The Culture Explores 40K III: Just As Planned

[Forum Explorer]

Having overwhelming realspace power is constraining the sorceror's options greatly however. You may notice that he's avoiding all direct conflict with the Culture and that his efforts are all focused on making the 40k factions fight each other with the Culture in the middle.
This is mainly because I simply can't come up with a plausible scenario where the sorceror could get into a conflict with the Culture and gain some advantage out of it.

eg. At this point, there is very little he can do to make the Tau not side with the Culture. But he can try to destabilize the region by provoking a war between Tau and IoM (now that the Tyranid problem there will eventually go away, the IoM should have the forces to attack the Tau), and just maybe, the Culture might be presented with the situation of "help the Tau in major ways or watch them die" or faced with a collapse of IoM military power (and the resulting problems for IoM populations) if the Tau win.

The ultimate success would be the corruption of the Culture, and I can actually see a way for it to occur. Chaos keeps sabotaging the Culture's efforts to improve thing in this galaxy and generally keeps their efforts in vain.

They also begin seeding false information of 'successful' warp experiments in different Imperium databases and other legends of the warp being used safely. They contact various frustrated SC agents, promising them tools to actually succeed at their various missions. They give the information needed to create machine-organic hybrids so drones could develop psyker powers. The experimental drones, likely mixed with various protective wards from Eldar and other species, though in reality Chaos is just ignoring them, are a success leading a Mind to eventually try to implement the idea.

The biggest obstacle to this is the Eldar who can reveal the source behind most of these temptations so they'd have to eliminate that friendly Craftworld. Perhaps by offering a lot of power to a Dark Eldar faction who could then attack them through the Webway, but that's hardly a guarantee of victory.

[jseah]

The biggest obstacle to this is the Eldar who can reveal the source behind most of these temptations so they'd have to eliminate that friendly Craftworld. Perhaps by offering a lot of power to a Dark Eldar faction who could then attack them through the Webway, but that's hardly a guarantee of victory.

There is also that all real scientific effort in the Culture is conducted by the Minds and they will replicate experiments, if only to get details the IoM missed. SC agents don't do research and there are no ways to contact an SC agent without the nearby Mind knowing about it.
Giving the Culture the principles for making artificial psykers won't get them making artificial psykers. They *don't* like having psykers since psykers are unstable daemon portals. The tech will just end up being reverse engineered for reality alteration principles.

And its not just the friendly Eldar who will give warnings. Any result that ends up something like the Galactic War hypothetical will prompt the Eldar to try averting it; even if it means warning the Culture they dislike.

[Forum Explorer]

There is also that all real scientific effort in the Culture is conducted by the Minds and they will replicate experiments, if only to get details the IoM missed. SC agents don't do research and there are no ways to contact an SC agent without the nearby Mind knowing about it.
Giving the Culture the principles for making artificial psykers won't get them making artificial psykers. They *don't* like having psykers since psykers are unstable daemon portals. The tech will just end up being reverse engineered for reality alteration principles.

And its not just the friendly Eldar who will give warnings. Any result that ends up something like the Galactic War hypothetical will prompt the Eldar to try averting it; even if it means warning the Culture they dislike.

Direct telepathy is an option. And the experimentation is exactly what they want. Basically they want the Culture to feel they've got this warp stuff figured out and that it's pretty much safe now. Then go for the corruption. Also Psykers are useful and it could simply be having a Mind exist in both Hyperspace and the Warp in order to be supercharged in intelligence and ability.

Of course another win for Chaos would be to get the Culture to go "F you guys, I'm going home." and just leaving the galaxy.

[Gavinfoxx]

Does anyone else think we need to get this story cleaned up and posted on Fanfiction.net and a few other places? That Star Destroyer bbs forum thingy, maybe elsewhere as well?

[The Glyphstone]

Maybe fanfiction.net. Stardestroyer.net is a hive of scum and villainy best left undisturbed. Or so I've heard.

[hamishspence]

That was the impression I got from a few minutes of reading random threads there.

[Gavinfoxx]

Well, not the actual FORUMS that have deep discussion. Just the places that are specifically to post cohesive stories.

[hamishspence]

The Jedi Council Forums seem similar but much politer- and have a non-SW fan fiction section- maybe it could go there?

Or on one of the more notable 40K forums, like Warseer or The Bolter & Chainsword- though I don't know how active their fanfic sections are.

