Hello. Long-ish time wiki reader here.

[alexanderhamiltonalaska]

Dry empire
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/464f25d76bab7

this article is basically a stub that hasn't been updated in 21 years, so you're welcome to expand on it

there's *plenty* of ways for your idea to work though, however you end up fleshing it out.

if I'm understanding correctly, whether this polity is composed of biologically-based sophonts or AIoids (which would make the transition easier) if they're starting with a tribe-mind, they'll still need to add quite a bit of additional infrastructure+ processing power before they 'merge' and reach the third sephirotic... but it's definitely possible.

I was planning on concentrating more on what their society is like in the present day, but loosely my idea was that a group of explorers from the Dry Empire encountered and eventually formed an alliance with the inhabitants of what was left of a virch world apparently created by the the post-Jester civilization. https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/56a10e1f0ef58
The virch itself was apparently created by a faction whose name roughly translates to "the order of the redeemed" for the purpose of persevering various xenosophant and especially xenoprovolve cultures. The virch itself was apparently meant to be governed by a tribemind formed by the various uploaded polities from representatives selected based on local custom. Thanks to the extremly robust tribemind protocols and the construction expertise brought by a group of transavant defectors from the MPA, they eventually managed to salvage the virch (and many of its inhabitants) and get it working more or less according to specifications. The MPA-ites even managed help to expand the system in order to vastly increase the amount of processing power available to both the AIs and virchers. After a few centuries of increasing processing power, running (and in some cases, replicating) at vastly accelerated rates and generally ignoring and being ignored by their neighboring Periphery worlds they got attacked by an extremist Bioist sect lead by a S2 transapiant. The subsequent conflict made clear the disastrous consequences of thinking they could ignore what was going on around them, so after defeating the bioists they immediately set about working on ways of both working their way up to archai equivalency (mainly by focusing on developing the aiod portion of the population and creating aiod-based duplicates of the vircher portion of the population) and carving out their own empire in the outer volumes. By the 10400s they have succeeded in both these goals.

[Drashner1]

After a few centuries of increasing processing power, running (and in some cases, replicating) at vastly accelerated rates and generally ignoring and being ignored by their neighboring Periphery worlds they got attacked by an extremist Bioist sect lead by a S2 transapiant. The subsequent conflict made clear the disastrous consequences of thinking they could ignore what was going on around them, so after defeating the bioists they immediately set about working on ways of both working their way up to archai equivalency (mainly by focusing on developing the aiod portion of the population and creating aiod-based duplicates of the vircher portion of the population) and carving out their own empire in the outer volumes. By the 10400s they have succeeded in both these goals.

How would they defeat a force led by an S2 when they apparently weren't even S1?

See our page on intertoposophic conflict.

Todd

[Drashner1]

What about if it was almost entirely composed of aiods in the first place? In addition, the polity might actually take an overall stance somewhat closer to Solipsism than what is generally found in standard sephirotic empires (likely being derived from the Dry Empire something similar), which combined with the fact that outside observers aren't necessarily going to be given a lot of access to the brains of minor archai for obvious reasons would mean that they wouldn't necessarily be being included in estimates of terragan population. While there might be a relatively 'small' minority of, say, 1.5e13 individuals that are willing to directly interact with the rest of terragan civilization, their claims of being part of a much larger tribemind-based metaempire could very easily be dismissed as being memetic engineering from the ruling archai.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking re these beings mostly being Aiods. That would make no difference in terms of the amount of computronium needed to support an S3 mind.

I'm also not sure what you're asking re population. Can you explain a bit more what you're referring to here, please?

Thanks!

Todd

[alexanderhamiltonalaska]

After a few centuries of increasing processing power, running (and in some cases, replicating) at vastly accelerated rates and generally ignoring and being ignored by their neighboring Periphery worlds they got attacked by an extremist Bioist sect lead by a S2 transapiant. The subsequent conflict made clear the disastrous consequences of thinking they could ignore what was going on around them, so after defeating the bioists they immediately set about working on ways of both working their way up to archai equivalency (mainly by focusing on developing the aiod portion of the population and creating aiod-based duplicates of the vircher portion of the population) and carving out their own empire in the outer volumes. By the 10400s they have succeeded in both these goals.

How would they defeat a force led by an S2 when they apparently weren't even S1?
 
See our page on intertoposophic conflict.

Todd

They had effectively reached ≈S2 status at that point. I probably should have made that clearer, but I kinda thought up the story on the spot.

[alexanderhamiltonalaska]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking re these beings mostly being Aiods. That would make no difference in terms of the amount of computronium needed to support an S3 mind.

I'm also not sure what you're asking re population. Can you explain a bit more what you're referring to here, please?

