A lurker on this site, decided to finally introduce myself

[SolarRider]

Hello OA, I’m SolarRider. I stumped on your site 5 years ago from a gaming forum about a realistic space sim game. A user on a discussion I was viewed posted a link to your homepage and from there afterwards I was hooked. What hooked me was the fact Orion’s Arm take place in a highly plausible sci-fi setting which is something that I’ve always had a bit of an obsession since I was young. Another reason is OA is entirely world-building, literally excites me because it fresh ideas from people who love to speculate the future and I’ve always wanted to present my ideas. Currently I been having a huge project that I’ve been cooking on and off for almost 2 years. I also do have some questions about the setting itself. While I do have a general grasp on the lore and terminology of OA from the EG article, there are some stuff that do leave me confused. So Today, I decided to reveal myself to the OA community to ask you some questions about the setting and the rules.

My questions are:

What are the limitation of SI:6 Archais. Can they/them survive on their own, creating a civilization far away without any other SI 6s around, or do they need other’s around as it mutually beneficial like for example we need other humans to survive. A human being can survive in isolation if they have skills, the knowledge and enough resources around them, however they usually will have a shorter life span than humans in a communal environment. does the same apply for them?

Is it possible for transapients or even Archais to disappear willing without their superiors intervening?

For a Sophont whether they’re Modosophonts, Transapients, or even Archailects, do they need to have a set of instructions or acquired knowledge of the process to in order ascend/transcend to the next toposopic level, or are they able to do it independently and in their own way? What I noticed is that in the case of Modosophonts ascension/transcension, most of the time they get help from Transapients. 

A Canon/lore question: my big project is creating a unique meta-empire with a twist, it’s about an isolate terragen civilization that are located currently around 200-300 ly away from the current extent of the Terragen Sphere, is there any rules that can be against the idea, or can it be lore-breaking for the setting since terragens has always been concentrated in the Sphere

Also any tips about creating a policy, I would very much appreciate it.

[Rakuen07]

Hello, welcome to OA!

Answering your questions:

1) This article (Limits on Transapient Power) shows examples of what Transaps and Archai can't do. An AI God can't disobey the laws of the physics of the universe they are in (ie. time travel, FTL tech are impossible even for them), possess limitations on their computing power and therefore they are limited in their prediction and modelling, possess limited knowledge on the past (ie.: their historical models about the big T aren't perfect because of the data loss) and on the universe (there are aspects of the laws of physics they aren't aware of, and the same goes for the technological applications of thereof), and lastly aren't able to predict the behavior of themselves or of another's SI:6.

2) If isolated, a SI:6 will likely suffer disadvantages when compared to the case where e lives in cooperation with other SI:6s. So, its likely that the life of the isolated SI:6 will be much inferior to the SI:6 integrated in a society. They may suffer health problems, be denied of knowledge and services they don't know/can't do but other SI:6's know/can do. About the part about them surviving on their own, I think it depends on their mind type and skills. Some may grow insane, unmotivated or sick which may or may not lead to death, while others would thrive normally.

3) In what sense? If by disappear you mean the transap/archai erasing all data about them and either killing themselves (conducting an auto-vanishment) or simply fleeing elsewhere, I think it is very difficult if not impossible. The reason is, chances are other entities of higher toposophics may have info on the transap/archai and thus may still know of em. You have an added problem that the bigger the transap/archai toposophic more noticeable they are (if only because they are bigger, but likely because of potential as well   ). If by disappear you mean simply leaving the empire they live on, why not? Many wouldn't care and this is easy to do, depending on the culture they live on.

4) What allows the ascension/transcendence is the change in one's mode of thinking, like a dog acquiring human cognitive skills. This does not need any foreknowledge, but I think it is advisable to have knowledge on some matters before ascending lest you become insane or simply an incompetent transap. Think about an adult with the knowledge of a baby, lol.

5) It is advisable to talk with the moderators first to get more familiarized with the setting, as a meta-empire is a large project. But otherwise, go for it!

[Drashner1]

Hello OA, I’m SolarRider. I stumped on your site 5 years ago from a gaming forum about a realistic space sim game. A user on a discussion I was viewed posted a link to your homepage and from there afterwards I was hooked. What hooked me was the fact Orion’s Arm take place in a highly plausible sci-fi setting which is something that I’ve always had a bit of an obsession since I was young. Another reason is OA is entirely world-building, literally excites me because it fresh ideas from people who love to speculate the future and I’ve always wanted to present my ideas. Currently I been having a huge project that I’ve been cooking on and off for almost 2 years. I also do have some questions about the setting itself. While I do have a general grasp on the lore and terminology of OA from the EG article, there are some stuff that do leave me confused. So Today, I decided to reveal myself to the OA community to ask you some questions about the setting and the rules.

