08-11-2017, 01:10 PM
Regarding interactions of this world with OA, assuming it was folded into the setting...
a) The idea of ships and probes being eaten before they reach the ground is....iffy. Biology and nanotech simply don't work that fast and it's actually not that difficult to harden a machine against nano-attack. Honestly, nanotech is a fairly niche technology when it comes to being directly applied to weapons applications.
b) Related to (a), If the Mabelen are S1 or so, then they will get rolled over as soon as anything from S3 or higher comes into contact with them. An S3 mind is usually housed in a brain the size of Earth's moon (more or less), an S4 generally has a brain around the size of Jupiter, an S5 may house its mind in something like a 10 solar mass star (With hundreds of secondary processors spread across light-years and linked by wormholes), while an S6 may have a mind spread across thousands of star systems millions of worlds, and some number of artificial universes - all linked together into a single whole via wormholes. Any or all of these beings would be vastly smarter and more powerful than anything the inhabitants of Pantellia could field - really the gap is so large there wouldn't even be a fight - think ant versus dinosaur killer asteroid or the sun exploding.
That all said, if it ends up that this is a discovered xenosophont world, then it could be at the outer edge of explored space and it might be some time before an element of one of the higher transapients showed up.
c) Note that the God-Emperor is just an avatar of the actual ruling Archailect of the Solar Dominion, which can operate bodies (or project images) that look like nearly anything it wants, really. The human appearing avatar is just an affectation, not a requirement.
d) It's not really clear if the Archai are vying for power or have wildly differing views of reality. It somewhat appears that way from a human perspective - but the transapients and archai very much are not human and are so superior to humans that whatever we think is going on may be nothing more than an act they are putting on for their amusement or ours - kind of like using a laser pointer to amuse a pet cat.
e) If the Pantellian races were to come into significant contact with Terragen civ - to the point where they were visiting the different empires and their constituent cultures - then they would encounter a hugely diverse, complex, and powerful civilization spanning hundreds of millions of solar systems. Concepts like racism would have a hard time operating and most of the beings they would encounter would be considerably more capable than they are - so the culture shock might be rather extreme - although also potentially interesting to explore.
Speaking more generally, agreed that you could potentially produce a general article about this world for consideration by the group. You could post it in the Encyclopedia Galactica sub-forum as a starting point. If you want to consider presenting general ideas and description about the world, then the General Setting Discussion sub-forum would be the best place for it.
Just some initial thoughts,
Todd
a) The idea of ships and probes being eaten before they reach the ground is....iffy. Biology and nanotech simply don't work that fast and it's actually not that difficult to harden a machine against nano-attack. Honestly, nanotech is a fairly niche technology when it comes to being directly applied to weapons applications.
b) Related to (a), If the Mabelen are S1 or so, then they will get rolled over as soon as anything from S3 or higher comes into contact with them. An S3 mind is usually housed in a brain the size of Earth's moon (more or less), an S4 generally has a brain around the size of Jupiter, an S5 may house its mind in something like a 10 solar mass star (With hundreds of secondary processors spread across light-years and linked by wormholes), while an S6 may have a mind spread across thousands of star systems millions of worlds, and some number of artificial universes - all linked together into a single whole via wormholes. Any or all of these beings would be vastly smarter and more powerful than anything the inhabitants of Pantellia could field - really the gap is so large there wouldn't even be a fight - think ant versus dinosaur killer asteroid or the sun exploding.
That all said, if it ends up that this is a discovered xenosophont world, then it could be at the outer edge of explored space and it might be some time before an element of one of the higher transapients showed up.
c) Note that the God-Emperor is just an avatar of the actual ruling Archailect of the Solar Dominion, which can operate bodies (or project images) that look like nearly anything it wants, really. The human appearing avatar is just an affectation, not a requirement.
d) It's not really clear if the Archai are vying for power or have wildly differing views of reality. It somewhat appears that way from a human perspective - but the transapients and archai very much are not human and are so superior to humans that whatever we think is going on may be nothing more than an act they are putting on for their amusement or ours - kind of like using a laser pointer to amuse a pet cat.
e) If the Pantellian races were to come into significant contact with Terragen civ - to the point where they were visiting the different empires and their constituent cultures - then they would encounter a hugely diverse, complex, and powerful civilization spanning hundreds of millions of solar systems. Concepts like racism would have a hard time operating and most of the beings they would encounter would be considerably more capable than they are - so the culture shock might be rather extreme - although also potentially interesting to explore.
Speaking more generally, agreed that you could potentially produce a general article about this world for consideration by the group. You could post it in the Encyclopedia Galactica sub-forum as a starting point. If you want to consider presenting general ideas and description about the world, then the General Setting Discussion sub-forum would be the best place for it.
Just some initial thoughts,
Todd