SysNES 1: A Murky Pool of Light

[Seon]

That's why I made sure that the Lone Wolf was of Non-Akresian design

Mwaha.

 

[alex994]

OOC: Yeah, but to make a viable population you need; what 5000 people? The number of scenarios where that was done by pure chance are vanishingly small.

OOC: You don't think a lot of obsessive East Asian parents wouldn't spend a bunch of money on creating designer babies?

But technically you're correct, since my people are descended from a genetic experimental project by various East Asian governments

 

[Kal'thzar]

So that makes what? Us three with a 'Vault' past?

 

[Seon]

If you have a Vault past, I have a Super Mutant past, let's just leave it at that.

 

[Kal'thzar]

A different Vault past? Beh, Super Mutants never scared me more annoying than anything.

 

[Disenfrancised]

As I think more and more about my government, it seems a lot like Iran's

No its pretty much exactly like Iran's, with just a different linguistic group and religion, so much so that I thought it was intentional...

OOC: Yeah, but to make a viable population you need; what 5000 people? The number of scenarios where that was done by pure chance are vanishingly small.

Since the Akresians are more a de novo production of genetic art, they were probably designed without the catalog of defective alleles that lead to problems with inbreeding (you can see this in 'purified' mouse lineages in the lab), though they are probably all going to look and act extremely similar, and that lack of diversity might cost them in other ways.

 

[alex994]

No its pretty much exactly like Iran's, with just a different linguistic group and religion, so much so that I thought it was intentional...

OOC: Well, I designed it with the purpose of the society (preservation of traditional and cultural norms) in mind. As such, it was necessary to create an unelected body which would ensure that such norms would be preserved and not at all violated by the elected government. Cultural preservation is the first priority of the government, civil liberties and property rights come second. That was the primary logic behind it.

The new government meets your approval I hope?

And could you also answer my latest PM?

 

[Kal'thzar]

An examination of the Vazan​

by the Union of Peoples Party​

The UPP believe that the Kations have much to learn from the Vazan; and from working with other powers that exist in the Hydra Tuft as well. The Cybernetists have gained much political power through encouraging and emphasising the growth of material wealth of the Kation people. Whilst this has allowed for a material growth, it has resulted in a collapse of the pursuit of enlightenment ideals.

The UPP seek first to rectify this by emphasising a drive for specific research centres and providing additional funding for our Higher Learning facilities. This is likely to require certain co-operation with the Vazan as their universities and research centres are much more efficient than our own. It is interesting to note that these more efficient methods require larger Habitats, crowding more Kations into one Habitat and allowing for the better flow of information. The space for building larger habitats is most affordable on Zavi IV and presents the most obvious place to begin this drive.

The second point the UPP seek to push is more friendly co-operation with foreign powers, most obviously the Vazan, but additionally others that have survived the Tumult. Continued existence in this Universe cannot allow for the us Kations to blunder around the Universe in a clumsy arrogant manner...

- It is the consideration of this committee that the UPP, whilst a single issue party, is part of a larger expression of discontent within the Kation community. These issues should be seized upon and moderated to allow proper inconclusion into the Biotechnologist Manifesto for the election in two years time

Developing a Military​

It has been deemed necessary by the Department of Defence to support the Space Presence we have and begin the creation of Kation ground forces. This has been done in support and co-ordination with current governmental policies.

To this end the Cybernetists have begun construction of several Planetary Defence Forces (PDF's), these have begun going through military manoeuvres and testing of military infrastructure on Zavi VIa and Zavi V.

It is the general belief of the DoD that the Vazan present little of interest and should be allowed to wither on the line so long as the DoD holds all the military advantages. When the Vazan are able to construct military spacecraft such a position will have to be re-examined but the DoD also believe that by this point a more secure way to construct spacecraft will have been acquired.

Ajax's Blog

Kations and the Vazan​

The Debate in the Public and Government about the proper relations the we Kations should have with the Vazan has simmered for years. With the recent overthrough of GAIA and the implementation of an extreme form of direct democracy (something that our extreme individuality means it could never be implemented here) many have wondered if we should re-examine our current governments isolationist policy. Whilst the recent Cybernetist coup means that at the very least our government is no longer overtly hostile, the Biotechnologists have remained the primary political party supporting a more open relationship with foreign powers.

