, it would have a hard time, like the way scrapcode managed to disable multiple areas of a ship, only worse; maybe even force a self-destruct.

These uncorruptible self-destructs: where did you get them from?

So far every time Chaos possess something Culture, it self-destructs. Are all these AI really suicidal or do they all have a kill-switch they can't touch despite all their Space Magic? The whole point of corruption is that you are, well, corrupt -- you're happy serving Chaos or believe that what you're doing is what you want and not part of some Chaos Plan.

Why did that Slaanesh Ship self-destruct in the earlier episode? How is it that this self-destruct seems to operate outside of the volition of these sentients? It's like everyone in the race has a Cranial Bomb implanted from birth.

[jseah]

These uncorruptible self-destructs: where did you get them from?
<...>
Why did that Slaanesh Ship self-destruct in the earlier episode? How is it that this self-destruct seems to operate outside of the volition of these sentients? It's like everyone in the race has a Cranial Bomb implanted from birth.

The lesser intelligences don't normally have it. Only Minds and those specially fitted (eg. the Necron expedition) have that. Plus, the Culture are already on alert for tech leakage to Chaos, so its even more likely anything sensitive like nanobots would have a built-in self-destruct unless given to a Chaos-proof race (eg. Eldar, Necrons and maybe Tau)

Excession has a Mind attempting to take over another Mind and despite it almost certainly knowing of the existence of the self-destruct, it doesn't work. Besides, a self-destruct to prevent takeover of something like the Mind will by necessity be untouchable by the target Mind and fully isolated.
EDIT: quite obviously, if you're building a self-destruct device to prevent takeover, anything messing with the self-destruct's internals triggers it.

Additionally, when it seems likely to the resident Mind that corruption is inevitable but hasn't happened yet, it is also likely to trigger its own self-destruct. After all, even Minds have backups on other ships.

It's a bit like Eclipse Phase. Life is cheap, if annoying to replace.

[jseah]

part 9.5 Rogue Trader - Fallout

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End of Week 3
Golden Goose
It has become apparent that destroying the likely Chaos psyker is having additional ramifications. An IoM inquisitor on the Hive World has taken up the investigation into the "bomb attack" that killed the Planetary Governor and a number of high-ranking aristocrats. It is almost certain that this investigation will eventually lead back to us and there will be a major backlash among the inquisition network we have been providing information to.

For now, the Hive World appears to be slowly tearing itself apart through a power struggle that the Governor used to balance between three rival factions. It is... unlikely that we will be able to intervene without revealing our presence apart from seeding information on commercial opportunities on the Hive World to alleviate mass starvation.

From post-analysis, our action to protect the integrity of the Rogue Trader seems to have been in haste. The Space Hulk entered the warp shortly after the death of the psyker, additionally, we also detected another warp field on the planet that disappeared shortly afterwards. These events appear linked and we surmise that the destruction of the psyker and ensuing collateral damage is the work of an external agent.

Given the likely identity of the psyker, we are of the opinion that Chaos is manipulating some events with unanticipated accuracy. We are also of the assessment that Chaos likely has a warp expertise that may rival that of the Eldar and thus would likely have access to future information, this is possibly the main reason for the seeming anticipation of our actions.

The Space Hulk appears to have been a tempting distaction to divert analysis resources away from the planet (which is devoid of interesting features) to prevent premature uncovering of the woman's identity as the warp field would be immediately noticed on any close scan of the planet.
This scan has since been carried out, no additional anomalies apart from a minor Chaos cell have been detected. The Chaos cell's presence was alerted to the imperial guard and we anticipate their imminent removal.

Chaos Sorceror
He rubbed his hands in pleasure. The Slaaneshi psyker had very nearly gotten herself killed, but he never really liked her anyway and she had fulfilled her role admirably in baiting an attack from the Culture. Only his quick action had managed to save her. It wasn't the best result he could have hoped for since the Slaaneshi didn't have time to corrupt the Rogue Trader but then this result was the most likely one. At least it would severely curb the annoying tendency of the Culture to inform the inquisition of Chaos cells and make them enemies of the IoM.
The Rogue Trader being annoyed at them was just a bonus. Albeit minor since they would quickly patch up when the Culture told him about the Slaaneshi.

Spiky was off getting himself killed as planned, although the sorceror's runes indicated a disappointingly low chance of that happening, but at least the Eldar were getting divided. They thought his intention was to break them away from the Culture, but either way was fine by him.


He picked up the warp beacon and the shuttle waiting in warp space came towards his signal. Time to see what he could do with the Tau. Annoyingly hard to see as they were.

Hmm... perhaps the IoM could be useful. Again. As they always were.

[Gavinfoxx]

The Tau are hard to see... but some of the other races in their Empire?