Hi there! Welcome to OA

Thank you for the kind words about the project! It is very much a labor of love and also just darn fun to work on. But it's also nice to hear that others are enjoying it from an entertainment perspective as well.

Over the years we've helped out a number of people with their own projects, so if you have any questions or other worldbuilding related things we might be able to advise or assist on, please don't hesitate to ask.

Regarding your questions below...

My questions are:

What are the limitation of SI:6 Archais. Can they/them survive on their own, creating a civilization far away without any other SI 6s around, or do they need other’s around as it mutually beneficial like for example we need other humans to survive. A human being can survive in isolation if they have skills, the knowledge and enough resources around them, however they usually will have a shorter life span than humans in a communal environment. does the same apply for them?

I'm actually going to break up the answer to this question into two parts. Re the very first sentence, I'm going to refer you to this article HERE, which is about this very subject. Please note that this is not a complete list in the sense that it covers every possible variant of some of the examples listed. For example, the inability to break physical laws leads to a whole range of specific things that transapients and archai can't do, but which aren't explicitly detailed on the page. But it hopefully provides a foundation to start thinking about such things.

Regarding the the rest of your question - In principle any transapient, from S1 on up, can survive on its own and create a civilization comparable to what those of its own S-level can create in Terragen civilization. The big difference would be the level of effort required (although the concept of LOE can be a bit difficult to pin down given the kind of technology that OA describes) and to some degree the amount of time it would take. The reason for this is that - unlike humans or other human equivalent entities within the setting, the transapients/archai don't just use tools and infrastructure created by their civilization - they are the tools and infrastructure that their civilizations use to do things. In other words, their various empires and sphere's of influence, and institutions are direct extensions of their bodies and minds to some degree or in some sense. This state of affairs is very different from anything that has existed in real life so far and makes discussions of what kind of civilization the Terragens have and what it can do somewhat...challenging to work out.

Some of the technologies that let them pull off that kind of thing include:

Self-replicating machinery
Self-managing omni-capable automation
The ability to create minds
The ability to copy minds, including their own (although for the larger Archai this will take more time and effort and may require some different approaches).

Note btw that human level minds in OA can also - in principle - take off and start an entire civilization on their own - but in their case they aren't truly doing it from scratch but are instead taking advantage of the implied support of the wider civilization in the form of tools and programs that the wider civilization has created and made available to the human level mind. Think of it as similar to the case of using a car to travel hundreds of kilometers in a matter of hours. Yes, you can do it - but that's because the wider civ has created the hardware and infrastructure that lets you do this.

Is it possible for transapients or even Archais to disappear willing without their superiors intervening?

Transapients can presumably become Hiders (what it says on the tin) or Leavers (sophonts who get on spaceships and aim to flee Terragen civilization) but it's unlikely that they can really do so anything to truly hide or disappear from higher transapients and archai if those beings really care to keep an eye on them. Certainly at the modosophont level the various Hiders and Backgrounders are generally considered to just be being humored by the ruling transapients rather than truly being successful (although I suppose the really successful ones wouldn't be reported on in the EG).

For the archai, there is the issue of their great size which makes simply taking off or disappearing rather more challenging. OTOH, the highest archai can also create basement universes into which - given enough time - they could potentially transfer themselves and then cut off the connection back to our universe, disappearing about as completely as possible in the OA setting.

For a Sophont whether they’re Modosophonts, Transapients, or even Archailects, do they need to have a set of instructions or acquired knowledge of the process to in order ascend/transcend to the next toposopic level, or are they able to do it independently and in their own way? What I noticed is that in the case of Modosophonts ascension/transcension, most of the time they get help from Transapients. 

It is possible for sophonts to ascend/transcend independently, but it can be extremely dangerous to do it that way - not just to the sophont attempting to jump to a higher S-level, but to innocent bystanders or even the entire local civilization.

The act of jumping to a higher S-level involves (in part) rewriting your own mind from the inside. Due to various factors, including the unique nature of each individual mind, the insetting limitations of any mind to fully and completely understand the mind of a being of the same S-level (including themselves), and things like chaos theory, there is always an element of uncertainty to the process, and a number of possible failure modes. These include the sophont actually ending up less intelligent than when they started, going insane, seeing no difference at all, experiencing only a partial jump in which only some parts of their mind jump to a higher S-level (transavants), or...becoming a blight or a perversion. A transapient that is also utterly hostile to lower S-life forms or that is insane in dangerous ways, or both.

