The Culture Explores 40K III: Just As Planned

[jseah]

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.

Necrons experimenting with bio-tech might be Ew to the IoM, but the Culture would see it as "what you're doing looks really interesting! How about we trade notes?"

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?

Especially since the Culture's default reaction to new civilizations is to meddle in them with stupidly complicated plots instead of killing them. And they refuse to expand over the galaxy precisely to encourange new civilizations to arise so that they can plot to make them join the Culture.
And heck, the Minds do it to their own organic citizens apparently.

Sure, it doesn't involve worship of Chaos or death/suffering/despair, but its got to be at least mildly Tzeentchian.

[Gavinfoxx]

Necrons experimenting with biotech is ew to other Necrons.

That's why Necrons call them Pariahs. And why there was people talking about marginalized parts of Necron society.... that you didn't seem to get!

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Necron_Pariah

[jseah]

Um, I don't recall that discussion. Mind summarizing it for me?

Also, Necron Pariahs aren't mentioned on the page to be outcasts of Necron society. That's Flayed Ones.

[Gavinfoxx]

Um, I don't recall that discussion. Mind summarizing it for me?

Also, Necron Pariahs aren't mentioned on the page to be outcasts of Necron society. That's Flayed Ones.

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.

Well, Pariahs aren't hated outcasts in IoM society. They are extremely valuable outcasts in IoM society. When the Inquisition gets wind that someone has a Pariah gene, they tend to be recruited post-haste, because they are astoundingly useful. So I was presuming that etesp had found something about the Necron Pariahs being outcasts in their society, presumably for using biotech (that and the Pariah name). I suppose I can look up in the 3rd edition Necron Codex, maybe.

[Tiki Snakes]

Necrons experimenting with bio-tech might be Ew to the IoM, but the Culture would see it as "what you're doing looks really interesting! How about we trade notes?"


Especially since the Culture's default reaction to new civilizations is to meddle in them with stupidly complicated plots instead of killing them. And they refuse to expand over the galaxy precisely to encourange new civilizations to arise so that they can plot to make them join the Culture.
And heck, the Minds do it to their own organic citizens apparently.

Sure, it doesn't involve worship of Chaos or death/suffering/despair, but its got to be at least mildly Tzeentchian.

There's nothing even remotely mild about it. Subtle, maybe.

Though if the occaisional apparently entirely untainted, safe Culture type simply spontainiously spouted wings, lazer eyes and mind powers before crawling away through the angle created by the perception of the angle between the wall and the floor, that wouldn't be entirely surprising either. Even if the spoutee was, I don't know, actually a knife missile or something.

[Gavinfoxx]

Necron Pariahs might have been retconned away, maybe. I suppose they could be listed as a failed experiment, or they are limited by the amount of numbers of Upsilon - Omega humans that Necrons can harvest from an IoM planet. I'd say it's probably just a few eccentric Crypteks that are making them.

[Forum Explorer]

Necron Pariahs might have been retconned away, maybe. I suppose they could be listed as a failed experiment, or they are limited by the amount of numbers of Upsilon - Omega humans that Necrons can harvest from an IoM planet. I'd say it's probably just a few eccentric Crypteks that are making them.

The version you linked to is certainly gone. I don't know if they still have a similar unit though.

[jseah]

Sorry, are we talking about the Necrons hating other Necron Pariahs, or IoM hating IoM pariahs or IoM hating Necron Pariahs? Getting confused here.

[jseah]

There's nothing even remotely mild about it. Subtle, maybe.

Though if the occaisional apparently entirely untainted, safe Culture type simply spontainiously spouted wings, lazer eyes and mind powers before crawling away through the angle created by the perception of the angle between the wall and the floor, that wouldn't be entirely surprising either. Even if the spoutee was, I don't know, actually a knife missile or something.

Or more likely, it will request to get wings, lazer eyes and mind powers after a particularly convoluted plot to try getting permission to have them.

Why spontaneously sprout wings when you can make up some incredibly complicated plan to get them "legally"?

[Gavinfoxx]

Sorry, are we talking about the Necrons hating other Necron Pariahs, or IoM hating IoM pariahs or IoM hating Necron Pariahs? Getting confused here.

Necrons possibly hating other Necron Pariahs. At least, I was... under the assumption that that was what etesp was talking about. Because I know that IoM doesn't hate their pariahs (at some levels), and the IoM hates everyone who isnt the IoM...

Though, in current canon, I would say that Necrons probably consider the Crypteks who do biological stuff, and who make Pariahs (probably from stolen human Pariahs, generally presumably undiscovered), a little weird. And would consider their creations weird..

...but looking at the whole thing, I don't know why etesp mentioned hate at all!