It has been shown here that we will have reached the peak of productivity that the Cybernetists can offer. Further improvements require either exploration of the Tuft or conquest of the Vazan. Conquest should be considered out of the question; when the wealth of the Tuft is considered. If we assist each other we can move on and explore the entire Hydra Tuft and if we dislike each other; this vast number of systems should offer us both plenty of room. However, this requires an emphasis on research and cooperation, and only the Biotechnologists offer this.

*****
So in order; that was a minor 4th party that was basically having the good parts of its policies incorporated into the Biotechnologist [winning] manifesto for next turn (not this one). Then we have a DoD brief on the construction of military assets; their a bit conservative and attract a certain type of Kation, as might be evident. Lastly we have a simple Blog entry or maybe its a fake Blog

 

[Kal'thzar]

@Milquari you around? Havn't seen you on MSN in a while :/

 

[Disenfrancised]

The new government meets your approval I hope?

And could you also answer my latest PM?

Yeah its fine. I haven't received any PM from you since Saturday .

Also the clearing up the first page might have to wait, was pretty busy today.

Since people are posting backgrounds and each aspiring for the legacy of Fallout I thought I'd expand on the timeline and descriptions:

Perhaps some depictions and clarification of background will be useful, so we're all on the same page.

Expanded back story timeline

Pre UC: Bizarre barbarian states like 'Chin', 'Amerika' and the 'Euu', form and develop space technologies, local planets of Old Sol explored via Rocket-canoe. Equivalent: Development of farming in Egypt and the Middle East, Shang China.

First Age
UC 0: Founding of the Solar Federation and the Universal Clock (~2230 AD). Solar Federation amalgamates all Earth states into overstructure to deal with climate concerns and space threats. Equivalent: Babylonia/Assyrian Empires
Early First Age (UC 0-300): Development of space transcending technologies, terraforming of Mars, Solar Federations creation of, war with, and evetual conquest conquest of the Jovian League. Equivalent: Trojan War, heroic age of Greek myth, Zhou/Warring States China.
Middle First Age (UC 300-600): Exploration of nearby systems with transcend drives, scattering of the peoples, Solar Feds ossification and secret societies, heroic campaigns by Sol Fed to control local colonies after several anarchist actions using antimatter threaten inhabited worlds. Equivalent: Alexander's conquests and Diodachi squabbles, Han Empire.
The War in Heaven/The Ravening/Close of the First Age (UC 600-800): Mass release of kinetic weapon factories, deconstructor swarms, antimatter weaponry, autowars. Destruction of life in Sol system, local colonies. Hider worlds cease electromagnetic transmissions, Line Worldships flee into deep space. Equivalent: biblical flood, Barbarian invasions of China, post-Rome dark ages.

Second Age
The New Dawn (UC 800-1700). Demons succumb to entropy. Line Worldships develop countermeasures to the demons, return to human space, cleanse worst infections, establish commercial and social protocols known as the Commonality. Equivalent: Migration Age, ancient myth, Hebrews being lead out of Egypt.
The Early Commonality Age (UC 1700-2100). Worldship Lines use unparalleled position to establish Root English, anti-super weapon phobia deep in all human cultures, find most Hider worlds and bring them into the main discourse. Line government model of very strong Technocratic executive with democratic trappings seen as optimal human government for survival. Equivalent: Greek/Roman republics.
The High Commonality Age (UC 2100-2400). Expansion further into unexplored space, first discovery of non-human artifacts, human space tied into tight economic web. Pretty nice time to be alive. Equivalent: Mythic medieval golden era of many cultures, chivalry, honour etc.
The New Empires Age (UC 2400-2673). Increasing power of planetary populations reduces then replaces Line influence, main players become multi-system polities bound by some ideology (religious, transhumanist, ecotopian, eudaimonic etc) and powerful fleets. Large scale wars over rare atom deposits, biospheres, or exotic alien finds occur, but still bound by Commonality codes to avoid excessive destruction. Equivalent: Carolingian Empire, Islamic Caliphates, Tang China
UC 2673+ : Exotic gravity pulse from smaller black hole merging with supermassive galactic centre black hole crosses human space, all technological artifacts based on metric transformation undergo complete mass to energy conversion. 99% of humanity expires, only some ships in deep space and backwards worlds survive.

