It's been a long, long time.

[Chrontius]

Last time I posted in an OA thread, the bias and pitch drives were the new hotness.

(PS - can I find an archived copy of old versions of those, and the Black Angels?  Inquiring - and nostalgic - minds want to know.)

But since then, I've been slowly working on a frontier polity of perhaps only three systems on the edge of the Seams, inspired by an old version of the EG article on abdicators, intertoposophic communication, and "bloatware" AIs - it's run by a mind who is nostalgic for modosophont-ism, and whom maintains the ability to quickly ascend a few rungs on the toposophic ladder, but prefers to live as a heavily bloated S1 with fleshy modosophont avatars.  E earns eir keep as a renowned intertoposophic translator, which is probably the only reason e wasn't chased out when the seams caught up with eir little settlement.  It can be described as a fantasy world, in some ways - it's heavily landscaped and quite the dramatic garden world - though (inspired by Newton's Wake) the "natural" charm of the world is really only there to provide plausible deniability and panache.

I'd like to get some feedback on whether the mind's claims of being a veteran of the Version Wars - and the warships e piloted during them - are plausible, or a bald-faced lie.  Most of the story works equally well as complete bullshit or complete honesty, however - even though I like the idea of the mind being as ruthlessly on the level as possible, going forward.

So - is there still room for a splinter polity like this in OA, or should I write some original fiction?

[Drashner1]

Hi Chrontius - Welcome back!

Short on time atm, but - the Wayback Machine online should let you find older versions of the OA website that still feature Bias and Pitch drives. We're hoping to eventually have some kind of searchable archive of the old Yahoo discussion lists available as well (the current Yahoo version borders on unusable), but that's still a work in progress.

The Bias and Pitch Drives have been replaced with two new drives with a stronger basis in physics - the Void drive and the Halo drive respectively. There is also a Displacement drive that is less advanced than the first two. Black Angels have been redesigned to work with the Halo drive and can still be found within the OA setting, along with much new technology built around the basic warp bubble concept that underlies all three drives.

OA always aims to have room for new polities (and new stories), so my initial feeling is that the outlook would be good for the one you've been working on, possibly with some tweaks to fit it into the setting, depending on various factors such as where you would like to place it in the timeline and such. All things we can discuss.

Regarding details about the mind's claims and such, I'll need to take some time to review the relevant sections of the EG and get back to you on that, assuming no one beats me to it. Or possibly even if they do

Great to see you again and hope to talk to you more soon.

Todd

[Rynn]

Welcome back to the project how much have you kept up with the EG? At first glance I can't see any major problems with your story/polity idea. In fact it sounds quite interesting. There are a few minor things you'll probably want to consider:

1) The protagonist of any story being one of the modosophont avatars of the transap would make it much easier to write. Far less problematic in terms of how one could describe the thoughts, motivations and inner dialogue of an S1.

2) "Pilots" and comparably simple military roles likely didn't exist in the version war. But military-mind templates responsible for broader command and tactics probably did. It's entirely plausible that authentication tokens could be corrupted or lost during the conflict/over time that would make the claim difficult to verify but not totally implausible.

3) "Earning ones keep" isn't really a concern for the vast majority of the terragen sphere. Automation provides almost everything. Labour markets only really exist for niche interests (though with hundreds of millions of settled systems "niche" can be large in an absolute sense. See also the NoCoZo). That's not to say the entity wouldn't have a vocation, nor that it couldn't be translation, just that they wouldn't have to do it for material wealth.

I'm looking forward to hearing more of your idea. I reread Newton's wake for the first time in years recently and it really holds up as interesting and quirky sci-fi

[Chrontius]

Welcome back to the project how much have you kept up with the EG? At first glance I can't see any major problems with your story/polity idea. In fact it sounds quite interesting. There are a few minor things you'll probably want to consider:

1) The protagonist of any story being one of the modosophont avatars of the transap would make it much easier to write. Far less problematic in terms of how one could describe the thoughts, motivations and inner dialogue of an S1.

2) "Pilots" and comparably simple military roles likely didn't exist in the version war. But military-mind templates responsible for broader command and tactics probably did. It's entirely plausible that authentication tokens could be corrupted or lost during the conflict/over time that would make the claim difficult to verify but not totally implausible.

3) "Earning ones keep" isn't really a concern for the vast majority of the terragen sphere. Automation provides almost everything. Labour markets only really exist for niche interests (though with hundreds of millions of settled systems "niche" can be large in an absolute sense. See also the NoCoZo). That's not to say the entity wouldn't have a vocation, nor that it couldn't be translation, just that they wouldn't have to do it for material wealth.

I'm looking forward to hearing more of your idea. I reread Newton's wake for the first time in years recently and it really holds up as interesting and quirky sci-fi

1:  Agreed.  They were intended to be background characters - rather like that one guy in Hardcore Henry who just _keeps showing up_ in ever less plausible ways until you realize what his game is.

2:  I remember an old entry about how modosophonts could be recruited as observers and commentators, militarily.  Those who succeeded became advisors.  Those who succeeded in that role became "pilots" - uploaded into gun-launched drone swarms; any experience or memory streamed or recovered from those drones would then be copied back into the source mind.  Has that been retconned?  I had intended to heavily imply that this was his background, but there's not a soul alive who can either confirm nor deny those events credibly.

3:  "Earning one's keep" in this case is more a case of keeping easy access to higher-end godtech and transapient favors.  This probably includes being allowed to remain in place when eir tiny empire was declared part of the Seams.

More:  E operates a pair of black angels - which have been nicknamed "The Left Hand of God" and "The Right Hand of God" and, during downtime, gives tours.  Mostly, I presume, it's the novelty value of being able to walk around something so physics-breaking that provides entertainment - the spheres are, after all, utterly featureless and inscrutable.*  Presumably, this happens during periods of downtime, maintenance and rearming - but presumably, armed with void cannons, they're just as capable of providing fire support while occupied, and with halo drives, high-gee burns are well tolerated - if you even realize the ships are under thrust.  There's something of a feral autowar problem in at least the capital system, which the pair serves to backstop.  E uses lesser ships as an expeditionary force in order to engage in a hobby of questionable wisdom but unarguable results - taming feral autowars.  What's involved is poorly understood, but many of the ships plying the system are the result of successful missions.  While discussing nicknames, that brings us to the AI's nickname - "Dragon Tamer".  I'm thinking that e may rely on a version of the Hectonithere neural architecture, modified for use with Siris pearl modules acquired through eir work as a translator. (see #3)  E could also be described as a transavant, and his polity could be considered a social preserve - Dragon Tamer is something of a first-federation loyalist, finding the ideals represented in the charter laudable, even as they're rendered obsolete by later singualrities.

*(Does this count as memetic engineering?  I think so.  E'd deny it, but its effect is probably real in spite of any denials.)

I've been interrupted a few times while writing this, so I'll end it here before it becomes a disorganized stream-of-consciousness memory dump.

Edit: I've kept up with the EG somewhat. At the very least, I've kept mostly up to date on the concepts I need for this project, including current thoughts on reactionless engines. Regarding the diametric drive, which I always thought was a runaway planet-cracker waiting to happen, did you guys see that physicists have created negative mass out of a Bose-Einstein condensate of rubidium?

PS - are plasma shields and lasers still a thing? I should detail those "lesser ships" used in this system.