Dragon Transhumanist Inbound

[Rakeela]

Greetings!  I'm Rakeela, an otherkin transhumanist with species dysphoria.  I have lifelong biotech interests that I was for two decades unable to pursue, though lately I've been trying to break into the field somewhat belatedly.  (With botanical experiments, specifically.)  My ultimate goal is to be a dragon in the flesh.  Recognizing that this is an immensely difficult undertaking requiring very advanced medicine, I consider indefinite life extension a 'prerequisite technology' for the level of species reassignment that I seek.  Don't worry, I'm aware of the square-cube law's implications on flight; I am content to be either small or wingless, and I've no desire to be larger than a horse at most.

I haven't read (much of) this forum's associated fiction, but I found this place while searching for "transhumanist forums".  I hope I can meet people and partake of interesting discussions without immediately wading into lore-filled contributions or roleplaying; I'm shy of roleplaying courtesy of unlucky experiences along the way.

[Worldtree]

Welcome Rakeela!
Yeah we have lots of fiction you could read, and a whole encyclopedia of lore that a lot of people take weeks , or years to read when they want
But you’re welcome to participate in discussions.

The forums here tend to be more formal and involve longer posts while the discord server has more casual conversation

Let us know if you have any questions!

[Drashner1]

Hi There - Welcome to OA!

Please feel free to join in on any discussions that catch your interest or to start new ones if you feel inspired to do so.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the OA setting or the project in general, please don't hesitate to ask.

Todd

[MacGregor]

Welcome to OA!

[stevebowers]

Greetings!

We do have some dragons in the OA scenario, but they are usually highly engineered lizards. Of course, in the OA Current Era, there are a significant number of people who were born in human form and have adopted dragon-like bodies, either temporarily or permanently.
https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b0eadcacae0e
https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/56f009e29ec1f

[Rakeela]

Greetings!

We do have some dragons in the OA scenario, but they are usually highly engineered lizards. Of course, in the OA Current Era, there are a significant number of people who were born in human form and have adopted dragon-like bodies, either temporarily or permanently.
https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b0eadcacae0e
https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/56f009e29ec1f

Good to hear!  I'm still intimidated by the depth of this.  That's quite a wiki you've got.

All my Stellaris runs use dragon mods... but they also try to take over the galaxy in the name of peace.  I've a more pacifistic take on dragons than is common; reading the Kulshedra article, I see the common expectation working strongly here.  I'll do my best to cause no friction with it.

[stevebowers]

On the contrary; the vast majority of sophonts with dragon-inspired body-forms are peaceful and sophisticated. Only a few are warlike, including the Jekerk dragoons. Whether they remain so is uncertain at the moment.

[Drashner1]

All my Stellaris runs use dragon mods... but they also try to take over the galaxy in the name of peace.  I've a more pacifistic take on dragons than is common; reading the Kulshedra article, I see the common expectation working strongly here.  I'll do my best to cause no friction with it.

While I'm sure we have common expectations around here, perhaps the most common of all when it comes to the OA setting is that it is enormous in both space and time (10,000 years of history spread across around 1 billion stars, an equal number of brown dwarves and deep space planets, plus some number of colonized Oort Clouds, deep space nebulae, and nomadic world ships wandering from system to system. Plus the various planets in each system, many with some number of moons, and huge orbital bands of habitats around nearly every star in the Civilized Galaxy (a mere 250 million stars or so), since the vast majority of the embodied population (all 380 quadrillion or so) live in space habs. Of course this entire population is barely a rounding error compared to the mind shatteringly huge scale of the Cybercosm (approx 1e20 virtual universes, with a population of ranging from 30 to 3000 quintillion depending on how you count things)

The other most common expectation we have here can be summed up as 'Diversity! Diversity! Diversity!'

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that if you'd like to write up one or more dragon clades to the setting that are committed pacifists or otherwise don't fall into the 'common expectation' outside OA - we are more than happy to help you do so and incorporate them into the setting.

Friction is unlikely - expansion of the setting in terms of size and depth and complexity is much preferred.

Also - and coming at the idea of 'common expectations' from a different direction - among the various ways that the setting depicts human beings we have such people as the Harren - who many people in real life (RL in OA parlance) seem to find a bit...exotic...for some reason Which is to say that if you (or anyone here really) is inspired to explore some very different takes on the dragon concept, either in terms of physical body or mental outlook, we are also generally very positively disposed toward that sort of thing.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Everything4404]

Welcome!

[Rakeela]

While I'm sure we have common expectations around here, perhaps the most common of all when it comes to the OA setting is that it is enormous in both space and time (10,000 years of history spread across around 1 billion stars, an equal number of brown dwarves and deep space planets, plus some number of colonized Oort Clouds, deep space nebulae, and nomadic world ships wandering from system to system. Plus the various planets in each system, many with some number of moons, and huge orbital bands of habitats around nearly every star in the Civilized Galaxy (a mere 250 million stars or so), since the vast majority of the embodied population (all 380 quadrillion or so) live in space habs. Of course this entire population is barely a rounding error compared to the mind shatteringly huge scale of the Cybercosm (approx 1e20 virtual universes, with a population of ranging from 30 to 3000 quintillion depending on how you count things)

The other most common expectation we have here can be summed up as 'Diversity! Diversity! Diversity!'

Maybe I should introduce the idea of a virtual society built up on a red dwarf star.  It would be a low-value star with energy-collectors accumulating on it, operating an energy accumulating economy for a purely virtual society, with a minimal devirtualized population of vacuum-adapted dragon-like beings for system maintenance purposes.  Moderate xenophobia managed by an archailect would maintain obligate aesthetic standards (ie, 'people here must be dragons, and no you cannot subvert it with a hideous dragon-like, as we do acknowledge that to be hateful conduct restrictive of the liberties of others'), but travel into and out of the system would not be blocked (immigration and emigration would be permitted).  Travel assistance would be available for visitors (ie, 'We'll give you a dragon avatar while you're here'), and private servers with less restrictive norms would be available for people wanting to host visitors whose sincerity they believe in more than the archailect believes in them.

I think I've used these words correctly.  I do not understand the requirements and limitations of an archailect at this time, though judging it in a purely etymological way it appears to be a combination of "architect" and "intellect" bridged with "ai", by which I took the base concept of such a being as an appropriate mind-base for society maintenance.