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

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, the Fire Warrior game wasn't bad. Had some good scenery about different things... got to see insides of a tau and imperial ship...

[Water_Bear]

Well, the Fire Warrior game wasn't bad. Had some good scenery about different things...

Yeah, but don't you gun down like a Chapter's worth of Space Marines? I'm sure it's a great game, but what I've heard about it makes it sound like a really bad source of Lore.

[Gavinfoxx]

Yeah, but don't you gun down like a Chapter's worth of Space Marines? I'm sure it's a great game, but what I've heard about it makes it sound like a really bad source of Lore.

Well... Okay. yea. You are way more badass than you have any right to be, of course. But the set-pieces in the scenery are useful, I guess. Even if the macrocannons might technically be a bit small...

[Gavinfoxx]

Can someone please specify the precise problems with the Fire Warrior novel? I'm really interested in that, or if there are particular passages from the novel that can be mined for useful information, if we ignore the rest of it. Thanks!

There is a two star amazon review of the novel that has these sentences:

"I would have to say that the single bright spot is the insight the novel provides into Tau culture and into the relationship between the Tau and the Imperium. These few passages are quite interesting, but unfortunately cannot make up for the book's other flaws."

Can someone help me with page numbers for those passages, for purposes of data mining?

[The Glyphstone]

1. It's written by C.S. MULTILASERS Goto.
2. See Problem 1.

I cannot be certain the Tau use multilasers in this book, but it would not shock me.

[Gavinfoxx]

1. It's written by C.S. MULTILASERS Goto.
2. See Problem 1.

I cannot be certain the Tau use multilasers in this book, but it would not shock me.

You sure? it doesnt have his name on it.. It has Simon Spurrier's name on it..

[The Glyphstone]

You sure? it doesnt have his name on it.. It has Simon Spurrier's name on it..

Actually, no. I had that information secondhand, so that might be in error.

[Gavinfoxx]

Yea, looks like its written by Simon Spurrier and Marc Gascoigne...

Also, Jseah, I just wanted to say I love your characterization of the Tzeentchian sorcerer, and his annoyance with the Khornates... heh 'Spiky'...

[Forum Explorer]

Something worth the Culture debating is if they should interfere with the Ethereals. So far the Culture doesn't know they were designed that way and honestly they may have evolved that way naturally. So why should they change how a race naturally became? Because they are pretentious pieces of garbage that are basically an HS in their own right is an acceptable answer.

I like the Eldar and Sorcerer trying to outseer each other.

[Forrestfire]

I like the sorcerer's disdain for Spiky's spikes.

[Parra]

Something worth the Culture debating is if they should interfere with the Ethereals. So far the Culture doesn't know they were designed that way and honestly they may have evolved that way naturally. So why should they change how a race naturally became? Because they are pretentious pieces of garbage that are basically an HS in their own right is an acceptable answer.

I like the Eldar and Sorcerer trying to outseer each other.

I think they would only try to interfere if they felt the other castes were being exploited and even then it might not be something they would worry about for a very long time

[Selrahc]

The Culture generally does accept quite a lot under the auspices of cultural differences. Not everything merits intervention. When you deal with insectiles, tentacle monsters, sentient gas-clouds and giant space walrus-whale-hot air-balloons, you can't be too attached to making sure societies work under a liberal democracy.

To merit an intervention it generally means that:
1. The society is tyrannical and horrifying to a large portion of the people ruled by it, or keeps them in forced ignorance so they don't realize how horrifying it is.
2. A society imposes its vision on other societies with force, particularly if there is no "Casus Belli" beyond expansionism.

The Tau empire fulfills 2, but not 1. So the Culture would limit its major reform efforts to working on the expansionistic nature of the Tau, while internal reform of the caste system might be a pet project of a few small groups in contact, probably by subtly pushing changes that allow castes to serve other roles. The Caste system works very well for the Tau, and while there is the potential for abuse, it really doesn't seem to happen. And the Culture will make sure it never does.

The big thing that could change that decision would be the knowledge that the Ethereals were an imposition from another power. That would cause some debates.

[jseah]

part 9.5 A Certain Chaotic Warp Sorceror

Spoiler

Show

A Minor Hive World just outside the main Culture exploration front
The governor, Mikael, retreated to his chambers at the very top of the spire. It was only here did he ever get any true privacy and the chamber was secure from all possible surveillance.

The young woman still tied to the bed made him smile. The governor wasn't obtuse enough to miss that her discomfort was only a pretense but he WAS obtuse enough to still be under the impression that the mysteriously attractive young woman was nothing but a particularly troublesome slave a... covert contact had wanted to be rid off.

------------------

The sorceror cast his runes again. The timelines were shifting once more and he ignored Spiky's shouting that seemed to echo off the hull of the ship. This was not a time he could afford to be distracted.

After setting so many contingencies in motion, over six individual warbands and more than twenty independent contacts and friendlies, but not actually giving them the "Go" signal, he had managed to tie far reaching strands of fate into his own hands. Right now, right here, was where Fate was decided. Here, in this time (whatever that meant in the Warp).