Thanks!

Todd

The stuff about them being mainly Aiods was more about addressing the fact that as you said a tribemind would need to at least go virtual in order to cross the S3 barrier, as well as likely making sure they were using the resources more efficiently I. E. that they at least weren't using too much more computronium than an S3 would generally need. 

In terms of population I was thinking of a setup where most of the polities' population would be residing in a mass of computronium on par with what S4 intelligences would normally require for themselves, while what in relative terms is an extremely small minority represent the population that would actually be in any way visible to most observers.

[Drashner1]

The stuff about them being mainly Aiods was more about addressing the fact that as you said a tribemind would need to at least go virtual in order to cross the S3 barrier, as well as likely making sure they were using the resources more efficiently I. E. that they at least weren't using too much more computronium than an S3 would generally need. 

An S3 entity that started out at as a tribemind or as a single mind would use the same amount of computronium/processing power. A virtual mind or tribemind would be able to run on larger arrays of computronium (big enough to host multiple S3s at once) while a non-virtual one would likely build a moon-node or equivalent.

In terms of population I was thinking of a setup where most of the polities' population would be residing in a mass of computronium on par with what S4 intelligences would normally require for themselves, while what in relative terms is an extremely small minority represent the population that would actually be in any way visible to most observers.

As I think was mentioned earlier, an S4 is equivalent to vastly more human level minds than exist in all of the setting (it also uses processors that are beyond the comprehension of lower minds). We wouldn't allow the setting population to expand by that much if you're thinking some hugely populated virtual civilization that dwarfs everything we currently list now. Any such polity would need to fit into the existing population numbers as written.

How big of a virtual population are you thinking of?

Having a minority of the population interact with the wider galaxy is fine.

Todd

[alexanderhamiltonalaska]

As I think was mentioned earlier, an S4 is equivalent to vastly more human level minds than exist in all of the setting (it also uses processors that are beyond the comprehension of lower minds). We wouldn't allow the setting population to expand by that much if you're thinking some hugely populated virtual civilization that dwarfs everything we currently list now. Any such polity would need to fit into the existing population numbers as written.

How big of a virtual population are you thinking of?

Having a minority of the population interact with the wider galaxy is fine.

Todd

A population of roughly one quadrillion (mostly transavants) with a few hundred million actual transapiants.

[Rynn]

A population of roughly one quadrillion (mostly transavants) with a few hundred million actual transapiants.

The issue is S3 and S4 minds are so vast that you're not going to assemble enough modosophont, or even S1 minds, to make up one. You need to have a few S2s and S3s in the mix to get the idea to properly fit in canon. This could work quite well if you had a smooth pyramid of toposophic levels with them all working together to make an S4. The key thing to note is that each topoposhic level contributes less than those above, due to quantitative and qualitative differences in their minds. The S3 minds would contribute the bulk of the cognitive functions, then S2, S1 etc. The quadrillion or so modo transavant minds would still contribute to the whole but their input would be relatively negligable.

This of course isn't a problem because OA isn't the type of setting where everything has to be 100% efficient or one in which we need near-human characters to have significant influence wrt to archai level minds.

[alexanderhamiltonalaska]

In practice the modos would mostly be filling roles an archai might normally use modo equivalent intelligences for (I. E. avatars, subroutines). Though the nature of these things would mean that the "real" amount of contribution/influence between each toposophic wouldn't necessarily be an answerable question.

[Drashner1]

In practice the modos would mostly be filling roles an archai might normally use modo equivalent intelligences for (I. E. avatars, subroutines). Though the nature of these things would mean that the "real" amount of contribution/influence between each toposophic wouldn't necessarily be an answerable question.

So modos/lower transaps would presumably have some degree of free will/operational freedom as independent beings rather than being 'finger puppets' for the higher mind. This is an interesting element and I'd suggest explaining it thoroughly - both because it's interesting and because (speaking from past experience) many readers will likely tend to jump to the initial conclusion that all the lower S-levels are basically just 'finger puppets' unless the point is made very clear and explicit. Most well known treatments of group minds (I'm looking at you ST:TNG) treat group minds as being of the 'finger puppet' sort so that is likely to be the attractor readers will default to if left to their own devices.

Hope this helps,

Todd

EDIT - Also - re where they might be living - if you wanted to have them based out of a Jupiter brain, you could either have the archailect be an S4 and most everyone else is living as Goddwellers within it or it could be a J-brain built as a habitat by lower S (S2/S3) beings rather than as a single entity (it wouldn't support plasma processors in that case, but could still exist). Or it could be something built by an S4 as a hab for virtual beings or built and abandoned for some (possibly unknown) reason.