Now to all of the above, add in that even an S1 level mind can - with moderate effort - restructure an entire solar system and/or manipulate lower minds to a degree that would put the best con artist who ever lived to absolute shame - and consider the potential consequences. Entire solar systems have died (or worse) as a result of an ascension/transcension gone wrong.

For all of these reasons, nearly everywhere in the Civilized Galaxy strongly encourages (in polite phrasing) that any attempt to ascend/transcend be supervised by a transapient of equal or higher S-level than the level that is being aimed for.

A Canon/lore question: my big project is creating a unique meta-empire with a twist, it’s about an isolate terragen civilization that are located currently around 200-300 ly away from the current extent of the Terragen Sphere, is there any rules that can be against the idea, or can it be lore-breaking for the setting since terragens has always been concentrated in the Sphere

The big question that comes to mind reading this is: How did they manage to get far enough ahead of the expanding Terragen colonization wave to set up their own civilization (somewhat dependent on how big this empire is)? The wave isn't moving at the speed of light, but it is moving at a significant fraction of it and so there would only be a limited amount of time for the civ to get going and expand to whatever size it is.

It might be argued that the Terragen Sphere is where Terragens are to be found, so this civilization would - somewhat by definition - be in the Terragen Sphere by dint of existing and being Terragen. But that may be neither here nor there.

Beyond the above, I'd need to know more about the civilization in question before I could make much more of a determination about potential issues or conflicts that it might cause in attempting to add it to the setting. Can you tell us more about it?

Also any tips about creating a policy, I would very much appreciate it.

I would say that the most important thing you can do is to create a consistent set of rules for your setting - and then stick with them even if they limit what can be done in that setting. This doesn't mean you can never ever expand or change the rules of your setting after the initial creation - but that should be a last resort, not the first response to any limit that you run into.

The rules may be hard science (convenient because most of it has been created for you in real life), but don't have to be.

The big thing you want to avoid is setting things up with such a loose set of rules that virtually anything goes and virtually all problems can be solved by invoking the 'particle of the week' or a 'subspace wedgie'. At that point, worldbuilding becomes so open ended that (IMHO) it starts interfering with the creativity of your setting because there is little or no incentive to try to solve problems with anything but yet another 'particle of the week' or 'subspace wedgie'. So even if you want to have your setting include some type of exotic fictional particles or subspace wedgies - it is better to give them clearly defined limits and applications.

Beyond that...

Limits - the more capable the tech, the better it is to also include what its limitations are in the description.

Make sure your bad guys can shoot straight

Hope this helps. Please feel free to ask any additional questions as they come up. Part of what we do here is answer questions

And once again - Welcome to OA!

Todd

[Madine]

For a Sophont whether they’re Modosophonts, Transapients, or even Archailects, do they need to have a set of instructions or acquired knowledge of the process to in order ascend/transcend to the next toposopic level, or are they able to do it independently and in their own way? What I noticed is that in the case of Modosophonts ascension/transcension, most of the time they get help from Transapients. 

....

A Canon/lore question: my big project is creating a unique meta-empire with a twist, it’s about an isolate terragen civilization that are located currently around 200-300 ly away from the current extent of the Terragen Sphere, is there any rules that can be against the idea, or can it be lore-breaking for the setting since terragens has always been concentrated in the Sphere

Hello! Welcome to the forums! We're generally quite willing to introduce new folks to the setting and discuss ideas.

Regarding ascension - it's definitely possible to do it without help (for each singularity barrier there has to be a trailblazer(s) that cross it). However as Todd mentioned the risks are significant, to oneself and potentially one's entire society. The first S2 entity, GAIA, was merely fixated on protecting the Earth, and in the process of expelling humans fought a bloody war that killed many of those who had managed to survive the Technocalypse. Things would have been far, far worse if she had become a blight. The first S4->S5 ascension was malevolent and subsumed the beings within its cluster, though fortunately said S5 entity's mind collapsed after a short time.

Regarding your idea for a civilization: the Terragen Sphere is really just the maximum extent of space explored and colonized by any Terragen-descended intelligences of any type. It includes the Sephirotic meta-empires, ahuman civilizations like the Diamond Belt, as well as myriad transapient run and modo-run civilizations that aren't tightly bound to any of the big players. If your meta-empire is Terragen in origin, by definition they can't really be outside the Terragen Sphere so much as being at a far-flung edge. Now it is possible to be far from contact with the so-called "civilized galaxy" (temporal displacement through wormholes also factors in here), but as mentioned there are always explorers, traders, and missionaries heading outwards, so no one can really remain totally out of contact for long.