For all that the Culture were powerful and ridiculously fast-acting, they couldn't see the future. At least not yet (and not ever if he was going to have his way) and so they were still pawns on the web of time. Important pawns, powerful enough to distort the entire game around them, but his real duel, soon to start, would be with the farseers of the Eldar and one particularly annoying Necron.

He felt Fate shift again, the farseers had come to a course of action and the probabilities of future paths they decided against dimmed. The sorceror cast another rune and felt the complex multidimensional diagram of dependencies shift in front of him.

The Eldar would ignore his threat, it would have seemed, to any amateur psyker or Farseer in training. But the game of future diplomacy was than just reading the future. The sorceror concentrated on one of his more trusted saboteurs, willing himself to believe that he would send the signal to attack regardless of cost.
It was a sheer act of willpower, one had to sincerely believe that one would carry out such a mutually destructive action. Chaos would lose the opportunity to use him for a devastating strike on a key Imperium resource world, hurting Chaos's chances for expanding out from the Eye in that direction. And the Eldar would lose a significant chunk of their Maiden world he resolved to attack.
The future branches dimmed and twisted as he depressed their probabilities with that act of self-hypnosis.

And yet, in such a game, one would have to believe not just that one would attack regardless of the cost, but at the same time also know that one would pull back if circumstances were more favourable. It was a game that the sorcerors learned to play, and perhaps only the more experienced Farseers worked it out for themselves.

The Necron twitched a little, trying to do something, but it was unclear what it was before the Eldar cut him off with a hypothetical. The sorceror smirked, so much for worrying about that, not even the Eldar Farseers were willing to tolerate an unknown third factor in something so delicate.
The Farseers blocked his action with a patrol plan, a hypothetical fleet moved into position in the future lines, the successful strike on an unguarded world fading away as its probability dropped. The sorceror changed his target to a different planet, an exodite world within the Culture's zone. The Eldar blocked him again.
The sorceror smiled, now these guys were a challenge.

The Farseers and the sorceror traded hypotheticals for a day. Chance dice (a truly random dice the sorceror had made one day back when he first realized how to manipulate the future) were used to confuse the waters by hiding plans behind chance branches, hypothetical reaction times were cut short by putting multiple plans into action simultaneously. Combinations and variations were explored.

Eventually the Farseers gave up the losing battle. If he wished, the sorceror could have Chaos strike and they would not have a good chance of defeating it and they knew that now.
So they changed paths. They moved their response around, going all the way back to the original decision and changing it a little. The sorceror looked at their future and saw a different craftworld with far superior technology. The Culture again. He snarled and the farseers took him across the changed circumstances. They played again, the strange kind of chess across time and space, even through the barrier of the Warp and real, for they were playing with the future.

After the third day, when the sorceror had to come out of his Sight trance to take a break, another craftworld had joined the fray. Their battle had not been unnoticed and the ancient farseers of the newcomer were probing the mess that had been left behind from their prior engagements.
Contingencies unraveled, plans were foiled and contacts slain. This new craftworld was far more experienced that the first one he had dueled. They knew all the tricks, better than he did even. Angry and not a little desperate, he dived into their past, seeking clues of what to do. Ah... Ulthwe, the most experienced in future sight, possibly in the whole galaxy.

But there was a crack in their defence of the other craftworld. The two worlds were both Eldar, true, and Eldar were somewhat united especially when it came down to opposing Chaos. In a flash of blazing insight, one that he knew must have come from the raw power of Chaos in his desperation and so would come with a price, he saw a way through the wall. This was the ancient farseers of the Eldar, who could not talk or communicate with their lessers, and he had made the mistake of fighting them as if they WERE the Eldar.

The Eldar were Eldar, but there was now one that might NOT be. The Culture had the potential to destroy much of what made the Eldar... Eldar. The sorceror dived down the future paths, further than he would normally have dared to without that blazing guidance within him. As the fire died away, he reached the answer. Far in the future, lay a time of chaos (not Chaos, he reminded himself), one where the other Eldar turned against the Eldar who were not Eldar.

He backed down the paths, returning to the present. It was paradoxical, but his answer lay in helping the Culture. Or at least threatening to. He knew what he had to do now, now that the method was shown. He laid hypotheticals, changing the web, drawing the attention of the ancient farseers to the path he was dancing around. When he was sure they were following his route, wondering why he was helping his original target, they reached the end, the battle where Khaine battled against not-Khaine. The battle where Khaine lost and was broken forever.

Far more furiously than his earlier battle (for there were more than one farseer and one sorceror, even one as powerful as him, could only do so much), the future paths dissolved in impossible tangled web as the farseers from the two craftworlds argued with each other in the future. The sorceror let them go at it, tweaking here and intruding there. The battle crept forward towards the present, the struggle with the future paths drew it closer.