[Tiki Snakes]

Or more likely, it will request to get wings, lazer eyes and mind powers after a particularly convoluted plot to try getting permission to have them.

Why spontaneously sprout wings when you can make up some incredibly complicated plan to get them "legally"?

Well, thing is, it might not want them in the first place. Given that requesting them would probably get it in trouble, it would most likely not want them. Sometimes the Chaos Gods simply get...generous. If you are lucky, they leave your major organs intact or at least grant you new equivalents. Those who aren't quite so lucky are called "Chaos Spawn". The minitures usually look like some kind of melted octopus or man-slug-ooze thing I think.

That's also why it's very unlikely to happen that way right now, because it would probably not significantly forward any in particular of Chaos's goals for it to happen.

Also; Everyone hates Pariah's. It's their thing. They are so fundamentally wrong, so metaphysically loathesome that you just don't have a choice in the matter. They have a literal aura of horridness.

[Gavinfoxx]

So the aura of horribleness affects machine sentience too...?? I thought it only affected those who have warp souls / a connection to the warp / use warp for some of their emotional processing / etc.?

[Tiki Snakes]

No idea, but that's what he was referring to.

[Forrestfire]

That's correct. The aura of Uncanny Valley should only affect beings with souls. (I think)

[Forum Explorer]

I'm not sure Necron Pariahs even exist anymore. If they do they almost certainly are vastly different then the last edition.

Yeah just googled it, Necron Pariahs are completely gone. So they have exactly zero Pariahs and it's unknown to know how they'd react to them.

[Tiki Snakes]

That's correct. The aura of Uncanny Valley should only affect beings with souls. (I think)

Except perhaps in cases where the whole thing manifests in part with the Pariah in question simply being a creepy, unpleasant jerk, at any rate.

[Forrestfire]

Except perhaps in cases where the whole thing manifests in part with the Pariah in question simply being a creepy, unpleasant jerk, at any rate.

We may have a chicken-and-egg scenario though. The uncanny valley effect brought on by being a Blank would cause dislike, but being treated the way this hypothetical Pariah did would probably mold them into the sort of person who is a creepy, unpleasant jerk.

That, or it may be different and weird for everyone, since it's the warp. Ferik Jurgen has the same aura of unpleasantness, and the way it manifests is as a strong body odor (in addition to making people uneasy around him).

[Gavinfoxx]

I was reading Path of the Seer, and the Eldar know of parts of their brains that bolster their psychic strength. Seemed an interesting tidbit to mention. Here's the quote.

Spoiler

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‘The offender is barred from all rune-casting, and to ensure compliance the perpetrator is taken to the Halls of Isha,’ continued Kelamith. His voice was quiet, filled with sadness. ‘He or she is subjected to a procedure that removes the parts of the brain that bolster our psychic strength. The criminal is cut off from the skein, unable to interact with the infinity circuit.’

That sounded a lot worse to Thirianna, though she still did not understand why Kelamith seemed to loathe it so much. His following words brought home the full extent of the injunction, as he turned and looked at Thirianna directly.

‘It is a far harsher punishment than death,’ he said. ‘It is the ultimate banishment, Thirianna. Forget for the moment the power to traverse the skein and witness the future. Think on those things that you take for granted, small acts you perform every day. Your chambers respond to your thoughts, warming and cooling, lightening and darkening as you desire. You would only be able to communicate through the spoken word, unable to access the infinity circuit.’

He took a step closer, eyes boring into Thirianna.

‘Even more than that, you do not see what you would lose by such a punishment. We each touch upon one another in subtle ways. We read each other not just physically but with our thoughts. We have bonds between us stronger than family and friendship. Every Alaitocii is bound together through the infinity circuit, and every craftworld tied to a single fate through the eternal matrix. To be cast from that is to be something other than eldar. Loneliness and despair, cut off from that most instinctive of contact, will haunt the criminal. They will watch and hear life around them, but they will not feel it.’

It was truly a greater punishment than Thirianna had appreciated. To lose one’s sight, one’s hearing, one’s sense of touch or smell would be unfortunate enough. To have part of one’s spirit taken away, to be rendered mundane, to lose a huge part of the essence of being eldar, would be crippling.

[jseah]

Hm, would they be truly outcasts? The Culture might be willing to welcome them, especially since their experience is likely to be useful.

[The_Final_Stand]

Quite possibly, yes. The way I read it, just from that quote above, the cut-off Eldar wouldn't be able to read other Eldar the same way, and vice-versa. It strikes me as similar to IoM Pariahs on a day to day life type scale. They radiate a sense of unease and unnaturalness to regular humans.

Make no mistake, as a strategic resource Pariahs are useful. On a day-to-day scale, they are unpleasant.

