05-17-2018, 02:18 PM
(05-15-2018, 05:00 AM)Roger Wrote: Circling back to the "What Happens Next" material I've been working on, I'll post one or two sample/summary chunks of it in the encyclopedia forum for people to look at/shoot full of holes, but the basic theme is "What happens when the Archailects try to ascend, or transaturation transcend, to S7 and hit the Great Toposophic Filter?" (which I'm assuming is real, and very hard to pass while staying in this reality but easy by transaturation transcention). Briefly, The Transcend transaturation transcends, Keter transaturation transcends (repeatedly) with a leftbehind (mostly an elaborate set of S0 to S5? Transcention Mazes, plus small leftbehind splinter factions that eventually noetically reform into a Post-Keter), Cyberia tries for S7, fails, goes hyperbolic Denebola Collapse and is torn apart (which gets very messy -- war-in-heaven-with-metric-weapons-level messy -- and turns out to be the actual backstory to the Chaos), the Invisible Hand tries it and goes into accelerated growth and economic instability, outcome currently unclear but prognosis dubious, while the Negentropists, Solar Dominion, Terran Federation, and others cautiously just stop growing at S6 until someone else manages it, the Zoefic Biopolity pauses at S6 until she can create an organic S5 (which may take a while), while the Caretaker Gods, the Eternal, and the Utopia Sphere each quietly go deliberate parabolic Denebola Collapse (i.e. split into multiple dividuals) but no-one can tell the difference. I'm still working on whether anyone manages S7 without transaturation transcention (in my personal opinion the most plausible candidates for a central role in this are the FAS and the Seams -- I can discuss my reasoning). Currently I'm leaning towards: "S7 without transaturation transcention is (barely) possible (see the Leviathen), but it requires making a group mind or tribemind out of at least several dozen different archailects all with different noetics and all of which have sufficiently good reasons not to just transaturation transcend right out of our reality (which rules out at least half the current archailects) without just becoming static (which rules out several more) -- so it's not happening in the next few millennia, or until the Terragen Bubble has grown a lot more -- and it also requires access to the sort of bizarre xenoremnants and weird old artifacts and anomalies left by past transaturation transcentions that our galaxy has in abundance but no (safe) single-galaxy basement universe would have (because reasons), so the archailects can't easily arrange for it to happen inside a Tipler oracle and watch from a safe distance" -- I'd really love to discuss this. If this was the case, the 10,500 to maybe 14,000 period is going to be interesting times, even worse than the 5,000s were -- the Oracle War was just the start of the end for the Pax Archailecta.
Another theme in it is "archailects start letting modosophonts through the connecting wormholes of some of their basement universes" -- starting with the MPA, of course, who can't wait to show off all the nifty pocket-universe-sized living spaces it can build now that it's S6. Which gives a view of what one version of a modosophont-friendly transaturation ascension would look like "from the inside".
Been meaning to reply to this and between short on time and the many elements being covered on this thread, I keep forgetting. I'd suggest shifting this post into its own thread, if you're wanting to continue discussing the ideas here after my reply as well as shifting the discussions on encryption and quantum computing in the setting into their own thread or threads, just to keep things reasonably neat and so we're aren't trying to juggle too many topics all in one linear thread.
If you're good with that, please let me know and I'll see about making that change.
Getting back to the ideas here:
The two big issues I see here are:
1) Jumping the whole project that far forward.
2) Having so many of the various empires that make up the setting all going into ascension all at the same time.
Either of these by themselves would be very disruptive to the setting and the project in general.
Beyond that, there is the issue of just what an S7 is (something we've deliberately left vague up to this point) and how all of the proposed events would impact the overall setting. A big concern on my part is that it would seem likely to distort the setting from a large canvas where many different ideas can be explored in both EG articles and fiction to one where the whole thing is focused around this one thing (attempts by various archai to become S7, or at least vanish).
A final complication might be that the vast majority of content pertaining to events in the setting is written in the past tense/historical mode rather than as current events. We've discussed/played with possible ways of also generating 'present tense' content (e.g., news headlines from 10,600), and are OK with the basic idea in principle, but it really hasn't caught on in terms of people really wanting to write that type of content (although we could make an effort to promote that, in principle).
That all said, we also really dislike quashing member's ideas and we've generally found that we can accommodate almost any concept into the setting somewhere - so those few times we can't are particularly irksome.