[SolarRider]

Thank you guys for welcoming me and taking your time to answer my questions. I asked these questions because they relate to the project that I’ve been envisioning. So the project is about like I mentioned a Isolate terragen civilization, run by a SI:6 Archai. The civilization originated from terragen Modosophonts refugees and transaps/lower archais who became disillusioned with the warring SI:6s during the version war. The ruling SI:6 of my civilization (Eir is an SI:4 at the time) is the one who lead and organize a fleet of refugees away from the Civilized Galaxy to establish E own civilization

Note: originally I was planning to keep my ruling Archai a SI:5 instead of a 6 because of the fact that E is isolate with its subject without any equal or higher Archai around to contact for help.
I am also considering to start my Archai as a Si:4 and maybe ascend E to SI:5 but like you guys mentioned it can be difficult for an Archai to leave its empire and also it very risky for a Transap/Archai to ascend which the risk of failure get bigger the higher toposophic level it is especially when it’s done independently.

So I plan the Isolate Civ to be its own “sphere”. Basically a Meta-empire(don’t know a better term to apply) that has multiple smaller meta-empire and policies within, ruled by Sophont of all S levels with nearly complete autonomy. The most powerful meta-empires are ruled by Archais that are a S level less than the ruling Archai. I also plan the civ to have its own unique and diverse cultures and clades that has evolved independently from the Main Terragen Sphere (foundation being the cultures that existed before and during the version war prior to the beginning of my civ’s exodus) as well as some variants of existing cultures/clades from the main sphere. As for reasoning of why the ruling Archai want to create a civilization separate or far away from the civilized galaxy. E wants a “sandbox” of it own, E doesn’t want to share it with other Archai of equal power to eirs. Think of it as creating your own virtual world like for example a Minecraft world in creative mode (I’m a huge gamer btw so expect gaming references   ) but self-subtaining and evolving.
A god sim where you overview your followers/subject and their daily life as they create kingdoms, wage war, trade with each other, form new religion/ ideology, etc. but rarely intervene only when necessary. My Civ will evolve independently with minimal intervention from the ruling Archai. Ofc my ruling Archai will have a presence but it’s barely felt since most of the Civ ( about 95%) is controlled by the major empires with ruling SI:4 or SI:5 archais. There will also be some rules implemented by the ruling Archai despite it being a sandbox for eir subjects, such prohibiting ascension or transcension to the equal S level as the ruling Archai as it can lead to a power struggle, and anything concerning destructive behavior from any Transap/Archai. The Civ will have very isolationist stance until lifting it at a time close to 11k.

As for the Journey and the size of the area which the Civ is located. My plan is that the exodus fleet meet up at Sagittarius Sphere where they beginning their journey coreward. The ships will be equipped with Reactionless drives(displacement drives if the ruling Archai is a SI:4 or halo drives if a SI:5). Now my Civ will be 1000 ly diameter with the first colonized system being at the center so the area will have 500 ly radius. This mean they just need to travel 700ly-800ly to reach their destination if ofc the Civ is certainly 200-300ly away from the periphery. Now the time span of the journey could be from 777 years if traveling at 90% C to up to 707 years if traveling at 99% C without any pit stop to fuel up the ship drives. Due to not trying to break Causality or laws of physics, the trip should take a good 800 to 900 year range, including the pit stops needed ofc and that gives my Civ a huge amount of time to grow and expand. I will be honest I don’t know much so much about the requirements and conditions need to use some tech in the OA universe so definitely correct me if I made a mistake.


Let me know any suggestions or feedback you might have about my project. I am trying to be original as possible with this project so feel free to give me an advice on what should I do differently. I’m happy you guys are taking your time to my idea and I hope you like it

[Rynn]

Welcome to the forums!

Thank you guys for welcoming me and taking your time to answer my questions. I asked these questions because they relate to the project that I’ve been envisioning. So the project is about like I mentioned a Isolate terragen civilization, run by a SI:6 Archai. The civilization originated from terragen Modosophonts refugees and transaps/lower archais who became disillusioned with the warring SI:6s during the version war. The ruling SI:6 of my civilization (Eir is an SI:4 at the time) is the one who lead and organize a fleet of refugees away from the Civilized Galaxy to establish E own civilization

Note: originally I was planning to keep my ruling Archai a SI:5 instead of a 6 because of the fact that E is isolate with its subject without any equal or higher Archai around to contact for help.
I am also considering to start my Archai as a Si:4 and maybe ascend E to SI:5 but like you guys mentioned it can be difficult for an Archai to leave its empire and also it very risky for a Transap/Archai to ascend which the risk of failure get bigger the higher toposophic level it is especially when it’s done independently.

