Quote:

So one key thing is what kind of tech for making tech the gift-givers gave the aquatics. Cornucopia machines with pre-set blueprints (either including new cornucopias or not, making them common or strategic hierlooms)? AI support (accessed through ritual prayer interfaces)? Nanoswarms? Internal biotech? Ubiqitious nanosurveillance that orders required equipment from surface factories and drops it where needed?

I would say all of the above, but with several limitations. Let me add a few more important details first. The disappearance of the gift-givers (I like that designation) was due to an attack by a parasite, an ancient native lifeform of the water-world. I still haven't decided if this parasite should be intelligent or mindless, but it would be similar to the Exsurgent virus in how it affects it's hosts. When it infected the gift-givers, they didn't go homicidal, they just went into a coma of sorts. But during the time of my campaign, it has been slowly infecting other lifeforms on the water-world, turning them into plague zombies, that sort of thing (this isn't exactly a Fall scenario, maybe if the Fall was slowly stretched out over hundreds of years). This happened during a transitional stage for the aquatics (I also like that designation). There are three intelligent races being uplifted, including a group of cephalopods, and a rough analogue of whales and dolphins. They had a happy, utopian society up and running, but like I said (and kind of like you described) everything is very ritualized when it comes to using advanced tech. They had quickly been brought up from animals, to hunter-gatherers, to a highly developed industrial society. Everything worked because of their intense religious devotion for these god-like beings, and the aquatics relied on them and their machines very heavily to accomplish things. The only people who knew how to interface with cornucopia machines or program nanoswarms were the caste of priests that developed over time. The long-term plan was to make all of this technology accessible to everyone, but the parasite was awakened before anyone got to this stage. So yes, I think there should be cornucopia machines, biotech, and hives, but they are not user-friendly, and only a small portion of the population even know how to get them working. I also think the CM's are rare in this setting, and they wouldn't have blueprints for making new ones. A lot of the equipment that people use is scavenged. One idea that I had was to have the gift-givers basically be a race of self-replicating nanoswarms, and so they would be physically present in almost every living thing, and also have large operating nodes all throughout the surface of the planet. This would give the characters in my campaign a lot more options for using and manipulating nanotech. They wouldn't need hives, they could just use the de-activated swarms that are floating everywhere in the ocean. Also, I've never read David Zindell, but that sounds fantastic. Do you have any other recommendations for far-out, alien-focused science-fiction?

Thanks for all the suggestions people, I will definitely be checking out Diaspora and Diamond Dogs/Turquoise Days. I hope to work my way through the whole Eclipse Phase reading list one day (or I'd at least like to sample each author). There are a few other questions that have come up as I've been sitting down and writing. How would transportation work on this world? I was thinking of a mass transit system that would have been in place before society collapsed. Either a network of high-speed trains that move through air-filled tunnels, or something that resembles those transport tubes from Futurama (that would be a lot more fun). Is any of this feasible? I was also thinking about vehicles, and what kinds would still be useful underwater. I could see submarines coming in handy, if nothing else as a sort of mobile home that can be easily defended. There would also probably be mining vehicles or tanks that move along the ocean floor. Would there be any point in using boats or aircraft? I would think you could get where you're going a lot faster above the ocean than beneath it, but you'd also have to take a lot of water on board for everyone to breathe. Also, new topic, how would you design a habitat or settlement in the underwater environment? I imagined large, sealed-off arcologies that grow their own food, produce their own power, and are relatively cut-off from the outside world. Would all settled communities look something like this? What sorts of problems would you face if you tried to build a community that was open to the rest of the ocean? I would think there would be all kinds of issues, from algal blooms to predators coming and going as they pleased.

Again, thanks for the suggestions everyone. I feel like I'm in a pretty good place to start writing this down and giving it rules. Just for the hell of it, I'll also go over a very brief outline of my campaign. People are welcome to give feedback or suggestions to this too if they like. In some ways the plot feels like something out of a very typical fantasy story, but I'm hoping that exploring a unique environment and getting to play weird sea aliens will give everyone a fresh perspective. The players in this game will be members of a monastic society. This is a multi-racial group that still worships the gift-givers (most people on this world simply recognize them as a single being called the Goddess). They start off living quietly in one of the arcologies I described earlier. Everyone there has access to fairly advanced tech, although they can't really communicate with the outside world. The game begins with an attack by creatures infected with a strange virus (the very same Exsurgent-like virus that rendered the Goddess completely inert). Despite a spirited defense, all of the monks and common folk living in the monastery will either be killed or driven away by these monsters. When (and if) the players escape, they will be given a mission by the abbot (as he slowly dies in their tentacles). They are told to find a hidden community of people who serve the Goddess directly, in a distant part of the planet. These servants are not just any normal uplifts, but a fourth race of cybernetic creatures who were created by the Goddess, and are working to revive her (and they would be seen by Goddess worshippers as semi-divine in their own right). So the players will venture out into a strange and uncaring world, on a quest to find the hidden enclave. The world outside the monastery has kinda gone to hell, as previously mentioned. There are roving bands of virus-infected monsters, malfunctioning nanoswarms, and deadly predators. Because hundreds of years have passed since the disappearance of the Goddess, the once proud civilization that existed on the planet has fallen to barbarism. Most people have forgotten the Goddess entirely, so many will view the players as members of a strange cult, or an old, misguided faith (but a misguided faith that has preserved knowledge of nanotech and missile launchers). The ultimate goal of the campaign, if it goes far enough, is to find a way to "cure" the Goddess, remove the threat that the virus poses to all life on the planet, and bring about the dawn of a new era. Once the players find the hidden settlement of Angel-Cyborg-Nautilus-Lobsters, that will become clear, and they will have the tools and the allies to make that happen. The antagonist of this whole crazy story would be this mysterious virus, and I'm still on the fence about it's true nature and it's capabilities. Originally, I thought of it as an ancient creature that originally was the sole inhabitant of this water world. A natural parasite that grew and evolved and spread it's biomass over the whole planet, until it reached a point where it could control it's own evolution, harvest energy from the planet itself, and think with the capacity of a million supercomputers. And then along came a space-faring posthuman race of nanoswarms that found this creature, and was horrified. They destroyed it (almost), and set about giving this world another chance at developing life, under their own guiding hand. So this creature has millions of years to sit and fester beneath the planet's crust, occasionally popping up to analyze the Goddess's nanomachines, and try to synthesize some kind of virus or toxin to shut down it's enemy. And that's how the Goddess eventually falls, even though it is the product of an incredibly advanced civilization. I know that this is all kind of implausible, that a single organism could ever become that advanced without making use of any technology, but I feel like it makes the back-story a little bit more complex. The Goddess can now be seen as an arrogant, paranoid being that usurped the planet from it's rightful ruler, and all the sentient beings of this world are abominations that shouldn't rightfully exist. And I was thinking that all of this would slowly be revealed to the players, and in the end they could make their own decision about how they want the world to be. They could become a part of the ancient virus entity if they wanted (because maybe they'd feel bad for it), they could revive the Goddess like their beliefs dictate, or they could say screw it, let's run this planet ourselves. Or, knowing my players they'd come up with some other ridiculous solution, if they even bothered to follow my plot to this point. So that's it, again feedback is welcome.