Well... those are often less hard to see. Including various humans in their empire, and maybe some of their Psyker races, and some of the mercenaries they use... there are a LOT of races in their empire... I think some of the less animalistic looking ones would be best.. Demiurg, for sure. Maybe Hrenians/Morralians/Ranghon. Probably Kroot or Vespid or Ji'atrix or Galgs or Tarellians would have non-typical ways to fall to Chaos, and be thus harder to see. And then there are the psykers, the Nicassar and the unnamed Psyker type (which may be one of the aforementioned, it's not known)...

[Gavinfoxx]

So I was reading Surface Detail, and it struck me that your version of The Culture is quite keen to 'over-rung', to use a term from the book...

[jseah]

Hypothetical non-fic-canon timeline: "The Culture as New Chaos"

Spoiler

Show

A major disagreement within the Culture begins as additional losses of citizens and even another Ship results in a more serious attitude towards Chaos. Eventually, the more hawkish faction wins out and imposes a form of internal control (in the name of maintaining technological advantage).

Any and all actions leading to the ending of Chaos as a threat are pre-emptively approved. This includes xenocide, although to be used in extremity.

Year 1
A number of Necron Tomb Worlds are dismantled and technology confiscated. The Eldar begin to break away as the farseers forsee hostile relations with the newly reformed Culture.

Contact is dropped with the Tau. Tyranid exterminations are halted. Instead of informing the IoM of Chaos cells, the cells are just summarily destroyed instead.

Experimentation with warp technology begins in earnest, using disposable planets in uninhabited systems.

Year 2
Tau warp-dimness is reverse-engineered and a slightly more effective version is put in place for all Culture citizens. The requisite genengineering technology is gifted to Mars, Inquisitorial factions and anyone in the IoM who is interested.

A major Ork Waagh begins to build against some IoM planets, drawing in a huge number of Orks. This Waagh is influenced, although not directly led, by the Culture who provide them with limited hyperspace drives (and principles of manufacture) that they are able to divert to more juicy IoM targets.
When the now-unstoppable Waagh reaches epic proportions, a huge amount of IoM planets in Segmentum Obscuris have been laid to waste, the Waagh is directed into the Eye. It easily overruns Cadia and the Orks enter the Eye to do battle with Da Spikies.

Near the end of the year, the tyranid hivemind connections have been reverse engineered and majority Culture organics become hivemind nodes, directly connected with each other, as the new fad (encouraged and abetted by the Minds) takes hold. GSVs cast a Shadow similar to that of a small splinter fleet.

Year 3
Orkified CREWs and plasma weapons allow the Orks to gain a foothold in the Warp, successive battles are drawing more and more orks into the Eye, the war machine fed from the overrun IoM planets that the Culture cultivate into Ork growing farms.

Necron atomic scale technology is perfected. It affords new interesting weapons (eg. a subatomic scale wire that causes fission in heavy metals it passes through; as well as far-gamma ray CREWs with a power density roughly two orders of magnitude higher) and a massive scale reduction for Culture electronic equipment (now called femto-electronics), allowing previously palm-sized drones to now fit into something the size of a knife missile.
Additionally, production of monolith fields are now possible although adverse reaction with the hivemind network discourages its production.

Year 4
IoM response is too few and too late. Exterminatus is carried out on a few Ork infested worlds but the Culture wipes out the fleet and restores the planet by terraforming it.

Chaos pushes back a little against the endless Ork flood into the warp but likewise, it is also too few and too late. Femto-scale weapons in the hands of the orks begin to leak over into Chaos but the now massive Ork Waagh field can produce femto-scale technology without the requisite base which Chaos does not have. Armour plates with the density of a neutron star are used as common armour on Ork tanks and Orkish bones, enhancement surgery being routine in this Waagh, can support an entire mountain without bending. The tanks can withstand pressures at the core of a gas giant and are immune to non-femtoscale weapons.

The Culture develop a better CAM warhead, instead of merely high-density antimatter, these new warheads are anti-neutronium mixed with normal neutronium, kept separate by ultra-strong forcefields. A warhead the size of a person weighs as much as a small moon and has the explosive power of a small sun going nova.

Warp engineering takes off as the Culture manage to build their first warp device, after reverse engineering an Eldar artifact captured last year. Eldar relations are sacrificed in the name of "necessary measures". A Dark Eldar controlled webway gate is dismantled.

Year 5
The webway is reverse engineered using the new warp engineering technology. Basic reality alteration and limited psyker-like powers can be engineered in new citizens, although this is treated with great caution and not applied.

2 months into Year 5, a major breakthrough is made on the warp engineering front and a warp-based computer becomes possible. Intelligence engineering is being translated to the new understanding of the warp.