I would suggest keeping the S level lower for a few reasons.

1) The higher the entity the more implausible it is to move. S4s can make mobile versions of S3s, but as far as I'm aware we don't have any non-metric level technology that would involve an S4 being suitably mobile. Transmitting themselves isn't an option in reasonable times either given their extreme mental size. I'd suggest having something like an S2 that ascends to an S3, maybe an S4.

2) There's a wealth of untapped potential in transapient/low archai civs in the setting. We've got a lot of articles on modo civs (or modo subsets of larger civs) and we have the major empires themselves. Fleshing out the middle option would be a great addition.

3) Power creep both across the project as a whole and within a civ is a consideration. From a project perspective we don't want the setting to become too front loaded with entities that are essentially gods, so far beyond mundane modo life that we can barely grasp the edges of what they are. From an article perspective having an S6 in it means that it's a much higher bar to write well and in a way that explores the consequences of an S6 civ.

So I plan the Isolate Civ to be its own “sphere”. Basically a Meta-empire(don’t know a better term to apply) that has multiple smaller meta-empire and policies within, ruled by Sophont of all S levels with nearly complete autonomy. The most powerful meta-empires are ruled by Archais that are a S level less than the ruling Archai. I also plan the civ to have its own unique and diverse cultures and clades that has evolved independently from the Main Terragen Sphere (foundation being the cultures that existed before and during the version war prior to the beginning of my civ’s exodus) as well as some variants of existing cultures/clades from the main sphere. As for reasoning of why the ruling Archai want to create a civilization separate or far away from the civilized galaxy. E wants a “sandbox” of it own, E doesn’t want to share it with other Archai of equal power to eirs.

This can work but like I said I'd suggest against having an S6 ruler. S4, maybe 5 at a stretch depending on how confident you are with your abilities to write it. The challenge will be trying to properly flesh out what exactly does an S2 governor do and look like from the perspective of modos who are already directly governed from an S1? Same for S3 to S2 and so on and so forth. Most empires are said to work this way incidentally, but the exact relationship and actions of the hierarchies beyond modo are largely mysterious.

Also you can totally have an isolated region without it being outside the terragen sphere. You could have a globular cluster or other such concentration of systems that has fairly strict immigration (rerouting lightway travellers without appropriate visas, destroying incoming craft without the same, not having a direct connection to the nexus etc). It's totally within canon for there to be systems and middle empires with autonomy and relative levels of isolation within the sphere. If you try to set it outside you'll run into issues of justifying the length of history. Yes it's possible for people to travel to the periphery, build a fast craft and run ahead of the expansion wave. But they have to travel for a while to build up any buffer and that buffer won't last very long.

Think of it as creating your own virtual world like for example a Minecraft world in creative mode (I’m a huge gamer btw so expect gaming references   ) but self-subtaining and evolving.
A god sim where you overview your followers/subject and their daily life as they create kingdoms, wage war, trade with each other, form new religion/ ideology, etc. but rarely intervene only when necessary. My Civ will evolve independently with minimal intervention from the ruling Archai. Ofc my ruling Archai will have a presence but it’s barely felt since most of the Civ ( about 95%) is controlled by the major empires with ruling SI:4 or SI:5 archais. There will also be some rules implemented by the ruling Archai despite it being a sandbox for eir subjects, such prohibiting ascension or transcension to the equal S level as the ruling Archai as it can lead to a power struggle, and anything concerning destructive behavior from any Transap/Archai. The Civ will have very isolationist stance until lifting it at a time close to 11k.

The current data is roughly 10,500at so articles shouldn't be set after that. But you could have the isolation of your society lifted relatively recently.