Third Age
The Dark Age/Feudal Age (UC ~3000-4500). Backwards and raw worlds redevelop civilisation, often based on Commonality radio transmissions who originators had died centuries before in the Tumult. Starships stranded by the Tumult find worlds using sublight engines, either uplift the populace or establish themselves as a ruling caste. The edicts of the Commonality and some of the ideology of the New Empires take on a semi-religious aspect. The isolation and extreme environments cause several new human subspecies to emerge/create themselves. Equivalent: Faltering of the HRE in twelfth century, warring kingdoms period in china, barbarian migrations, Columbian exchange from the Amerindian point of view.
The Renaissance (UC 4500-4900). Redevelopment of interstellar signalling and ships kicks off a new wave of development as the scattered worlds of man find each other, and begin expanding into space once more. Equivalent: Duh.
The Age of Revelations (UC 4900-5100). The discovery of the ruins of the god-like Priors gives humanity something of an inferiority complex, even as the looting of Ansibyl Pearls causes an explosion in societal capabilities. Equivalent: Opium wars for china. Black ships for Japan.
The High Third Age/Kingdom Age (UC 5100-5931). Faster than light communication allows a human interstellar culture not seen before, trade flourishes, but the new capabilities allow petty realms to extend themselves to the stars on quite low technological and social platforms compared to the Solar Federation or the Second Age Empires. This leads to orgies of petty wars over the loot of alien tombs. Many turn to Hiding from the main thrust of interstellar politics, or seek solace in the ancient religions of the Second or Earlier ages. In some worlds a zenith of excellence or nadir of barbarism is reach beyond anything from the earlier ages. With the new subspecies making waves, and weaker morality, many kingdoms engineer specialised forms of humanity. Equivalent: European opening of the world, Imperialism, new world slavery, your societies admit a direct link to this period but are slightly embarrassed by some actions done by their forefathers.
UC 5931+. A second gravity wave sweeps the human pollution from the sky, Due to a generally lower development level and density (though some regions have surpassed the Second Age), rather less proportional death results, only about 92%.

Note – due to hibernation and time dilation due to starship travel your society may not have lived through every year of this timeline, but instead skipping 10-100 year chunks. The Universal Clock is calibrated via a bunch of distant pulsars, so you all have a rough idea what the year is (UC 5955, or 8185±50 AD).

Some descriptions for my own amusement.

Lantians
The Lantian people represent an 'optimised' view of ancient East Asian traits as picked by both discerning parents and a concerned government. The individuals are of average height of 5”9' (the government quashing individual families dreams of basketball stars in favour of reduced mass and energy requirements) with low variance and little difference between the sexes, the men compactly muscular and the women slender. Flawless slightly tan skin covers attractive (but not overwhelmingly so) features. One thing the parents did manage to sneak by the government, particularly in the insular regions of the Geashial sphere, was a kaleidoscopic range of hair and eye colouration, as well as microscale keratin adjustments that reduced skin cancer rates and create improbable natural hairstyles. Over half of the population have these cosmetic adjustments, though accumulation of culture and worth means the naturally occurring electric blue Mohawk that once was the sign of cultural rebellion now indicates members of venerable banking clans. The feline ears abomination however was thankfully eradicated at the elders behest in the early centuries of the second age. They generally wear extremely ancient clothing styles of synthsilk - robes, kimonos, and business suits.

Ik
The Ik are generally of a very dark skin and eye tone with Semitic features, generally quite tall (averaging over 6”) and with full bushy beards and hairstyles. Generally wearing flowing robes in white or black over elaborately constructed waistcoats, both sexes favour sturdily constructed trousers and boots for reasons of both propriety and protection from leech-like organisms.

