Hi there!
While checking the rulebooks info on the TITANs, it states constantly about their force-uploads of billions of people, but nowhere in the book (not even the GM part of it where the various menaces to transhumanity are explained in detail and ideas given out on how to handle them) it says what did they actually did or are doing with the minds they stole...
Did I miss something?
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The TITANs and their antics (Posible spoilers)
Mon, 2009-09-14 10:06
#1
obsidian razor
The TITANs and their antics (Posible spoilers)
this is one of those things that your GM will have to decide upon, or not depending on what type of game you run.
Origionaly I thought that they were grabbing a bunch of humanity for seeding elsewhere... that they were doing what they thought was best to save humanity before going someplace else...
...then I read about what happened on Mercury...
sure it does. its actually speculated about under ETIs, since the titans were acting under their influence when corrupted by exurgent. take a look at 353.
regarding mercury, i assume were talking about Caloris 18. its not that different from other forced uploads except that it was a bit of a different approach and it failed. possibly because it was a different strain of exurgent, or maybe because that particular AGI reacted to it differently. i dont think it invalidaes any of the possibilities being considered.
the implications of the "enlightenment" option are that the TITANs hardcoded loyalties were still in effect, and they were helping humanity by giving them access to enlightenment as quickly as possible.
other motives have to be infered from the other sections, but all three of them have similar and not-very nice implications. things along the lines "study your enemy" or "do unspeakable things to them to discourage further trouble" are what jump imediately to mind.
i expect exactly what happened to the minds is being saved for either a "big reveal" later, or is going to be one of the ongoing unresolved mysteries of the setting. the "big reveal" is more likely, as it seems like too big of a plot point and too much of an adventure-seller.
unfortuneate, since its very likely that GMs will write their own bit of metaplot and be contradicted by cannon. might not be too bad though, as its easy to say there are multiple strains of exurgant at work, or multiple ETIs or somesuch.
Maybe they say nothing about this for the same reason as they say less about everything else. So you can decide on your own.
And anyways, everyone knows why the TITANs forcibly uploading humans. Having self-improved in the ways machine intelligences can, they were after the human mind's creativity, it's intuition, and it's broad perspective. They took the uploaded minds and merged with them.
Duh.
That was the sort of take that I was writing into my game, actually. The way I see it, the TITANs had self-improved to the point where they knew they could no longer do so without massive hardware upgrades (hence, the failed attempt at converting Iapetus into a moonbrain) so they grabbed as many minds (and their unique perspectives, memories, and methods of thinking) as they could to incorporate into themselves and took off for parts unknown to try it again.