Then another craftworld noticed. Before they could add even more to the tangles (no doubt wondering why the Eldar were fighting each other), another craftworld joined in. Then yet again and again. As the battle of Khaine on Khaine (not-Khaine had turned into Khaine at some point when the sorceror wasn't looking) drew closer, the magnitude of the extremely unusual event drew the curiousity of the other craftworlds. Each contributed to the mess and made it even harder to navigate.

Then the younger farseers, those who could still act and thus were far more energetic in the future paths than the statues, caught wind of the turmoil in the future despite their inexperience. They noticed the impossibility of Eldar fighting other Eldar and sprang into the growing swamp of the future like eager children. The knot exploded in size as the interval of action decreased from months to days and even hours.

At his best, the sorceror might have considered navigating it a nearly impossible task. Something that Tzeentch might set him as a punishment. But after being drained from his earlier fight and that borrowed insight, he was in no condition to enter. The farseers had no choice though, in a Eldar versus Eldar scenario, they simply HAD to try.

This was working out, if not according to plan, at least better than he had ever expected. The Eldar would be out of the equation until they had worked through that mess, and that gave him relatively more space to work on the Imperium.
From the looks of it, he wouldn't be able to get them to drop their association with the Culture (now that he had experienced that touch of insight, his supposedly brilliant plan didn't look so brilliant now), but he would just have to take what he got and make the best of it. At the very least, this potential Eldar on Eldar battle would make for strained relations between the craftworlds (all paths out of it lead that way) and a less united Eldar was always better for Chaos.

Even the best laid plans went off the rails occasionally, and one had to improvise. Of course, that didn't mean the improvisations had to be simple either...

Gods, that was long. This is why I hate explaining anything to do with time travel. (even information counts as time travel) Still, the younger mobile farseers are probably way out of their depth in this case.

Especially since Tzeentch takes a little personal interest. One hint in just the right place can start a huge avalanche. Just like Tzeentch to use the most minor of things to do that through a stupidly complicated route.

For perspective, the original far future battle is a hypothetical future a thousand years or so forward where the current Culture contacted craftworld has drifted far from Eldar traditions. The Ulthwe disagree about that and the result hypothetical spat in the future gets pulled forward now that they know about it.
As each craftworld enters, more disagreements start and the war or at least period of poor relations gets brought forward the present, which makes it more visible to the farseers, drawing more of them in. A rather vicious feedback loop as it were.

I hope that wasn't too complicated. =D

So there, I've loaded the Chekov's guns, time to go with the main plan now.
The idea here is that Chaos is taking an approach to the Culture very similar to what the Americans did to the Soviets during the Cold War. In this case, they have no feasible way to physically strike against the Culture, so they will go after the Culture's allies (or potential allies). Isolate and contain.

Of course, you all know what happens to plans that the author explains. Right? =P

[Brother Oni]

<Typical Tzeenchian plan>

Then Spikey says "I'm bored" and goes kills something which brings the entire house of cards crashing down.

[Gavinfoxx]

That. was an absolutely great Tzeentchian plan... waayyy overly complicated with contingencies upon contingencies...

[Douglas]

Very good plan there, much better than what originally appeared to be the Chaos plan. As the Eldar, my immediate response to "Chaos, our greatest enemy, wants us to break up with the Culture" would be to do something different - most likely notifying the Culture of it and asking for some help augmenting defenses. This tactic of drawing them into a giant snarl of debate and conflicting visions has much greater plausibility for being effective.

Now, what the Eldar and Culture really need to do is get some of their oldest and best Farseers onto a Culture ship, grant permission for the Minds to read their minds in order to see the visions they're no longer capable of communicating normally - and see them in far greater detail and fidelity than they were ever able to communicate - and get Mind help in analyzing the various contingencies and providing feedback. Sorting through the current tangle will delay them from considering such things, of course, but it should eventually come up. If nothing else, it should appear in some possible futures and someone will eventually notice that those futures tend to a far greater degree of success against Chaos.

[Gavinfoxx]

Now, what the Eldar and Culture really need to do is ...

...Something that would be absurdly difficult to ever, ever happen. Whether it would be the best idea ever... yea, that won't happen. Not that I can see.

[etesp]

Sorry, this post is going to be rather long. I've just read the whole thread and the previous one, and have quite a lot I want to reply to. Will try to be restrained and future posts will be less massive.

First off, the requested collection of links to each story post, which I think should be added to the opening post. I know Gavinfoxx has been collecting the story and making minor fixes to each post, but afaik the mediafire is not up to date (can you even update old files, or do you just get a new link?), and nor is the google doc. I've been considering a fairly similar storyline for the last few weeks and found this thread while googling for ideas, took surprisingly long to read through all your debates and fun philosophical sidetracks. This setting is really cool because of the massive opposites, impossible to match tech, but facing things it does not understand and will find very hard to understand. About the most perfect Utopia vs Dystopia imaginable (unless you value specifically human sentience's control somehow, that was a few pages of debate I'm sad to have missed the chance to join in with).