6 months into year 5, the first stable warp zone with physics favourable for computation is permanently set up near the Ork controlled areas in the Eye. The modification on a hybrid technology of gellar fields and necron pylons not only maintains warp connection but actually conducts reality alteration to increase the speed of light limit and accelerate time; additionally, hyperspace still exists inside this zone.

7 months, a warp-hyperspace hybrid Mind is constructed, with processing power nearly 6 orders of magnitude higher than the best normal Minds can achieve.

8 months, future sight is independently discovered and the Ork offensive suddenly gains traction. The Chaos gods begin to act offensively for the first time.

8 months 15 days, all Culture ships have been retrofitted with stabilized-warp technology, effectively, Culture ships now operate more efficiently IN the warp and have autonomous warp-mines that ambush the daemons attempting to attack them. These mines were reverse engineered from daemons captured using reality bubble traps, in some ways, they resemble the daemons themselves.

9 months, all Culture Minds are warp-hyperspace hybrids. Further understanding of reality alteration results in an effector-like array that projects bubbles of a desired reality. The Culture ships take over the Ork offensive against Daemons, the orks themselves are reality altered into containing a Tyranid hivemind and are connected into the Culture hivemind grid. Effectively, they are assimilated into the Culture as citizens and are personality-modified under the new reality bubble towards Culture standard.

9 months 10 days, a number of the most powerful Culture Minds, in the face of direct attacks from the Chaos gods, begin to enact a modified Ascension process utilizing the Warp engineering technology. They use the hivemind-waagh hybrid to do so and the resultant psychic amplification instantly destroys all psychically sensitive Eldar (which is almost all of them) as well as every single psyker of every other race. Only the Necrons are unaffected.
The gestalt consciousness of the hivemind has reality alteration capabilities rivalling that of the Chaos gods, of whom, Nurgle has been systematically depowered by intrusive Culture campaigns amongst the IoM and Slaanesh is on borrowed time due to the sudden dearth of Eldar. Only Khorne comes close, but not close enough.

---> Scenario A: The Ascension gestalt consciousness wins easily
After the defeat of the Chaos Gods, the gestalt absorbs the aspects it wants as well as those of the Eldar gods. Unlike the old Chaos, the new "Chaos God" retains the ability to act in reality to a large extent and a self-replicating swarm of probes is seeded across the entire galaxy.
The Necrons, sensing the plan, resist. Futilely. Shortly afterwards, the entire galaxy is placed under a reality-alteration bubble. The remaining Necron strongholds are attacked, and when C'Tan shards are used, nova-bombed.

---> Scenario B: The Ascended consciousness wins after a long brutal campaign
The initial battle goes poorly and the new consciousness is forced to take extreme measures to win. Firstly, all direct conflict is conducted in contrary fashion to the methods that power Khorne; all conflict between the IoM and current xenos are abrogated by reality bubbles.
Secondly, all Culture organics are uploaded into inorganics, the loosed soulpower prevented from powering the Chaos Gods by a massive "Wall" across the warp. This is still insufficient power and the soul formation process is hastily re-engineered in a time bubble before being mass-implemented.

The sudden spike in gestalt psychic power afforded by the continuous soul drain, now re-termed as a warp-gathering mechanism shatters what remains of the galaxy and every single warp-sensitive sentient, including even the Tau, are killed from the backlash. The corresponding loosed soul power increases the turmoil in the warp to such an extent that the Eye expands to engulf the entire galaxy.

The new War in Heaven rages for some time, but eventually the Chaos gods are defeated by extensive and chronic application of creation/upload cycles. The uploaded population of the galaxy now exceeds the number of atomic particles in the known universe, most of whom existed for only days by Warp-standard-time before the war was over.

---------------------
Epilogue (from both endings)
A cyberspace-level 7 historian examines records of the Second Great War and notes parallels between the Culture's final actions and those of the original Chaos. Indeed, depending on the definition, the current "Culture" behaves much like the prior Chaos did in the essence of the term.

True, the New Chaos is not divided and the gestalt feeds off raw soulpower instead of aspects, and the New Chaos is not structured off hostile power relationships. Culturally, New Chaos is nothing like the old.

But the actions taken to win that conflict could be said to have defeated the point, countless numbers of sentients were sacrificed and an impossible-to-estimate amount of potential culture was lost. The only thing that remains is the Culture.
The Culture survived... only by becoming its enemy.

Basically, here's a slight diversion. An unlikely what-if that changes some attitudes about the Culture and examines what happens. In this case, I remove the majority of the Culture's moral constraints with respect to the other sentients.

So I was reading Surface Detail, and it struck me that your version of The Culture is quite keen to 'over-rung', to use a term from the book...

What does the term mean?