Hello. Long-ish time wiki reader here.

[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.

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.

It would probably be built by the group before it reached S4 status, though it's possible that they deliberately left room for further 'upgrades' to be made after they actually reached that status. Re: 'Finger puppets' all observers could say is that the modo/lower transaps certainly seem a whole lot more independent than you'd normally expect, but they wouldn't have any real way of actually telling, and that's before you take into account the existence of memes that have modo level intelligence and the like which could quite easily confuse the issue even further.

[alexanderhamiltonalaska]

Could I move this to General Setting Discussion?

[Worldtree]

Could I move this to General Setting Discussion?

Yes