I love many of the choices made, particularly those involving the nature of the warp, soul interaction, future sight, the culture being much more interventionist, most of the races reactions to them, letting Culturetech totally curbstomp (they should not ever really be pressed for their existence, in my opinion. Letting things go naturally, they are so far above everyone else that they'll come out on top. It's just about how, how quickly, and how many casualties they can avoid. You've already been extremely generous to the advantages of Psykers (mass kill an entire crew at multi-AU distance in ~1 second without preparation, even for earth that's nuts) and Chaos (dream vectors being that infectious would have made IoM fall sofast, and scrapcode being that hard to stop would've screwed most of everyone else's tech spectacularly).), way you're treating things like emotions biologically as well as warpishly, etc, as well as the way you're writing it as significantly mission reports, covering every notable interaction in a galaxy-wide mass study/intervention with thousands of sentient creatures and a whole load of new physics would be totally impractical as a classic narrative. The fact that you're using a load of feedback is also excellent (though the fact that many of the issues are, almost unavoidably, raised after you post a section is unideal, though you've invited retcons which is great). The "on the ground" stuff is also great, particularly the Necron tombworld "dig", and the most recent war of future sight.

Gavinfoxx: Can you please post a download for your most recent edited collection/the place you're working on it?

Now onto criticisms/questions/suggestions:
1. This Culture seems out of character with what I know of the cannon one. Particularly their willingness to do non-consensual mind reading (even in the face of a scary unknown, this seemed pretty fundamental), and large scale interventions, especially tech sharing.
2. The first post gave minimal/no explanation of why they're in this galaxy.
Possible explanation for both: This is not just a random group of ships, but one which holds a different philosophy from the Culture as a whole. They value the wellbeing of other sentients above the other sentients right to develop as they otherwise would. Not to the point where they step in and make everyone the Culture, but they will intervene in local disputes to avoid harm to sentients, and where there's great suffering they'll be willing to bend other aspects of their morals. Basically, these ships are loaded with Culture citizens who share a similar mindset to SC (though they're not actually all-SC), and Minds who broadly follow the same philosophies.

Perhaps they were able to detect from <stupidly huge distance> that there was *something* strange going on in this galaxy. It's got to be a long way otherwise communication with the body of the Culture is going to have happened, and it's not (though communication with a massive timelag could be interesting). The Eye of Terror has gotta have a pretty weird spectroscopic analysis, though that'd had only 12000 years to spread.. no where near enough to reach to a far-off galaxy, or even another galaxy at all. Perhaps some unknown FTL pulse from the birth of Slaanesh was enough to direct them to the fairly distant galaxy (swept through the Culture, perhaps gave each/most citizen(s) an extremely slight but detectable (with close mindreading) mood change almost simultaneously, even if an individual Mind could not tell the direction, they'd be able to figure out which direction it was going from the data they found and be curious. Probably most would discard it as questionably significant, or some Sublimed influence, but maybe a few would want to go looking). Or perhaps some of the strange happenings from the War in Heaven finally reached them (60 million years of the light traveling through the void, that's 257.5 years at 233 KL, sounds pretty sane).

Anyway, in order to get massive timelag at Culture communication speeds (how FTL was it settled on that this Culture could communicate?), the galaxy has to be a very, very long way away. Even the fastest hyperspace drives (233 kilolights?) are (correct me if I'm wrong) vastly slower than the fastest available communication. So you've got to have a really long trip (possibly with most biologicals in sleeper mode) in order to lose fastish (few months-year timelag each way) communication. Even if the distance itself makes the fastest signals hard to pick up, a trail of "communication buoys" to relay signals would solve that. Unless this subset of the Culture actively wanted to cut themselves off.

It'd be good to have a bit of prequel, which I could put together if wanted, but someone who's read Culture novels rather than just read about them would be able to put more detail in.

Questions:
Culture's fastest communication speeds?
Culture's resistance to exploring the wider than the galaxy?
Culture's reaction to a faction splitting off and being more interfery, especially if they intend to do it far from the general anti-become-a-HS oversight? I'm thinking that if half of them did not want to fight the Iridians and they let the other half go ahead, splits are acceptable, but they do take great care to avoid drifts towards HSness.

3. This Culture seems waaaay too quick and keen to give away tech, at least from an in story perspective. And not wary enough to avoid situations where Chaos almost gets supertech. Examples: RT, Necrons, Durfan Empire carrying guy, and Eldar to a lesser extent.
4. They play out many diplomatic situations as if others have much more significant bargaining chips. Particularly RT. No one can reasonably demand stuff from them, other than maybe Necrons, but that's just because they're not reasonable.
These two are related, so again I'll deal with them together. Given that they know they don't understand the situation with Chaos, and don't know how friendly the other races are (and will almost immediately find evidence of almost every faction committing major atrocities), giving away tech without very careful consideration and explanation appears spectacularly stupid, counterproductive, morally abhorrent (let's give warring factions superweapons and things they can turn into superweapons!), and risky. No matter how interventionist they are. There are a couple of fairly good reasons for certain techshareing, but you've explained them almost exclusively outside the story sections. And I'm not sure they're enough. Let's look at them.