[etesp]

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

<details which seem pretty sensible>

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.

hm, it'd be nice to have at least little in story note justifying/explaning the decision to slow growth, considering that extra ships=ability to support more IoM worlds after collapse, which is at least one of the more likely scenarios the Minds will be expecting.

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.

Why would femtobots not evolve? Especially untested femtobots, they will almost certainly have imperfect self-replication. Until you've built femtobots capable of locating and destroying any flawed femtobots with great accuracy and speed, there's the risk of a "cancer" where one of the femtobots fails to replicate the shutoff switch for replication properly, but keeps the ability to replicate, and spreads uncontrollably. Subatomic gray goo. With enough Mindpower, they'll probably be able to introduce enough safeguards despite being on pretty unfamiliar territory, but it's something to watch out for imo.

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.

Mostly seems pretty sensible, so long as requiring it to weigh as much is going to fall away massively as Culture understanding improves. The Necron atom scale teleport tech clearly does not make each atom have a teleporter with equivalent weight to a normal teleporter, it uses much smaller and therefore much lighter parts. Similarly, a Hyperdrive or an Effector array should not just be a compressed full weight duplicate (1000x power, 1000x weight), but a much more tightly packed set of extremely small/light parts. The maximum density will of course go up a lot, so maximum useful weight would, but I don't think that they should go up together. Except for armor.

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.

You'd be able to make extremely thin armor of the same strength as vastly thicker materials, and perhaps the binding strength would go up more than the weight, but I can see significant armour being unreasonably heavy for personnel.

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

I meant human, not Necron, as Tiki Snakes said. They're great tools, but even a lot of IoM highups want to kill them all because they feel so wrong. Most Parahs are not going to be picked up by the IoM: "they generally die young as their aura of disgust and nausea turns other living beings against them."

and

"It is hardly surprising that Blanks are often treated like outcasts or lepers in Imperial society, rejected by their parents and banished from their homeworld's local settlements. Local superstitions on many worlds often warn about touching them, saying that to do so would bring bad luck. Resigned to their fate, many Blanks lead simple, solitary existences, as far away from heavily populated areas as possible."
Which is only going to be amplified in the case of Pariahs.

The Culture would not ask for IoM trained Parahs, they'd rescue outcast/in danger Pariahs from their homeworlds. Sure, immigrants may be extremely rare, but getting some near perfect shields against a foe they don't understand and fear greatly while rescuing the persecuted? That's gotta sound pretty tempting. And from the warp interactions we've been using.. I doubt machine intelligences would be affected by the aura of loathing.


@Tiki Snakes and Gavinfoxx: Great Tzeentchian stuff there :). I like the idea of the warp god of change playing both sides, playing both to take down the Culture, and to play nice if necessary and be a non-evil force of change for an arbitrarily long time.

[Gavinfoxx]

FYI, my Eldar quote was totally off topic regarding the Pariah discussion. It was just something I found, yaknow?

A few more topics... Pariahs are sometimes get grown!!

After double checking, even the highly valued pariahs are often feared and hated.

Also, don't Necron soldiers that teleport rather than be destroyed, only teleport to pre-prepared areas designed to receive them, maybe even pull them to a particular location?

[Gavinfoxx]

It strikes me that, with improvements to psi scanning devices, if The Culture wanted to improve the treatment of Pariahs, they could just start adding lists of them that slipped through the cracks to the reports they are giving the Inquisition. Because it is Pariahs that aren't found and classified that happen to be not valued. Hell, just lists of people of Phi to Omega and of Eta to Alpha that have managed to slip the net would be profoundly useful. They'd also get to watch the IoM response.

[The Glyphstone]

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.

Sort of like the "Tzeentch Ascendant" scenario I'd proposed in the last thread, though a bit more subtle, as appropriate.

[etesp]

It strikes me that, with improvements to psi scanning devices, if The Culture wanted to improve the treatment of Pariahs, they could just start adding lists of them that slipped through the cracks to the reports they are giving the Inquisition. Because it is Pariahs that aren't found and classified that happen to be not valued. Hell, just lists of people of Phi to Omega and of Eta to Alpha that have managed to slip the net would be profoundly useful. They'd also get to watch the IoM response.

While Pariahs found by the IoM are less likely to get killed by their families, I'm not sure the Culture particularly wants to encourage brainwashing them into becoming perfect assassins then having them sent on suicidal missions. And picking them up themselves as shields would be the main reason they would want to, the humanitarian side is just a bonus/moral justification for the non-interventionist factions.