[jseah]

Direct telepathy is an option. And the experimentation is exactly what they want. Basically they want the Culture to feel they've got this warp stuff figured out and that it's pretty much safe now. Then go for the corruption. Also Psykers are useful and it could simply be having a Mind exist in both Hyperspace and the Warp in order to be supercharged in intelligence and ability.

Of course another win for Chaos would be to get the Culture to go "F you guys, I'm going home." and just leaving the galaxy.

The thing is that, when the Culture does feel they've got it figured out is exactly when it does become safe. They're not going to be able to feel they've got it until they actually understand the underlying rules of the warp and have control over what they're doing.

Also, psykers can't actually do anything the Culture needs beyond reality manipulation and psyker reality manipulation is precisely what they're trying to get rid off since it causes daemons.
They come from a scientific and technological background after all. If they meet a problem and they think a warp solution is best, they're not going to go the Eldar route and have a psyker bonesing a solution. They'll build a warp device to do that thing and only that; if they can't build that device, they'll look for another method.

[Gavinfoxx]

Psykers and sorcerers can bind and permanently kill Daemons, given ability, knowledge of the means, appropriate circumstances, situation and luck.

No tech I know of can do that.

[jseah]

Psykers and sorcerers can bind and permanently kill Daemons, given ability, knowledge of the means, appropriate circumstances, situation and luck.

No tech I know of can do that.

Given that Daemons outnumber humans and supposedly regenerate all the time, this is a poor strategy. Especially since psykers have a tendency to end up being Daemon-bait.

Besides, "no tech available to do that" just means that it hasn't been figured out yet. And knowledge of how to make artificial psykers will be a major step to figuring it out. EDIT: this is speaking from the Culture's perspective, whether there is a possible warp device that is able to kill some particular daemon is not something we have discussed.

[Gavinfoxx]

There's one sword somewhere in the warp that should be able to kill any given daemon or god. We had a discussion about this, I think late in the last thread.

And they should probably be getting a decent grasp of an idea regarding what warp devices are Sorcery-based in origin, and which aren't... at least regarding prohibitions on Sorcery in the IoM...

[The Glyphstone]

Given that Daemons outnumber humans and supposedly regenerate all the time, this is a poor strategy. Especially since psykers have a tendency to end up being Daemon-bait.

Besides, "no tech available to do that" just means that it hasn't been figured out yet. And knowledge of how to make artificial psykers will be a major step to figuring it out. EDIT: this is speaking from the Culture's perspective, whether there is a possible warp device that is able to kill some particular daemon is not something we have discussed.

And it's something important, and probably something you as the author have already considered to some degree...does Clarke's Third Law hold true here? The Culture comes from a setting where Sufficiently Advanced Technology is the baseline, as a default condition of being post-singularity. In 40K, the nature of the warp can be studied, interpreted, and harnessed to a point, but a core element of its nature is that it is ultimately unpredictable, wild, and, well, chaotic. It's magic. Space magic. Changing this isn't a setting-breaker (it's not like 40K could analyze it properly even if such was possible) but it's a fundamental clash-of-setting-worldviews that'd go into whatever the fanfiction version of a setting bible is.

This may have been hashed out/answered already, I dunno.

[jseah]

Well, anyone looking at the threads would agree that the threads have gotten a bit... long winded and we have covered how to integrate both settings in very high detail (which was, btw, the main reason why I starting writing this in the first place, to give a starting point by which to explore interactions in a plausible fashion)

I couldn't exactly tell you whether we had discussed X specific topic in the last.. oh, hundred pages or so? Mainly because I don't remember it well. =D

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

The warp can be truly unpredictable, but that doesn't mean what you think it means. Even truly unpredictable things, when properly surveyed, fall into a set of predictable unpredictability.

For the warp to exist as fluffy space magic that cannot ever be understood, it would have to be a constant source of Outside Context Problems. In which case, the Necron plan to seal off the warp starts to look very nice in comparison.

[The Glyphstone]

Well yeah, anything can be reduced down to probability ranges, no matter how minute the probabilities involved. I was talking more about the idea that with enough SCIENCE, it could be tamed/replicated at will. With the Third Law in place, it can eventually be duplicated - without it, you might understand its rules, but you have to play by its rules to use it. The concept of artificial/non-organic psykers, for instance...Clarke says you just need a sufficiently advanced AI, 40K says 'No U' and kicks Clarke out an airlock into a warp storm.