They want pawns against Chaos.
They most certainly do. But they are cautious, and they'll know its much safer to use methods of fighting Chaos with a zero/nearzero chance of making Chaos stronger with Culturetech. Mass producing good IoM class ships and (subtly) gifting them to factions who will use them exclusively on Chaos or leading a large WAAAAGH! against them once they get records of Ork's near uncorruptability (hey, that's a point, combine the two and gift a large IoM fleet to some Orks squarely pointed at Chaos) would have a much smaller chance of backfiring than finding a RT of all people and dumping tactical FTL and self replicating nanobots on them. Sure, they may not have the info right away, but they can scan databases effectively and figure out the general picture at least. Hypertech giveaways which will come into intentional direct contact with Chaos before knowing the full picture by beings as smart as Minds?

They want IoM worlds to have non-warp FTL for food supplies to avoid megadeath.
Actually a pretty strong reason, if they were going with the shut down warp path (which you guys mostly agreed would be a Bad Idea). Or if the IoM falls apart. They do not want Hive worlds to have megadeath (probably, though the scale of overpopulation on those things and quality of life may make some wonder). They'd also be pretty happy with reducing the need for Astropaths/warptech in general in IoM, reducing the ways for Chaos to get in. However, there's another solution to giving tactical FTL which will leak to Chaos, since it needs to be spread widely: Transport the food themselves. One big fast well defended/set to blow if there's any chance of Chaos it can't escape from transport per system, maybe without biologicals to reduce the chance of Chaos corruption. They can fake whatever approval orders are needed, and if the IoM's gone from an area to the extent they're not moving food around, everyone's going to be desperate enough for help that they'll accept it. Not that anyone could stop the Culture helping them.

The Eldar have interesting technology they want.
Sure. If the Eldar realised how much Culturetech was worth to them, they'd insist on a trade, and the Culture would maybe accept since they need warptech/info badly. But the Culture should go into negotiations trying not to give away supertech if remotely possible, and instead offer treaties of protection for the Eldar (keeping Tyranids off their back, passively (i.e. displace foes far away each time they come close until they get bored) preventing all attacks other than Chaos to already inhabited Eldar ships/worlds). Maybe the Eldar have enough to offer them to get supertech, if farseers see they need it.

The Necrons have interesting technology they want.
I don't see the Culture trading potentially dangerous tech to a possible HS. They may have withdrawn, and perhaps would've even returned the artifacts, but any openly hostile Necrons after the first would've been torn apart and have their tech stolen. Especially with the Eldar really wanting rid of them, and the Culture having important things to get from the Eldar. Necrontech can be stolen, Eldartech.. probably can't. Culture wants both. The way I see they could've not just stolen it would be if they feared the Necrons enough to not want to provoke war, and the initial curbstomp/Eldar/IoM info would've given them a fair amount of confidence that the 'crons have some cool toys, but can't properly fight them.

Optimizing the Tau was done well, in my opinion. They gained a useful ally, got maybe not quite enough guarantees about the Tau not being overagressive/treating other races well, but it generally seemed in character and well thought out.

So.. while some of these are possible to justify, I'm not sure that other than Tau and maybe Eldar they were likely choices for a Mind, or well justified in-story. Basically, it feels like you're trying to get high level tech into a lot of people's hands, rather than how the Culture would naturally act. I'm not suggesting a mass-retcon, we're too far into a lot of these threads of story for that to be sensible, just things to bear in mind for future encounters.

5. The Culture's intel seems.. not quite as awesome as I'd imagine it should be. At least really early on.
Even without any warp understanding/manipulation/experiments themselves, the first task the Culture seems likely to focus on is draining every single bit of knowledge from every world they come across. They have the processing power to handle it all, and extract what they want. If they're allowed mass mindmindreading from orbit, that's a hell of a lot of information (especially if culture mindreading extends to memories as well as current mindstate, is this the case?). I understand that a lot of why they're not acting with a much much more co-ordinated library of almost all IoM data is significantly that jseah does not know all WH cannon, and I think knew a lot less at the start of this. By now this has mostly gone away, but I'd assume that the Culture knew almost everything that someone else knew.

6. Tyranids should attract a bit of Culture focus.
These things are the textbook example of a highly aggressive not individually sentient HS, and they don't pose a threat to the Culture. Going on a all out extermination mission to clean them from the galaxy (other than well contained samples for study) seems like a straightforward choice for interventionist Culture as soon as they understand them. Even sending out small fleets to nearby galaxies once they find this thing is a potential threat to life in them would be entirely reasonable. And yea, they should die. Fast. AoE weapons should allow even low level ships to take down fleets very quickly, and there's nothing 'nids can do vs tactical FTL.