'Al
The 'Al are from what will come to referred to as 'cosmopolitan' stock in millennia yet to come as the earth phenotypes run together – pleasingly indeterminate bone structure, dark hair, and medium olive skin tone, with a peppering of the rarer earth features like interesting eye colour, folds, or nose shape (plonk a bunch of them down on modern Earth and they'll probably be taken for Brazilian). Wearing drab black or grey jumpsuits the 'Al communicator caste is extremely skinny (as the collective song does not like wasting food resources) with buzz cut hair, and in person seem to have a still, calm, and even monkish attitude as they listen to far away voices and watch invisible internally generated displays. They are only distinguished from the drones by the latter's long and unkempt hair and control collars.

Akresians
The Akresians, designed for intimidation from the ground up are huge compared even post-terrestrial baseline humanity, averaging 8” in height and being massively built. Constructed from cosmopolitan stock they retain the olive skin and generic faces, but are completely hairless apart from the eyebrows and a shock of light brown hair on the scalp (another concession to their heat distribution problems). Sharply pointed teeth and the oddly positioned coolant veins hint at further modifications from baseline humanity. Akresian-baseline cross-breeds produce individuals very close to baseline, as the Akresian designers put a great number of copy-protection engineering in the new Akresian chromosomes. Nearly all of the Akresian dress is based on military uniforms of some type, not particularly due to choice, juts that their cultural pool not yet having had sufficient time to drift from the war machine in which it was cast.

Esani
<Datalink not found>

Gardeners
The Gardeners are another group of cosmopolitan ethnic extraction, their religo-ideology having brought in interested individuals from a host of planets. Unlike the 'Al the typical Gardener is well nourished and generally quite tall. The traditional garb of the Gardener is a flowing white robe embroidered with geometric designs in green thread plus a tough plastic apron for dirty work, but in the backstreet's of the major cities blooms of creativity can be seen among the young and hip before they are assigned their future roles. In zero-g environments where robes would be impractical the Gardeners favour simple white tunics and trousers.

Soulon
Much like the Gardeners the Soulon are cosmopolitan in appearance (indeed deriving from many of the same systems), though the commercial nature of their origin gives rather higher percentages of rare features mixed in like the odd hair colours, eyes and skull shape, including some post-terrestrial developments like grey skin colours and lack of canine teeth. Scarred and bruised by hard living, the average Soulon tunnel dweller wears pieced together clothes of durable fabrics and sports facial tattoos indicating allegiance to one powerful group or individual.

Kations
Both the Kations and the Vazan populations are derived from the Diamond Network, an empire/transhumanist ideological grouping that flourished in the last centuries of the second age (See The New Empires Age above). Several similar such groups existed at the same time, the Network only being notable for its far flung resource extraction operations. It was these operations that allowed shards of their culture to survive the first Tumult, when most other high tech societies were by far the hardest hit; the Kations coming from a deep-space comet farm and the Vazan from a mining complex on a remote mercurian world. The Vazan and the Kations thus share the DN's founder mix of extreme northern European and northern Geashial genotypes plus alterations to be near completely lacking in skin colouration, grey/silver haired and eye coloured, sharp bone structure with pronounced cheek bones , and generally thin and long-limbed. They both have the basic Network cyber layout with an exoframe of white plastic overlaying their limbs, universal ports in the neck, an extra sensors emplaced in the hands or free moving remotes rather than changing the eyes of face (preferring to keep a set of unmodified organic binocular eyes as backups in case their implants are compromised). The Kations, having undergone further genetic modification, have almost preternaturally fine facial features and beauty, as well as freckly skin (the freckles are the results of an automatic removal of radiation induced melanomas and accumulate with age, and indeed are one of the few ways to accurately place a Kations age due to their unchanging hair and unlined faces). Their cybermodifications tend to run to more sensors than the ancestral norm, with additional alterations around the mouth, neck and back to allow the quick exchange of environmental survival modules.

Vazan
The Vazan on the other hand lack the geneline changes and are more stocky than the Kations due to favouring high gravity environments, but retain the grey hair and pale skin. Their cybermodifications tend to be much more bulky, with vastly more powerful servos for industrial work and moving around in high-g, as well as liking protective subdermal plating and powerful long range internal communicators to remain in the loop with GAIA/the demarchic process (the Kations on the other hand like their peace and quiet, using external communication systems they can ignore if they choose).