Putting all this together, how do we find a compromise that lets you at least partially explore the ideas you want to play with here while also working within OA Canon and not either distorting the setting or so disrupting it that it loses a lot of the elements that many of us know and love?
After letting this percolate for a bit, the following ideas have come to mind. In no particular order:
1) Based on the existing EG article(s) Transaturation Ascension is a real thing in the setting already, not just a rumor/theory/hypothesis. This implies that it has happened at least once, and likely more than once (given the wording of the article) in the history of the setting already. While the article itself seems likely to need some rework just due to the ideas/discussions you've started since arriving here, the basic concepts seem unlikely to change. As such, it seems like it would be doable to have some Transaturation Ascension events described in considerably more detail within the current timeline of the EG without the need to jump further into the OA future and without the need to involve all of the various sephirotic empires we currently describe.
Doing this would likely involve the creation of some new S5 or higher archailects and civs to go with them to then have TS out of regular existence and such (Hmm. It might also allow us to retcon the Surreal Rash entry, which is cool, but doesn't quite fit our current take on intertoposophic relations...) - something you would be welcome to take the lead on developing (so you could give them their own unique spin to a large degree if so inclined), but which I suspect a number of members would also be happy to help with.
I'm not really sure we would want to explicitly say that this was resulting in the creation of an S7. It might be 'merely' a new way to operate as an S5 or S6 or it might be an entirely new mode of existence that takes off at right angles to the whole toposophic scale or something. OA being OA we are most likely to want to have a fair bit of mystery and/or a lot of competing theories about what exactly happened/is happening. The resulting power vacuum and other societal disruption from an entire S5 or higher archailect vanishing would also likely be the definition of living in an...interesting time.
This would basically be filling in details and expanding (with some modifications probably) an existing element of the setting, something that we are usually very open too on general principles. I don't think we would want a whole batch of empires all vanishing at once, but since TS has apparently happened more than once, we could likely come up with a number we could all live with and you could describe that many such events over some chunk of the history of the setting.
2) Pretty much the same scenario as '1' but set in the OA 'present day' - in this case the event would be presented as something happening in 'real time' in 10,600AT. To pull this off with minimal fuss we could look at having one or more of our less developed empires undergo TS - or possibly some part of the Panvirtuality or other ahuman polities. Or you could create an S5 level empire and then have it go TS and vanish. I'd actualy suggest not using a portion of the Transcend for this since they are so much off in their own world (So to speak) that the effects of a TS event might be much more muted in terms of impacts to the Sephirotics and such.
The big difference here from Option 1 is that it would potentially involve taking something away from the setting (an existing empire) and based on past experience removing anything from the setting often results in massive debate and discussion and can take a long time to build consensus on. That said, the current mood of the OA community may have shifted on this a bit, since we are currently gearing up to do some major article consolidations and similar stuff later this year, that will also result in some content being effectively removed - and so far the response has been completely positive among the active membership.
The other major challenge here would be figuring out how best to present a 'present day' set of events in the EG. Doable, but not what we're used to and probably worth giving a bit of thought to before we start trying to actually implement it.
3) As has been suggested already, we could have something like what you suggest taking place inside a virtuality - the reason for its existence could range from some kind of simulation or forecast being run by the Negentropy Alliance (who are very interested in the future) or Keter/the Solar Dominion (who are very interested in ascension) to some kind of game running in the Cybercosm that is played by billions or trillions of sophonts across the Civilized Galaxy.
4) If you're writing skills/interest are up for it, you could do a story describing the idea you've suggested and it could be set in the far future of the setting. Our guidelines around fiction writing in the setting tend to be rather more relaxed, or at least different, from how we handle the setting itself. In this scenario we are more likely to actually want you to have this stuff taking place further into the future than closer to the OA present day for various reason.
5) You could have these events taking place in another galaxy, with one or more xenosophont civs involved and Terragens civ observing the whole thing via the Argus Array and recording it as some number of EG articles.
Ok, I think that about covers it.
Thoughts?
Todd
P.S - After midnight and I really do need to get to bed so I'm good for work tomorrow. But there is a lot of crunchy goodness in your other posts I want to reply to (I know, I keep saying that). Will reply as I can and hopefully get caught up by this weekend.
Thanks!
G'nite