7. Careful with the Orkyness field, it's interesting, but as I understand it far from long range, and not quick acting/likely to turn people against their allies. Long term, probably just a bit of personality shift from exposure.
It's possible those in long term direct ork contact would act differently, and detectably so. And around enough Orks, physics is a bit screwed (that arm attachment by human thing probably happened in very close proximity to a lot of Orks who expected it to work for him). But unless a Mind decides to personally fly close to/leading an extremely large WAAAAGH for too long or leave too much Culturetech around for looting, it's unlikely to be a gamechanger imo.

8. I think you've been really generous to Chaos/Psyker's ability to fight supertech.
Maybe that's not an entirely bad thing (and I see why from some of the posts around then), but dream vectors being enough to bring in Chaos, the ability of scrapcode to challenge even a Mind, non-harmful pleasure bringing in Chaos, the absolutely insane Psyker defense of Terra (targeting and killing an entire crew moving FTL across a solar system with almost no preparation), the Hyperspace null field (that's something which on its own could be weaponised to great effect, and seems strange for warp to play with considering nothing hyperspace has been used before in WH40k), Astropath communication (admittedly, you retcon-reduced that)... yes, you made Chaos fundamentally rule-based, and it could be seen as "compensation" for that, but there being SOME logic, however convoluted, is.. absolutely required for any universe. Any fluff claiming that there is no pattern to the warp, no constraints whatsoever, is contradicted by the stories existing in the first place. Hm, basically, even with zero warp defenses.. The Culture is far enough beyond IoM that anything the IoM can give trouble by standard means, the Culture is not really threatened by. A+ Psykers burning a hole in physics? Get a rock going massively FTL aimed at them from a long way away, they'll die before they react. Chaos is really infectious? Burn them at great distance. Only going into the warp potentially is a problem, and pretty soon they'll know all the tricks others use to survive there, as well as having a lot of their own still help. Still risky, but not instadeath. Don't be afraid to let Culture totally curbstomp everything they naturally curbstomp, if you're wanting to write this story as "I wonder what happens if...", which I and many others seem very happy with.


That may seem like a lot of nitpicking, but, again, I love this overall. I'm not going to be online much for a few weeks over christmas, but after that I'd be more than happy to work with/help someone implement the various retcons which have been agreed upon earlier in the threads, and maybe add to the story if people feel parts I write are fitting.


tl;dr: this is really cool + nitpicks

[Hylleddin]

It'd be good to have a bit of prequel, which I could put together if wanted, but someone who's read Culture novels rather than just read about them would be able to put more detail in.

That could be neat.

6. Tyranids should attract a bit of Culture focus.
These things are the textbook example of a highly aggressive not individually sentient HS, and they don't pose a threat to the Culture. Going on a all out extermination mission to clean them from the galaxy (other than well contained samples for study) seems like a straightforward choice for interventionist Culture as soon as they understand them. Even sending out small fleets to nearby galaxies once they find this thing is a potential threat to life in them would be entirely reasonable. And yea, they should die. Fast. AoE weapons should allow even low level ships to take down fleets very quickly, and there's nothing 'nids can do vs tactical FTL.

My understanding that the Culture is doing significant work against the Tyranids, but it doesn't show up on screen much because it isn't very dramatically interesting.

[Gavinfoxx]

What's that term for not quite an offshoot, but not mainstream... its in the Culture books; there are several terms for degrees of how far away from mainstream they are? Some term like ancillary or auxiliary or something??

[jseah]

That was a nice post to read etesp. Suffice it to say that most of your nitpicks have the excuse of: "The Culture is very very smart. I am not. "

>.>
I try to come up with plans and stuff, but there will inevitably be things I overlooked that the Culture Minds would not have.

The Rogue Trader and Eldar were... not ideal. Ok, fine, they were manifestly bad ideas. =D
At the time, I was thinking that the Eldar were more benign than they really are and that RTs were far more greedy than loyal (and thus the Culture could pocket them and use them as proxies).

RE Necrons:
The current working hypothesis the Culture is taking to the Necrons is that they are an organic race that tried to shift to pure inorganic intelligence with incomplete understanding of intelligence engineering and so screwed themselves over. (and the C'Tan who made them do it are Outside Context Problems)

So, to a very large extent, the Culture are still seeing them as just another misguided race who have gone a little crazy. They aren't treating the Necrons as a HS to be exterminated, more like an equal who is down on his luck, with a few disagreeable habits.

There was a reason why gavinfoxx said that this Culture is considerably more tolerable than the original one. >.>

EDIT:
I have edited the first post of this thread with a link to your collection of links.

[Gavinfoxx]

Also... I, uh, stopped updating the posts from what you see... I'll get around to updating it sometime in the next week, I guess...

Incomplete understanding of intelligence engineering... and possible incomplete understanding of the extent that their emotional processing as biologicals were shunted to their warp aspects, and how to compensate appropriately for the lack? With the hypothesis that all biological life in this galaxy that have emotions connect and offload some of their emotional processing to the warp part of their person?