As for the Journey and the size of the area which the Civ is located. My plan is that the exodus fleet meet up at Sagittarius Sphere where they beginning their journey coreward. The ships will be equipped with Reactionless drives(displacement drives if the ruling Archai is a SI:4 or halo drives if a SI:5). Now my Civ will be 1000 ly diameter with the first colonized system being at the center so the area will have 500 ly radius. This mean they just need to travel 700ly-800ly to reach their destination if ofc the Civ is certainly 200-300ly away from the periphery. Now the time span of the journey could be from 777 years if traveling at 90% C to up to 707 years if traveling at 99% C without any pit stop to fuel up the ship drives. Due to not trying to break Causality or laws of physics, the trip should take a good 800 to 900 year range, including the pit stops needed ofc and that gives my Civ a huge amount of time to grow and expand. I will be honest I don’t know much so much about the requirements and conditions need to use some tech in the OA universe so definitely correct me if I made a mistake.

Jumping past the comments above on how archai don't move and perhaps don't gun straight for writing another example of the most powerful entities in the setting...

The terragen sphere on average expands at about a rate of 70% of the speed of light. It's implausible that a new empire would do the same as much of the terragen expansion is due to migration from millions of heavily populated core systems to the periphery, providing a constant low of colony efforts. But lets sat this new civ also expanded at .7c (basically the moment it starts new colony missions are sent out). If the exodus fleet is travelling at .9c then for every 5 years of travel it stays 1 light year ahead of the expansion front. If the goal is to find a new homesystem and expand outwards to a radius of 500ly then it needs to be at least 500ly ahead, but because the main sphere and this new colony are both expanding towards each other the exodus fleet has to start 1000 light years beyond the wave front. That means the exodus fleet would have to launch 5,000 years before it finally arrives at its destination to begin expanding into its own sphere, around 5500at. No S6 entities had been observed at this point.

Hopefully this shows that it's not really a workable plan in its current state, but as I've said you don't need to go for this strategy The major empires are said to only have a third of the colonised systems of the terragen sphere affiliated with them. The rest are a wealth of minor empires which can easily have their own policies on isolation. Your idea can fit right in here.

[stevebowers]

Hi! Welcome to OA!
One problem with having an expedition led by an S4 is that archailects at that level are very large; a Jupiter-sized entity would not be able to travel very fast very easily, and would be easily overtaken by other smaller entities. The departure of a Jupiter Brain during the Version War would have been observed by many factions, and quite probably followed throughout the process. Better to have the leader of such a mission a bit smaller- maybe an S:3 with several transavant spikes, specially created by a S:4 as a scion that will attempt to transcend to S:4 status on arrival.

This is a particular feature of the Orion's Arm setting - in general, archailects are too large to travel at an significant speed. This means that the Outer Volumes and Periphery are largely separate from the regions that are currently ruled by the Archailects - at least, until the Wormhole Nexus arrives.

If there are any archailects outside of the Nexus (and there are a few), they have ascended in situ, and are often quite idiosyncratic.

[Drashner1]

Rynn makes excellent points. Building on what he's already said...

Thank you guys for welcoming me and taking your time to answer my questions. I asked these questions because they relate to the project that I’ve been envisioning. So the project is about like I mentioned a Isolate terragen civilization, run by a SI:6 Archai. The civilization originated from terragen Modosophonts refugees and transaps/lower archais who became disillusioned with the warring SI:6s during the version war. The ruling SI:6 of my civilization (Eir is an SI:4 at the time) is the one who lead and organize a fleet of refugees away from the Civilized Galaxy to establish E own civilization

Per the OA timeline, the first S6 minds didn't arise until 6000AT or so. So the S6 didn't have anything to do with the VW. Note also that - while the war was a big deal to those involved - it was not a very big deal when considered against the entire scope of the civilization at the time. Also, it isn't at all clear that the highest archai of the time had any real concerns about the war and it's considered entirely possible that they engineered it for their own reasons such as manipulating Terragen civ to a direction more to their liking.

This doesn't disallow your basic idea, which (as Rynn says) is quite workable on general principles, but it does mean that the background for the war is more complex than it being a simple conflict between the ruling archai via their proxies. It is as likely that it was the equivalent of a cockfight or even a game between them.

Note: originally I was planning to keep my ruling Archai a SI:5 instead of a 6 because of the fact that E is isolate with its subject without any equal or higher Archai around to contact for help.
I am also considering to start my Archai as a Si:4 and maybe ascend E to SI:5 but like you guys mentioned it can be difficult for an Archai to leave its empire and also it very risky for a Transap/Archai to ascend which the risk of failure get bigger the higher toposophic level it is especially when it’s done independently.

I wouldn't get overly hung up on sophonts, especially high transapients, needing help from each other, either on general principles or in terms of ascension/transcension. First because Terragen civilization is not like our civilization. Second because transapients are not 'human beings with a few extra gadgets'. They are entities beyond human comprehension and whatever their equivalent of a civilization looks like and what it does for them may look nothing like any civilization humans would create or even be able to understand (try explaining credit default swaps to a flatworm sometime.).

