SYSNES2: On the Lathe of Suns

And they will presumably be adjusted for the elapsed time in between.
 
I'll have the look at the traits and may make minor modifications. I don't feel it would be right to make too much of a change; that may change their narrative too radically.
 
Since someone complained about the old one, here is a new terraforming chart.

newterraforming.png


Nearly finished updating the rule book by the way.
 
I like this one much more. It may be worth noting somewhere that Biospheres and Exotics can coexist and that heating can also convert ice/slush to atmosphere/seas.
 
If the rulebook's being updated, I'll hold off to read it (not that I've gotten far past page 5 anyway). So... I'm waiting. You know, no pressure except of course for pressure. :D
 
At least as we currently understand it, the update mostly consists of the Errata below the manual and some other things being folded into the manual, and a few things being clarified, rather than sweeping revisions. Most of it is edge-case stuff that's come up over the course of play. Pages 1-30 and 64+ and still quite valuable as an orientation. The Ship Builder/Combat and Army Builder/Combat sections aren't really "required" reading to start with. You wouldn't go wrong with reading it as-is.
 
Yeah the rule book changes are nothing major, jsut adding in stuff that is scattered through the thread and some minor changes.

Plus also its done already, so Circuit should start reading my crappy explanations right away. It would be nice if any redone Seffassian concept can be included with the coming update!


(Click the image) Version 1.02​
 
(Separating a story from the update for the sole purpose of trolling Kraz)

Pacing after Bedtime

The room was much too humid, and the air smelt terrible.

It was ever thus though, and Uyo folded the memory of waking in the cabin and filed it together with the one hundred and three similar memories of the days that preceded it. She was the first awake as usual, and she tasted the air of her sleeping companions; the seven other Leeni curled up in the cabins huge bunk or on every one of the comically oversized chairs, and the three tunnel-sheep sprawled in a corner. The sheep were uncomfortable with their confinement and the microgravity, but otherwise tasted healthy. Her fellow Lictors were deeply bored and doused in trepidation and anticipation, but were otherwise holding strong. The feelings that worried her and roused her from her rest were wafting from Alo and Ke; the two savants huddled at the centre of the nest of bodies.

Both were skilled and smart, experts in foreign cultures and the long history of radio transmissions Leeni had trawled from the sky, but they had only dealt with the academic idea of foreign cultures and separation from their tribe. Stress and terror and nostalgia wafted off them in waves, and even the sheep shifted and kicked in shared pain. It was a terrible thing to do, but the Praetors had explained no Lictors with the appropriate training existed yet, and the foreigners were leaving on a very tight schedule. It would be one of the Lictors tasks to keep them safe and sane - creating a community for them and the other savants. Ironic considering the entire point of the Lictor caste was to create someone capable of breaking the bonds of a tribe and not worry about the niceties of the subconscious. It fell to Uyo as the Keeper of Secrets to coordinate the rest of the Lictors on this and other aspects of emotional and informational security. Alo had been the weaker one from the start, but the Lictor Gie had taken it upon herself to pairbond with him, and as he clutched her in his sleep thoughts of contentment occasionally washed out. Ke was certainly Uyo chief worry at the present time; neither happy thoughts, nor entertainments and sex, or even research in the Praxzen libraries seemed to be breaking her out of her funk.

Uyo would think on it more later, for now she tried to breath deep and taste the other nests. Nothing but the scrubbed air and the scent of chlorine came back to her. In the early days of the voyage she had been able to taste the feelings of the other rooms of the fifty strong delegations wafting over the air circulation systems. It had been a comfort in the alien environment of the transport, but at some point the Praxzen had adjusted their scrubbers to filter out the pheromone carrier signals, amputating the common Leeni community into discordant shards. When pressed on it the officers had just rolled their eyes and said the ships ecology adjusts automatically, but Uyo had her doubts that the Praxzen would let anything run unsupervised or leave even the tiniest aspect of the ship outside their ability to control.

