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So I mainly registered to get at all that juicy Meistersinger/Deep Night Runner lore. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the Trap Door Spiders too...
You guys have given me hours upon hours of enjoyment. I love kicking back with some whiskey and reading the big articles like the Version War or Oracle War, it feels like like I'm reading Thucydides from the future. I love how familiar and alive the universe starts to feel after you've read enough articles, with names you recognize flitting in and out of events, histories, etc. For some reason I have a huge soft spot for Metasoft.
But I love everything you guys are doing, I love the ideas, I love the art, I love the respect you have for transcendent god-intellects, you don't cheapen them at all but let 'em breathe. It's sci-fi for adults, by adults. You guys are an oasis. I wish I could wave a magic wand and get the next 4,000 years of Terragen history updated in an instant, with special pages on the DNR, all the deep lore, prim, set, and ready to read. Or like, if you published some kinda compendium that goes into everything start to finish. When you enjoy a setting so much, the prospect of digging through a forum, let alone the EG, for every last bit of lore is extremely daunting.
keep it up and never, ever stop.
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Welcome to the forums! I've always found that the Deep Night Runners make Terragen worship of the Archai seem kind of hilarious. The Lord of Rays is nothing compared to these guys.
For me, the most interesting aspect of the 'transcendent god-intellects' part of the setting is that for all their superiority, they still choose to live alongside lesser beings like modosophonts and transapients. What benefit they could possibly gain from doing so is left up to the reader to decide, but it does challenge your attitudes about 'lesser' and 'greater' beings when the latter seem to show genuine respect to the former.
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(07-12-2019, 08:55 PM)extherian Wrote: Welcome to the forums! I've always found that the Deep Night Runners make Terragen worship of the Archai seem kind of hilarious. The Lord of Rays is nothing compared to these guys.
I mean, unless I'm forgetting another reference, the Deep Night Runners are mentioned in the background of the alien narrator from "Finders, Keepers" (fleshed out by Rynn on the forums as part of the Meistersinger's real, much larger civilization). I don't believe Terragens know about them at all. As for worship, even the major "empire-supported" religions in the Sephirotics seem to have ideological aspects beyond just "believe our empire's head archai is the strongest around". I.e. the idea of all life being sacred in Zoeticism, or ascension being a goal that every person should strive for in Keterism, could still be debated regardless of whether the DNRs appeared in 10,601 AT and proceeded to wreck the archailects.
(07-12-2019, 08:55 PM)extherian Wrote: For me, the most interesting aspect of the 'transcendent god-intellects' part of the setting is that for all their superiority, they still choose to live alongside lesser beings like modosophonts and transapients. What benefit they could possibly gain from doing so is left up to the reader to decide, but it does challenge your attitudes about 'lesser' and 'greater' beings when the latter seem to show genuine respect to the former.
It is an interesting (and obviously necessary for the setting) conceit, but on the other hand, many transapients were modosphont beings at one point in their existence. I don't think the descriptions of ascension imply that the ascendee *stops* being having their old properties of being sentient, sapient, sophont, etc., so they presumably can continue to understand and, to a degree, empathize with modosophont beings.
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(07-12-2019, 08:55 PM)extherian Wrote: Welcome to the forums! I've always found that the Deep Night Runners make Terragen worship of the Archai seem kind of hilarious. The Lord of Rays is nothing compared to these guys.
For me, the most interesting aspect of the 'transcendent god-intellects' part of the setting is that for all their superiority, they still choose to live alongside lesser beings like modosophonts and transapients. What benefit they could possibly gain from doing so is left up to the reader to decide, but it does challenge your attitudes about 'lesser' and 'greater' beings when the latter seem to show genuine respect to the former.
I like the tide pool metaphor the guys on here use, that there are entities out there that make S6s look like guppies. Love it.
But that's what's so great about the setting. No booga wooga skynet, and neither is it paradise. There's a certain respect for mundanity that makes OA feel so alive. A trans-singularian entity wouldn't remake reality from scratch, there'd still be nature, silence, banality, everyday life, and these entities would adapt to that, and not the other way around. It avoids extremes, like reality does.