[The Glyphstone]

The reason there's no explanation for the Culture showing up in the galaxy to begin with is because this started as a hostile Versus thread. It wasn't a fanfiction to begin with, it was 'Lets You and Him Fight' to see if the Culture could beat the collective might of the 40Kverse. Seeing as how it took us about 15 minutes to decide the answer was a resounding 'Yes', it eventually morphed into what you see here and now.

[Gavinfoxx]

I thought the answer was, 'Buuuut Chaaooos!' and 'It depends exactly on the interpretation of the way several factors work'. Hence the further examination in this thread and the original thread.

[The Glyphstone]

That too, but he mentioned the very first thread, which was indeed rather devoid of context.

[Gavinfoxx]

Anyway, I think a plausible interpretation is something like, 'There is massive parallel evolution in this galaxy of shunting emotional processing to the warp aspect of a biological entity's personality, because there has been a major evolutionary advantage in doing this, namely that it saves on calories and simplifies the complexity in the brain that has to be a part of this system. But biological entities don't have to be built this way; they don't have to outsource their emotions to the warp; they just tend to. The biological entities from outside this galaxy -- aside from the Tyranids, which are connected to the same warp system as this galaxy -- didn't evolve the same way, and the machine intelligence transferral systems that have nothing to do with warp 'souls' that many of these entities used is more robust because of this. In contrast, non-warp based intelligence transfer systems, to work on this universe's biological denizens, must compensate for the lack of emotional processing inherent in the matter-based aspects of biological brains, intelligently adding or removing these capabilities as necessary, as virtual people won't have the same connection, but a person resurrected into a body will -- if the genetic hooks are still present.'

[etesp]

My understanding that the Culture is doing significant work against the Tyranids, but it doesn't show up on screen much because it isn't very dramatically interesting.

Possible, but:

Tyranid infestations sighted: 11
Tyranid fleets destroyed: 10
Ork infestations sights: 1, 309
Ork infestations cleaned: 808

From the half year report suggests otherwise, unless 'nids are rarer than I thought. The fleets must be splinter fleets, not full ones.. hm, we could probably figure out how active 'nids were being if there was a set more specific date, perhaps just there being a lull in Tyranids would explain why they've not run into that many. Or maybe being roflstomped quite so instantly made the Hive mind decide there was something scary and to avoid this galaxy in future.

And even if they don't get much screen time since the battles are laughably one sided, a little note about how much/little damage they'd done to other races/info on any infestations they'd not reached yet and were going for would be nice (possibly just a note to an allied race, with some video. the Tau would love seeing a large 'nid fleet annihilated in milliseconds.), and perhaps plans to pursue them extragalacticly.

Also, one possible dramatically interesting point involving Tyranids will be when they turn up in the Octarius war, massive endless Ork/'nid war, with 'nids starting to take on Ork traits (probably genetically), and Orks using loads of looted bits of Tyranid to fight. If the Culture has IoM records (they really should by now), they'll know about it.

What's that term for not quite an offshoot, but not mainstream... its in the Culture books; there are several terms for degrees of how far away from mainstream they are? Some term like ancillary or auxiliary or something??

That term would definitely be very useful for any prequel mini story, as would the Culture's reaction to them striking off on their own.

That was a nice post to read etesp. Suffice it to say that most of your nitpicks have the excuse of: "The Culture is very very smart. I am not. "

>.>
I try to come up with plans and stuff, but there will inevitably be things I overlooked that the Culture Minds would not have.

The Rogue Trader and Eldar were... not ideal. Ok, fine, they were manifestly bad ideas. =D
At the time, I was thinking that the Eldar were more benign than they really are and that RTs were far more greedy than loyal (and thus the Culture could pocket them and use them as proxies).

Thanks, and fair, not many beings simulate universes for fun. And you got started on some threads before having a chance to explore the lore in great detail, so were working with a lot less information than a Mind too.

RE Necrons:
The current working hypothesis the Culture is taking to the Necrons is that they are an organic race that tried to shift to pure inorganic intelligence with incomplete understanding of intelligence engineering and so screwed themselves over. (and the C'Tan who made them do it are Outside Context Problems)

So, to a very large extent, the Culture are still seeing them as just another misguided race who have gone a little crazy. They aren't treating the Necrons as a HS to be exterminated, more like an equal who is down on his luck, with a few disagreeable habits.

There was a reason why gavinfoxx said that this Culture is considerably more tolerable than the original one. >.>

hm, would that be enough to stop the Culture doing major techstealing though? Especially if they could justify it with:
1. We need all the tools we can get to fight Chaos, right now.
2. Us understanding their technology will allow us to help them sooner.
3. We can maybe do this in a way which won't be traceable back to us, if enough care is taken.
4. They have been openly hostile to much less technically advanced races with apparently no justification (farmworld).