Humans in RL require a supporting civilization to survive and thrive. There is much less need for that - at least in material terms -among Terragens given their level of personal capability (due to genetic engineering and cybernetic augmentation) and the power of the technology they wield. In the case of even low transapients both of these things increase by orders of magnitude. Their concern is not really about how to survive in the wild, but ensuring they don't eliminate the wild through their own carelessness.

There's are also the facts that:

a) At some point or other all new S-levels had to ascend or transcend to that level without anyone else of that level around.

b) Due to light speed limitations, there is only so much that can/could be done to provide support (whatever that looks like) in many cases.

Yet civilization survives anyway.

So I plan the Isolate Civ to be its own “sphere”. Basically a Meta-empire(don’t know a better term to apply) that has multiple smaller meta-empire and policies within, ruled by Sophont of all S levels with nearly complete autonomy. The most powerful meta-empires are ruled by Archais that are a S level less than the ruling Archai. I also plan the civ to have its own unique and diverse cultures and clades that has evolved independently from the Main Terragen Sphere (foundation being the cultures that existed before and during the version war prior to the beginning of my civ’s exodus) as well as some variants of existing cultures/clades from the main sphere. As for reasoning of why the ruling Archai want to create a civilization separate or far away from the civilized galaxy. E wants a “sandbox” of it own, E doesn’t want to share it with other Archai of equal power to eirs. Think of it as creating your own virtual world like for example a Minecraft world in creative mode (I’m a huge gamer btw so expect gaming references   ) but self-subtaining and evolving.
A god sim where you overview your followers/subject and their daily life as they create kingdoms, wage war, trade with each other, form new religion/ ideology, etc. but rarely intervene only when necessary. My Civ will evolve independently with minimal intervention from the ruling Archai. Ofc my ruling Archai will have a presence but it’s barely felt since most of the Civ ( about 95%) is controlled by the major empires with ruling SI:4 or SI:5 archais. There will also be some rules implemented by the ruling Archai despite it being a sandbox for eir subjects, such prohibiting ascension or transcension to the equal S level as the ruling Archai as it can lead to a power struggle, and anything concerning destructive behavior from any Transap/Archai. The Civ will have very isolationist stance until lifting it at a time close to 11k.

Meta-empire actually has a distinct meaning in the OA setting already, but that's a fairly minor issue we can discuss later.

Speaking more generally, how is what you're describing significantly different from the other empires already in the setting? You seem to be making a point of saying that this civilization is different or unique in some or many ways from the rest of Terragen civilization, but I'm not really seeing that from the description provided so far. Can you help me understand better, please?

As for the Journey and the size of the area which the Civ is located. My plan is that the exodus fleet meet up at Sagittarius Sphere where they beginning their journey coreward. The ships will be equipped with Reactionless drives(displacement drives if the ruling Archai is a SI:4 or halo drives if a SI:5). Now my Civ will be 1000 ly diameter with the first colonized system being at the center so the area will have 500 ly radius. This mean they just need to travel 700ly-800ly to reach their destination if ofc the Civ is certainly 200-300ly away from the periphery. Now the time span of the journey could be from 777 years if traveling at 90% C to up to 707 years if traveling at 99% C without any pit stop to fuel up the ship drives. Due to not trying to break Causality or laws of physics, the trip should take a good 800 to 900 year range, including the pit stops needed ofc and that gives my Civ a huge amount of time to grow and expand. I will be honest I don’t know much so much about the requirements and conditions need to use some tech in the OA universe so definitely correct me if I made a mistake.

Reactionless drives are a very rare thing, even in Y11k and require at least an S4 mind to create. At the point in the timeline where you are having this start from there were even fewer S4 archai and even fewer reactionless drives around. So a bunch of modosophonts and low transapients getting an entire fleet of reactionless drive ships is very unlikely and probably the biggest technical issue I'm seeing with this besides the issues Rynn has already covered with trying to get out ahead of the Terragens colonization wave for any length of time.

Related to the colonization wave - the part of space that was 'the edge of the Terragen Bubble' back around the time of the Version War is thousands of light-years deep inside that bubble by 10,600 AT (the 'present day' in Orion's Arm). So - as Rynn points out - they would need to travel for much further (and longer) than mere hundreds of light-years to get ahead of the wave and stay isolated for any length of time.