[Gavinfoxx]

No no no, it's only the Omega Minuses that are made Culexus. The other ones have other assignments, and they often find themselves in the Retinues of Inquisitors... or assistants to Heroes of the Imperium, and actually considered more valuable than the hero they assist, by those in the know. ;)

[Forum Explorer]

No no no, it's only the Omega Minuses that are made Culexus. The other ones have other assignments, and they often find themselves in the Retinues of Inquisitors... or assistants to Heroes of the Imperium, and actually considered more valuable than the hero they assist, by those in the know. ;)

Or on suicidal missions hunting daemons and the like.

[etesp]

No no no, it's only the Omega Minuses that are made Culexus. The other ones have other assignments, and they often find themselves in the Retinues of Inquisitors... or assistants to Heroes of the Imperium, and actually considered more valuable than the hero they assist, by those in the know. ;)

I was going from "The most commonly known instances of Pariahs are the Imperium's Culexus Temple assassins and the Sisters of Silence...", but looking again the assignment again it does link straight to Culexus from Omega Minus, and gives Omega as:

Usually referred to as Untouchables, Pariahs, or Blanks.

hm.. perhaps they reach Omega Minus level due to being highly trained/equipped/modified, because I'm not seeing anything else indicating that Culexus takes in only Omega Minus, just Pariahs. Could be just missing from wikis though.

Either way, the main point is using them as a defense. I guess they could point out some spare ones to the Imperium if they think they'll get treated decently and are on good terms with the Imperium, but it's not like pointing out Chaos cults which are direct threats to civilians.

[jseah]

part 10.5 IoM

Spoiler

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Week 2
One of the items on the list the Eldar have given us (this is being referred to as "The List" by our 1:1 citizens) is a strange item on an IoM shrine world.

The Adeptus Sororitas worship this item and it accepts pilgrims from all nearby IoM worlds. In fact, we have examined this world before (it is well within our influence zone) and passed it over after analyzing its social impact. The item is the nose cone of a certain frigate with an illustrious history of victories against Chaos.

This item was examined before and no unusual effects were detected. Furthermore, upon rescanning the item, we have detected no warp effects from it. This is interesting as The List has so far only contained items that are warp-active in some fashion.

We are investigating the item further but detailed effector scans indicate no unusual effects, much like the original survey.

Week 3
IoM lore indicates that the item is supposed to have protected the ship from damage despite no possible functional mechanism. Part of their legends indicate that ships that had the nose cone installed on their prow suffered lower damage rates in engagements with Chaos forces.
However, even assuming their legends are true reports and unexaggerated, given the total number of ships and battle simuations of IoM standard tactics, there appears to be a significant selection effect at work here. Out of all nose cones on ships, it is overwhelmingly likely that there would be one nose cone that would fall far outside the normal range. Basically, their legends could be explained by pure luck.

More interestingly, we have circumstantial evidence that this may not be completely the case. The Sororitas regularly receive 'blessings' by worshipping the artifact and tracking of the Sororitas in their law enforcement duties on the planet have revealed a statistically significant decrease in injury cases (adjusted for the force level of the situation) while on patrol. Furthermore, this reduction in injury cases trends towards baseline, measured from Sororitas operating across the IoM, the longer they have gone without performing the 'blessing' ritual. We are attempting to refine our confidence intervals through longer observation, which will take at least a week due to the sample size of injury events needed.

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

Another method of helping the IoM has been proposed. Since the IoM treats their Pariahs as a useful aid to anti-Chaos operations, and that Pariahs are treated worse than standard citizens due to their effect on organic sentient life, we are piloting a project to inform the IoM of certain Pariahs we have identified amongst their population that were missed or went unreported.

So far, five of them on various planets have been revealed to the Inquisition through the same channel we inform the IoM of Chaos cults. IoM response to this information will be monitored and further action or even a permanent arrangement will be considered depending on their treatment.

[Gavinfoxx]

FYI, the Placebo Effect isn't just 'unreal'; it is very, very real and very, very useful.

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/...urrentPage=all

http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/m...urrentPage=all

Of course, The Culture would know this, and would have to compensate for the psychological, cultural, behavioral, etc. differences due to belief... but remember, there are other items of faith which have much, much more obvious and direct behaviors. Low tech weapons and armor that protect and stand up to far, far more abuse than they should, or which can damage things offensively far, far more readily than they should. Holy relics which can (for a short time), make someone immune to all physical damage. Things like that.


I would also expect that there is an Astartes Relic Bolter, in the most holy vaults of some Battle Barge or Fortress-Monastary, which despite being an otherwise normal Bolter, can pierce any protective energy field, even when firing normal bolter shells. It'd be fairly simple for The Culture to just displace this thing out of the vault, test it on thousands of different sorts of energy fields, and find out that yes, it can pierce any sort of energy field, even though it by all rights shouldn't be able to, before putting the thing back...