[Gavinfoxx]

You can make non-organic psykers!

They just have to start as Organic first. ;)

[jseah]

part 10.5 IoM

Spoiler

Show

Week 1
We have begun to apply IoM classification schemes, refined for lower intrusive characteristics and subdivided into minor grades of Rank, Rank+ and Rank-.

While the vast majority of Culture citizens are Rho ranks (with approximately 2% Pi rank), one citizen has registered as Omicron and another as Xi. On the other scale, there are two Sigmas and one Tau.

Careful analysis of the data and past history of the citizens has not revealed any percularities or apparent "luck" that the IoM attributes to the Omicron and Xi ranks.
Additionally, further tracing of the non-Rho ranks indicates that all but exactly one of the non-Rho rank citizens are those who came with the original expedition and have not gone through a Reload experience at any point in their lives.
Indeed, since we have opted to use Reload to activate our citizens who have chosen to make the intergalactic trip as pure data, we surmise that the Reload process tends to reset psionic sensitivity to human baseline. This is consistent with the experiments conducted on full scans of IoM psykers and blanks.
We are currently investigating the records of the one Pi rank citizen who had a Reload in his history in an attempt to find out what was different about his reload process.

The two people who are Omicron and Xi have been offered a Reload (of their current state) and the Xi person has agreed. After Reload, she now ranks as Rho+. The Omicron has offered to directly help investigations into the Warp as a result of his special status so we have put off the Reload and will follow him with great interest. We hope to detect some form of Warp effect that could be studied.

It strikes me that the Culture has a 'cure' for the psyker condition.

[The Glyphstone]

The Imperium also has a cure for the psyker condition. Theirs is exactly the same, except you don't get to come back afterwards.

[Forum Explorer]

The Imperium also has a cure for the psyker condition. Theirs is exactly the same, except you don't get to come back afterwards.

This made me laugh


Anyways there can be non-organic psykers, it's more a matter of preserving the soul or somehow getting one. In theory I think it's capable to build a machine with a soul by infusing it with a lot of warp stuff which is much more dangerous then it sounds (and it sounds pretty insanely dangerous to me )

Oh if the Culture is starting to get psykers they might start getting visions of the warp, and realize that reloading is not preserving them and while a copy of themselves may exist a very real part of them is now in the warp being eaten by daemons. (Since they lack the protection of any sort of god and as a warp sensitive they are too noticeable to just slip through like Tau do. Or perhaps Tau are like rice with each Tau being a single rice.)

[Gavinfoxx]

The thing is, Humans don't generally have the strength of will to, after dying, maintain their sense of identity / who they are / etc. when they are tortured by Daemons in the warp. Eldar do, which is why dying and being eaten by Slaanesh is so terrifying to them.

[etesp]

Does anyone else think we need to get this story cleaned up and posted on Fanfiction.net and a few other places? That Star Destroyer bbs forum thingy, maybe elsewhere as well?

Yes! But there's a significant amount of cleaning up that wants doing imo, almost all in the early parts (mostly discussed retcons from the first thread). Also, can we use a.. less ugly/restrictive (no/minimal formatting, collaborative editing, or links) alternative to fanfiction.net (Looking around a bit, this place looks pretty cool, though it'll be a few weeks till the invite comes through). At least until it's in a near-final state, then it could be cross posted to a few places? For cleaning up I'd personally be most happy with a series of wiki pages (I like the edit histories/edit summaries, especially for notable changes), or maybe google docs (especially for minor tweaks, like spelling/grammar).

Rise of Chaos was epic. Perhaps if someone (Eldar probably) can convince the Culture that them sticking around may cause that, then they may flat out leave the galaxy (taking all but a few selected tech gifts with them, and perhaps observing from a huge distance). Or at least take extra anti-Mind corruption measures like forcing Minds to travel in groups of 5+, each shielded by a group of Parahs, and each constantly observing each others. Parah shielding in general is something I'd expect the Culture to be setting up around now, with the basic warp understanding from others databases. Shuts down most forms of actual corruption entirely, other than literally talking a Mind into turning into almost the direct opposite of what they are built to be (not totally impossible if they're unaware of what Chaos means and highly curious, but they'll all be cautious with the warnings from everywhere). Parah shielding of Minds is also an amazing deal for Parahs: They swap the role of a hated outcast for that of near-perfect luxury, in exchange for living in one area of the ship, and maybe being used as part of a few warp tests if they're okay with it. Minds, Drones, and other Parahs provide companions who are not unsettled by their presence. And the Culture should be able to track them down pretty quickly once they know what they're looking for.