 

[Kal'thzar]

That is very interesting; brings to mind another story topic I could cover

 

[alex994]

OOC:

kaleidoscopic range of hair and eye colouration...naturally occurring electric blue Mohawk that once was the sign of cultural rebellion now indicates members of venerable banking clans.

I almost had a heart attack in the middle of my class when I saw this. Seriously? That is blasphemous. I see this as a total invasion and corruption of East Asian heritage. Though I totally approve of the suits and the elimination of the feline ears.

And I resent the PM.

 

[Immaculate]

From The Republic of Ik
To The Al'

The Republic of Ik proposes the following treaty.

...
some treaty...

OOC: You asked for an IC response:

IC ... echoing silence across the commlinks... maybe the strange and muffled sound of someone asking someone else to make sure they use a good amount of bleach to wash the commlinks to get the stink of the voice of betrayers out completely... ... then a splashing sound...

there is no attempt at return communication

 

[Disenfrancised]

OOC:

I almost had a heart attack in the middle of my class when I saw this. Seriously? That is blasphemous. I see this as a total invasion and corruption of East Asian heritage. Though I totally approve of the suits and the elimination of the feline ears.

And I resent the PM.

Well you could have been just Chinese but noooo, you had to pick a cultural heritage that included...the Japanese.

Answered!

 

[Kentharu]

From The Republic of Ik
To The Al'

We offered you a chance at peace, a hope for a brighter future for your people. It might have been possible to live in peace in Errai, but your continued refusal to be reasonable, to do right by your own people. It has shown us that you are completely unwilling to not only open diplomatic relations, but also that you do not hold any modicum of civility.

Be well prepared friend, for the Ik shall bring such a righteous devastation upon your sorry nation that you will tremble and wail for peace.

 

[Immaculate]

Well, i admit that i lost. You guys beat me fair and square (well, sort of). Its good when there can be a victor and a loser. Its just too bad (for me) that i was the loser.

So, because i don't want to play out what is my obvious downfall, i hereby go NPC.

Thanks to all for a fun game, especially Dis. You are a very excellent writer with an interesting style of language and story-telling.

 

[alex994]

Well you could have been just Chinese but noooo, you had to pick a cultural heritage that included...the Japanese.

OOC: I assumed that since the Chinese had such a massive numerical advantage over the other East Asian states they would form the greatest part; and I wanted to preserve the other East Asian cultures as well

I petition Dis to take over the Al' and bring an end to the war.

 

[Disenfrancised]

OOC: I assumed that since the Chinese had such a massive numerical advantage over the other East Asian states they would form the greatest part; and I wanted to preserve the other East Asian cultures as well

I petition Dis to take over the Al' and bring an end to the war.

Yes, but since the silly hair styles relied on new genes, they were pretty much always dominant, and thus infiltrated the population (SCIENCE!).

It's really not the 'Al that are preventing the war from concluding .

 

[Kentharu]

The Ik-Al' Accord

1. All hostilities between the Republic of Ik and the Al shall cease immediately.

2.a) The Al shall recognize the planets of Errai I-VI as dominions of the Republic of Ik.
b) The Al shall not seek to place any settlements on the planets of Errai I-Errai VI
c) The Al shall not send any ship on the planets of Errai I-Errai VI without the express permission of the Republic of Ik.
d) The Al shall allow the safe passage of space probes of the Republic of Ik through their dominions for the purpose of exploration.

3.a) The Republic of Ik shall recognize and respect the sovereignty of the Al' and their dominion over Errai VII.
b) The Al shall recognize and respect the sovereignty of the Republic of Ik and their dominion over Errai I-Errai VI

4. The terms of this treaty shall be in effect for a period of 5 years, after which time the treaty shall be brought up for renewal.

Signed
The Prime Chancellor of the Republic of Ik Hezbul Rasheed

The Ik again propose a treaty. All portions of the treaty are negotiable.

 

[Seon]

Actually it is. Both I and the Ik are bluffing.