Let me know any suggestions or feedback you might have about my project. I am trying to be original as possible with this project so feel free to give me an advice on what should I do differently. I’m happy you guys are taking your time to my idea and I hope you like it

I think the biggest single bit of feedback I'd provide at this point is to put less focus on trying to create what amounts to an S6 level empire - able to play on an equal footing with the Sephirotic empires, either individually or even as a whole - right out of the gate. This kind of thing - in various forms - seems to be a common impulse with people wanting to make their first contribution(s) to the project and it rarely (almost never)... works out well.

We are far more likely to be positively impressed by something complex, original, different, and well done - even if it's much smaller than an entire empire - then an alternative that aims for sheer size, but sacrifices the above factors as a result. There is also the practical matter that the OA setting is the result of a lot of different people working together over many many years - and I'm not sure that any single person can match the results of that right out of the gate.

Not trying to attack you or your project at all - and we're happy to help as we can to produce the best addition to the setting that can be had - but I feel it's better to lay out these issues up front than tap dance around them. Based on experience, that also never works out well.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Drashner1]

So, after a nice hot AM shower (I do some of my best thinking in the shower ) some ideas have come to mind that might potentially address the issue of how your civ might get out on its own given the Terragen expansion wave.

Speaking on general principles, I would suggest moving the starting point for your civ forward by some thousands of years so that they leave Terragen civ closer to the 'present day' and having them relocate to a location that is on the edge of Terragen civ - where archai writ runs thin - but also sufficiently connected to it that the founders of the civ can take advantage of 'modern' transport infrastructure to get there.

In terms of possible locations for this, some idea are:

a) The Perseus Arm - We currently have this as being on the very edge of Terragen expansion and a place where new archai - the Perseus Princes are rising, possibly to one day challenge the old guard of archai and the dominance of the Sephirotic Empires. Your civilization and its ruling archailect could be one of these. We have almost nothing written up on these so in many respects it would be a blank canvas for you to create on.

b) The Carina Rush - Again this is an area where circumstances (and an alien wormhole) have created a frontier region far from the center of the main archailect powers. Your empire's ancestors could head out through the wormhole into the Rush and go on to found a new civilization. We might or might not need to tweak the current Carina Rush article(s) a bit to accommodate that, but that could be doable. Again, little has been written about this region so there is likely lots of room for you to create as you wish without running afoul of existing canon and articles.

c) The Hellfire Expansion - This is a bit different in that it is a 'frontier' region that is surrounded on all sides by the existing civilization. But frontiers might be seen as as much about ideas as territory. In this instance your empire founders could be a group that got into the Expansion early and took over a cluster or other group of stars to found a new empire. This would definitely be a smaller empire, but as Rynn has pointed out, there is a huge amount of room to create in that general conceptual space in OA since we haven't done a lot with it.

d) The Middle and Outer Volumes - While these are not on the edge of Terragen civilization per se, they were at one time and (depending on where you go) there are significant to large regions that have little contact with/influence from the Sephirotic empires. From an editorial perspective, there are vast regions that have had little written up about them which leaves them open for anyone who wants to grab a small to medium size chunk of space and start using it as a sandbox. In this case, rather than a founding group being outside the Terragen Sphere it would be more a matter of 'Around such and such a date Group X founded a civilization in location Y and rapidly expanded to control a volume of Z light years across. They have been rather isolationist and maintain relatively little contact with the wider Terragen civilization. etc etc.' Such an empire need not be anywhere near as large as a Sephirotic to host a huge amount of places to play. For example, a bit of googling turns up that there are nearly 14,000 stars within 100 light-years of the Sun and between 200 and 300 thousand within 250ly. So even a pretty modest empire can have more places to create then any one person (or likely group of people) could manage in a singe life-time.

Likely there are other potential 'blank spots on the map' where you could set an empire, but hopefully this gives you the general idea.

Starting out your empire a bit later and/or in a way that doesn't require being 'outside' the entire Terragen Bubble purely in spacial terms removes one of the single biggest challenges I see with your proposal at a single stroke.

In terms of how unique your empire might be, and what it might contain. Partly that's going to depend on what sort of 'foundation' and 'framework' you build for it such that you and others (based on our experience a group effort on an ongoing basis is definitely something you want) can add to it over time with more specific article entries. In terms of a recommendation - I wouldn't try to create the entire thing in all details all in one go.

Ok - need to get back to work.

Hope this helps, and if you have any questions or concerns regarding any of the above or anything else, please don't hesitate to ask.

Todd

[Rakuen07]

How many Princes there are in setting? I may want to write about one later.