Edit: Also, I prefer the idea of the Warp being extremely complex, unintuitive, unpredictable, and chaotic, but fundamentally following a set of excessively convoluted rules. Although parts of the fluff may claim that it's without rules, the fact that it interacts in a fairly predictable way with the materrium shows that it is not literally without pattern, and as has been shown by some races once you reach high technology you CAN make specific warp devices and use the warp in technology. The power of a Culture worth of Minds (which individually simulate entire universes with strange physics to amuse themselves) applied to this problem will, with the right tools to analyze and test, bring them post-singularity warptech eventually. Perhaps it will take a significant length of time (note: geometric expansion of computational power and testing ability means even a few years is significant, remember my calculation about coating the entire galaxy with a layer of firepower in under a year, same deal), and the Old Ones were in a much better position to develop warptech/took an extremely long time to do so, but I don't find a universe in which near-arbitrary warptech is impossible to be very consistent with my mental model.


Annnddd, lots of questions incoming, I would like to know where the figures for how long each doubling of capacity takes comes from. How long does it take one GSV to build one GSV, or one GSU to build one GSU? Do ROVs have significant production capacity? And how fast can a larger ship churn out 1:1+ well equipped drones, if it turns its mind to it? Up to what level can Culture ships be produced by a self-rep nanobot swarm, are there any specific parts which can't be (Minds? Effector arrays? Hyperdrives)? Do we have any good sources of this from the books?

Also, I wonder what happens when femotech nanobots start appearing.. probably will require extensive safety testing, overseen by a Mind ready to Gridfire them into oblivion if they start evolving dangerously, but when that works properly.. :)

[Gavinfoxx]

You mean femtobots? ;)

[etesp]

That's the one.

Edit: What, how do we have cameras with femto second scale frames.

[Forum Explorer]

The thing is, Humans don't generally have the strength of will to, after dying, maintain their sense of identity / who they are / etc. when they are tortured by Daemons in the warp. Eldar do, which is why dying and being eaten by Slaanesh is so terrifying to them.

True, but they don't quite realize that and in theory the Emperor protects them. They do however see it happen.


Actually why haven't the Rangers commented on that yet? If they saw a reloading or the like take place they'd likely react as if the Culture killed and created a new person, which considering the universe, might not be that negative of a reaction. They would however treat them as an entirely new person.

[Gavinfoxx]

Yea... surely someone has asked the Rangers, 'Can you explain to me, as if I were a child, why you react with such horror to this reloading process, and view our drone citizens as soulless, and with such horror or disgust towards them? At first we thought you were like any of innumerable races we've encountered in our home galaxy that had similar views... but I think there is more to it, based on some of the terms you have used. What's going on?'

[jseah]

Doubling times were not given anywhere in the books, so I just made it up out of thin air.

Currently I am working off a guideline of:
Self-rep nanobots - doubling time, 2-5 hours in ideal conditions
GSV producing a GCU/ROU - 1 week
GSV producing a GSV - 3 weeks
GCU producing a GCU/ROU - 3 weeks
GCU producting a GSV - 9 weeks

Ships take much longer to self-rep than a nanobot because a fully operational ship contains a lot less things that produce stuff than a nanobot swarm. A swarm is 80-99% production power by weight, a ship is maybe 1 to 10%.
Ship production time assumes raw materials are available to hand. Increase 10% if element conversion is required, double if making from raw Gridfire.

Multiple ships in the same place can cooperate on a project. GSVs can build up to three projects at the same time without affecting speed. (and so 3 GSVs can build 3 projects in 1/3 the time)

1:1 drones or similar is probably scaling by weight. Meaning that if a standard drones weighs say, 100kg, and a GCU weighs a million tons, then a GSV can make 10 million drones in 1 week using 1 construction bay.
Finding a place to put them might be hard.

In any case, the Culture have stopped using true exponential expansion. Most of the new construction is occuring at the fringe of their area, which by part 11, will cover all of Segmentum Solar and begin intruding into the other two areas they haven't touched yet.


Femtotech nanobots:
Nanobots don't evolve. But aside from that, femtotech nanobots won't actually be all that faster at making classical tech stuff (the bottleneck in Culture nanobot production is almost certainly the speed that the nanobot can move).