In truth she felt that whilst some of the crew had a curiosity about the Leeni, none of them really had any respect for the delegation. The Praxzen diplomats might feel different, or at least have courtesy to fake it, but those who hadn’t gone into hibernation were engrossed in their planning sessions and briefing materials. It was inevitable really; the contrast between the state back on Leeni and the delegation was just too stark. The Praetors with the full power and knowledge base of the tribes backing them up had certainly been impressive enough for the Praxzen on their home turf in the tunnels; their hypersensitivity to emotional and communication cues letting them dredge more out secrets of the Praxzen than anyone had before. Compare that to the small crowd occupying the decks of their ship and filling the corridors like errant children, with their animals and stupid questions and occasional vomit and mess from the new experiences of zero gravity and hard acceleration. Then compound it by the failure to come to an agreement on the resources the Praxzen seemed so desperately to want to secure and the crew’s irritation was entirely explicable. The Praxzen were interested in the Leeni, but looked down on them both figuratively and literally.

Returning to sleep seemed to not be on the agenda for Uyo’s body, so she slipped off the bunk and delicately hopped over the sleeping bodies to reach the washbasin. As she passed each of them she gave a gentle stroke and pat and burst of good feeling to those who seemed more troubled and tense. The basin itself was a plastic orb of clam shelled active materials that allowed hands and faces to enter but would halt the escape of any liquids, a prosaic example of the technical marvels the Praxzen had tried to entice the Praetors with. In was set high in the wall and using it easily might have proven a challenge for the barely 145cm Uyo even in the gentle 0.2g of the transports acceleration had she not been able grip her armoured toes into the synthetic wood panelling that made up cabins walls. The gauges she left joined a veritable host of other scratches, but explaining that damage to their hosts was a problem she was glad to push off for now.

Hands and head rinsed, she slipped on a brown woollen frock over her sleeping shift and decided to go for a wander. As the door shut behind her and the filters sucked out the taste of the others moods she nearly changed her mind and return to the comfort of the nest. But she persevered, managing this howling ache of loneliness was everything she’d been bred and trained for and in only a few moments it was a dull lack rather than a physical pain.

The corridor was similarly panelled to the cabins in dark woods and plastics and the lights were low and red. She could see well enough in the light and so could the Praxzen, and the corridors even reminded her of the tunnels she’d grown up in; she’d tried to strike up conversations about their homeworld’s cavern cities only to be met with a chill silence. One would have assumed a shared history of living underground might offer a few points of contact for the two cultures to relate on, but it seems there are as many ways of living underground as there are living above it, and wherever the Praxzen come from it must be a very different place to Leeni.

As she skipped along she pondered her options on where to go, or if she would merely run till she felt sleepy again. At this time on the sleep cycle the galley would be closed, and all the other Leeni would be asleep. The crew and engineering areas were not open to guests, the poisoning Njyo had received in the first week was certainly proof of that. The gym had nothing in it suitable to the Leeni physique. That left the observation corridor, where you could peer out of portholes at an empty starfield, and the information annex where the ships libraries. With that as the only real option in truth, she set off at a brisk pace. With the drive on, some of the corridors that had been horizontal when the ship was landed were vertical and vice versa, but Uyo bounded at roughly the same rate along both. Jumping and skittering from panel to panel on the vertical ones, she disdained the hand holds in favour of a bit of acrobatic exercise.

It was only a few short moments before she arrived at the annex threshold, and cautiously stuck her head within. The long low room was more brightly lit than the corridor thanks to the glare of hundreds of screens and tablets. The briefing they’d received when they first boarded had said that the transport ship was quite the venerable design indeed, and came from design period when the Praxzen hadn’t been able to pipe all the data and interactives one might want to the cabins and staterooms – hence a common information annex. Ke had offered the insight that if it truly was superfluous the Praxzen would have repurposed it for storage like every other nook and cranny of the ship, and their hosts must still enjoy some aspects of communal experience for doing research or experiencing media.