If the Culture thought the Necrons were a potential threat (maybe knew about the C'tan shards), AND thought there was a way to resolve this peacefully, then perhaps they'd hold of grabbing as much Necron tech as possible. Maybe. But I guess they could've got some hint of the shards from somewhere/been worried enough by unknown tech, and being cautious/preferring diplomacy.. yea, the Necron situation is believable. Just a little odd, especially techtrading to hostiles.

I have edited the first post of this thread with a link to your collection of links.

Cool. Thinking again, I've make a new link actually, one which is possible to update, but also not publicly editable. I'm PMing you the link to update it (and Gavinfoxx since he seems to also be interested in organizing this. other interested people can request edit link if we're not updating fast enough, or have good ideas.).

Also... I, uh, stopped updating the posts from what you see... I'll get around to updating it sometime in the next week, I guess...

If all you've done is in the google doc, that's fine. Just wanted to avoid duplication of effort when I get to it. With the links in the OP there's no urgency, and as I said, my activity's going to be low for some time.


@Glyphstone: Yep, I read that bit, but now it's evolved into a fanfic it'd be nice to retcon in a proper beginning imo.

@Gavinfoxx: That does sound very plausible, the one possible issue I see is that Culture humans having a warp presence/soul implies some warp connection.. though perhaps that can be explained by the warp recognizing the patterns of sentient life and sticking to it, having "learned" those patterns from experiencing sentients which generate emotional patterns for millions of years. And I guess you'd need some explanation as to why Culture galaxy beings don't make those efficiency savings. Perhaps the warp there just happened to be inert enough that random evolution did not ever manage to connect, whereas when you've got churned warp there's plenty of chance for interaction and adaptation.

Also that Tzeench plan has got to be my favorite part. I think the whole story is just going uphill really.

Oh, I missed one possible nitpick. Are self replicating nanobots something that would be safe to send into a system with unknown technical abilities, or would the Culture not just make the nanoparticles a few light years away, then fire them into the Sol system with absolutely no self replicating ability, just loads of spying power. That seems like a much less risky way and only takes a bit more effort to make. Self-rep nano seems like something even the Culture would be a little wary of unless they were sure there was nothing strange going on, which is not the case. But perhaps it's standard to include self-rep in nano, and they're so confident in the tech that they don't consider it could go wrong. I should read the books.

edit: this avoiding tl;dr is going really well :p

[jseah]

I have been working off the interpretation that the 'Nids are actually less numerous than given. Their reach is huge because their fleets strike at a system then disappear before anyone reacts as per described in the lexicanum. Relatively few fleets (growing in size each system they eat) will be able to wreak untold amounts of havoc.

Being Warp immune also renders them able to strike with impunity since future sight doesn't pick them up. It also makes them very hard to find since the Culture have to stumble across them.

RE nanobots:
That was kind of a "oops" moment, I didn't know Mars still had scrapcode.
The Culture normally uses nanobots for spying regularly. It's a routine thing for Contact. Self-rep is the only way you'll ever get enough bots to scan a planet (not enough mass even on a GCU, and risk of detection of overly large packages).

[Parra]

The reason there's no explanation for the Culture showing up in the galaxy to begin with is because this started as a hostile Versus thread. It wasn't a fanfiction to begin with, it was 'Lets You and Him Fight' to see if the Culture could beat the collective might of the 40Kverse. Seeing as how it took us about 15 minutes to decide the answer was a resounding 'Yes', it eventually morphed into what you see here and now.

well the orginal idea was from a throwaway reference in one of the Culture books that a group of Culture ships had decided to make the long trip to the next galaxy over, probably just to see whats there. Since I had just blasted through all the culture novels and I had always been a 40k fan, I was wondering how they would interact.

Jesah has since taken that to a whole other, totally unexpected but very much enjoyed, other level

I agree that the timescale is a little fast for the normal pace of things in both Cultureverse and 40kverse, but Im ok with that.

[Parra]

Anyway, I think a plausible interpretation is something like, 'There is massive parallel evolution in this galaxy of shunting emotional processing to the warp aspect of a biological entity's personality, because there has been a major evolutionary advantage in doing this, namely that it saves on calories and simplifies the complexity in the brain that has to be a part of this system. But biological entities don't have to be built this way; they don't have to outsource their emotions to the warp; they just tend to. The biological entities from outside this galaxy -- aside from the Tyranids, which are connected to the same warp system as this galaxy -- didn't evolve the same way, and the machine intelligence transferral systems that have nothing to do with warp 'souls' that many of these entities used is more robust because of this. In contrast, non-warp based intelligence transfer systems, to work on this universe's biological denizens, must compensate for the lack of emotional processing inherent in the matter-based aspects of biological brains, intelligently adding or removing these capabilities as necessary, as virtual people won't have the same connection, but a person resurrected into a body will -- if the genetic hooks are still present.'

I liked one of the descriptions of civilisation advancement put forward in one of the Culture books that went something like this:
"Civilisation & Technology advancement is not a straight line, its more like a cliff face. Everyone takes different routes and learns different things that others haven't but its all the same when you reach the top (Sublimination)"