They can just make femtotech stuff as well and would be the last step towards getting functional large-scale femto-tech.


Rangers:
True, I ought to have mentioned that. The cultural exchange has been ended for now though, due to the political tension with other craftworlds. Zahr-Tann doesn't want to anger Alaitoc further.

I'll make a special dialogue with the Eldar, not sure how long that'll be though.

[jseah]

Interpretation of Femtotech:
Before the Culture starts understanding all the magic Necron stuff, they'll apply it to their own more familiar tech first. Femto-tech gravity manipulation in part 12, hyperspace in part 13, which gives effectors/displacers/pancaker (all their major equipments), femto-tech nanobots in 14 and then they start on Necron stuff. Like teleporter atoms.

For the most part, I'm taking femtotech to be basically a uber-miniaturization tech. Theoretically, it would shrink everything by about ten million times, in practice its really about one thousand times until the Culture improve their understanding.
So, in the same amount of space, the Culture can put one thousand times more stuff, or make it one thousand times more powerful (but weighs one thousand times more).

This does not translate to a gamebreaking huge advantage, funnily enough. Effector ranges, if you obey Inverse-Cube law (it's 4D), only increase range by ten times, although they become one thousand times more powerful for the same space. Meaning they'll be able to project a weapon-grade laser from an effector or literally tear things apart from a light year away.

Hyperspace drives also won't be too buffed. Sure, you can cram one thousand times more drive power into the same space, but it also weighs one thousand times more. What this results in is that the difference between the theoretical 100% drive ship and the standard engine portion of Culture ships shrinking by 1000 times. All Culture ships become 99% engine by weight, unless they have femto-tech equipment on board (and crucially, a femto-tech hull).
IIRC, this means that ROUs become obsolete since everything has the roughly same speed now and I don't see why they would build a femto-tech hull since nothing in 40k can even touch them now. This speed is probably ~400 kilolights or so.

Femto-tech armour is probably the only one that gets changed alot. 1000 times binding strength will translate to a stupidly hard material, gaps between matter being 1000 times smaller translates to reflecting gamma rays.
Unfortunately, it also weighs 1000 times more and so you can't make it into armour since you'll literally sink into the ground. Through solid rock.


Teleporting atoms however, will give a major boost to SC capability. Drones can recall to ship (or specific meeting point) under their own power, unblocked by things that block hyperspace. A field femto-swarm can add teleportation capability to whatever target object and then bring it out.

I probably don't have to talk about what happens to Chaos intrusions once they reverse engineer the Monolith field.

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

Pariahs:
The Culture might take the Pariahs, but there is that they don't normally accept immigrants. (this is stated by Word of God, btw) Still, it's a plan I can consider, perhaps the Culture might ask the IoM inquisition first. They're still trying to make friends remember? (even if they won't do it the IoM way)

[Gavinfoxx]

There are the Necron Pariahs, and the IoM Pariahs... the IoM Pariahs are reaaalllyyy valuable to those in charge (omg, anti-psykers and anti-daemons!)... the Necron ones are seen as kinda weird and not liked that much. Necrons experimenting with biological components? Ewww.

[Tiki Snakes]

See, the culture will study the Warp with the utmost care, proceeding only when they are entirely certain that they understand and utilise it without the faintest risk of it backfiring.

All according to plan.

Because that is exactly how it works and really should happen, especially as the Culture are basically Tzeentch's perfect victims/chosen people.

This is also the secret true answer to the Tau/Chaos/Culture situation. If it looks like Chaos lacks any way to prevent Tau Culture bff status and so on, you really need to ask yourself how this situation could actually be to Chaos's advantage (or at least how it could be in their kind of interest, given that sometimes chaos losing is in Chaos's interest and so Tzeentch wil ensure that it happens).

It's entirely possible that the endgame could look exactly like a full Culture victory even, with the dangers of the warp minimised for a thousand years. Only several thousand years later when reality grows fat and complacent in it's safety, Chaos rears it's head as if from no-where, plunging the galaxy into nightmare and turmoil and despair once more. All according to plan, after all why else did Tzeentch lead the Culture here in the first place?

[Gavinfoxx]

There's also that Tzeentch could be like, "I want to survive. I don't care if I am changed, I am Change, I just want to survive!"

So it's possible that Tzeentch actually lets itself be made 'nice' over several millenia, if it means that it gets to survive in some form.