There were only a few Praxzen in residence, sprawled in the comfortable and uniquely pieces of furniture and staring at screens or tablets. Most were in the dark, tight, and heavily pocketed uniforms of the crew, but there was one man in the looser and more varied clothing of the diplomatic group. He must have had trouble sleeping as well, for the diplomats had shifted to the Leeni sleep cycle during the long rounds of negotiation and discussions back under the Sea of Nests, and still maintained that for the shipboard shifts. She did recognise him though the name escaped her; it was so hard to keep the names straight without the accompanying pheromonal spoor, all Praxzen tasted of the same harsh chlorine and lactic acids with no informational content whatsoever. He was someone she’d feel comfortable approaching however, this past year had taught her there were two type of Praxzen; those that thought they were better than you and would not waste their time breaking their cold silence, and those that thought they were better than you but liked to explain in excruciating detail exactly why that was. The diplomat was definitely of the latter category, and thus might dispel her loneliness if not her worries.

She sidled over to the table he was working at, careful to keep the furniture between her and the other Praxzen and to tread as softly as possible. He was staring dreamily into space whilst the fingers of one hand tapped out a rhythm on the surface of a tablet. No, not a rhythm, on listening for a few moments she realised it had the random clatter of a digital carrier signal. She could see the patterns swirling on the skin of that hand; he must have assigned his internal computer to do data entry, like the shrieking of a modem over an ancient audio communications system. She shivered at that, after the hugeness and poison, the autonomy of their body parts was the most unsettling part about their hosts. Rumour had it that an opponent could drive a spike through their brain and the body would still keep on trying to kill them for hours after. Uyo thought that unlikely, but she wouldn’t bet her life on it being false.

As she climbed up into the chair opposite him and dangled her legs over its side, the man broke out a smile, though he didn’t turn his head or cease his tapping.

“How very Leeni of you” he said in deep voice.

She startled a bit at that, but tried a rejoinder, aware of how high and quiet her own voice was, “It is said that a diplomat should be the purest distillation of their culture, in order to best represent their interests. We here should be the most Leeni of all Leeni, or we would not have been chosen”

The man snorted in response, and shadows zigzagged above one of his eyebrows. “Well put if…limited. I was referring to you coming and striking up a conversation. What was very Leeni of you was to not even consider the idea of solitary contemplation. You didn’t consider not talking to any of us – you focused on who rather than if. If only all cultures produced such predictable behaviour our job would be much easier.”

“Predictable elements can have unpredictable emergent properties. Humans are not a gas, knowing a tribesman is not knowing the tribe.” Uyo countered, but seeking to move the conversation in a less adversarial direction she continued with, “which unpredictable cultures are troubling you at the moment?”

“It was not a criticism miss Uyo. A milieu whose actors are predictable by all other actors is an ordered, efficient, and successful one. As for unpredictable cultures, who else might I refer too but those rabid vermin we all have the unfortunate luck of sharing a stellar neighbourhood with.”
The man’s face darkened as he said that, and Uyo filed away the flickering ticks around the mouth as a possible sign of anger for Praxzen. This wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she went for a sleep cycle wander, and she slightly anxiously smoothed her frock over her knees and folded her spines as closely as possible. Not knowing how other people were truly feeling about things was terrifying; it made her conscious assessment of anger less like empathy she held inside and more like the dials on a engine slipping into the red. There was fear, but no sharing of the anger, just a desperate need to make it stop.

The diplomat was still talking of course, something about how the upcoming conference the Ceaserians were organising was a waste of time due to the inherent irrationality of their opponent, ‘arguing with the weather’ came up as a phrase more than once. Uyo felt she would probably have a lot more chances to gauge Praxzen expressions of anger in the months to come.
 
I really enjoyed that story.

Circuit, do you have any thoughts on what you'd like to do with the Seffassians, in terms of remodeling them or some such? If you know what you're interested in doing, I could get started on working on your faction banner.
 
Well, right now, I'm behind on homework and barely have time for it let alone a NES such as this. I'm still interested, but I think I should wait until finals are over, near the beginning of December.
 
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