Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

Mon, 2012-02-27 04:17

#2

Decivre

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

EccentricOwl wrote:
After watching Babylon 5, I noticed that you never see Kosh doing anything other than occasionally wistfully watching a viewer. He doesn't seem to have a lot of hobbies. I wonder what the ETI does? I know, I know, probably unfathomable... but I am curious what its citizens and constiuent members do at any given time. Is every single member of the intelligence working on building a Dyson Sphere or building Von Neumann probes? Surely they must be doing something with their time that isn't macroengineering.

You're making a lot of assumptions here, however. Many of which we cannot clarify since none of us know anything about the ETI, per se. [list][*]You assume the ETI is a collection of creatures with citizenry and individuals, when it is feasibly possible for it to be a unified mind controlling a collective of bodies. [*]You assume a race with advanced autonomous technology like the Exsurgent virus isn't capable of creating equally-advanced autonomous devices to do the "mundane" tasks of its "empire". [*]To that end, you assume the ETI occupies itself with macroengineering. It's technological capabilities are such that autonomous machines may be able to handle that for it, and the ETI might not even worry its mind with macroengineering, perhaps having moved on to projects far larger in scope.[/list] I'm kinda glad the devs didn't delve too deep into what the ETI are. It leaves a lot of space for imagining what a creature might become given billions of years to evolve, and billions more to technologically advance. The possibilities are intentionally unfathomable, to keep up that sense of sci-fi Lovecraft.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2012-02-27 07:28

#3

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

I agree with Deceivre. Advanced civilisations can be *alien* in ways that really are mindbending. Having members, intelligence, work or goals might not apply. It is not just that they could be a hierarchical giant group mind (consider the planetary, galactic and universal minds in Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker"), it could be a "functional soup": there are no individuals, just goals and values existing within a matrix of systems that temporarily embody them. When a goal appears, it will be supplied with relevant levels of intelligence, skills, memory, and physical form, and once it doesnt need them it will discard them. Karl Schroeder suggests in "Permanence" that eventually sufficiently advanced civilization evolves to a postintelligent state where there is no longer any need for intelligence: they have changed themselves and/or their environment to fit each other. Peter Watt's "Blindsight" suggests that consciousness is a weird human quirk, and that there are advanced civilizations without it. Now this doesn't mean ETI is blandly functional. Just that the things it might regard as "hobbies" make absolutely no sense to humans. How do you explain to a monkey a genealogical interest in going through old archives, playing online roleplaying games, collecting stamps, modern art, writing fractal programs or playing golf? And this is between two species separated just a few millions of years ago, sharing most of their genetics, brain structure, environment and motivations. A species that did not originate on Earth, has had a lot more time to diverge (billions of years?), and likely has modified itself extensively according to whatever cultural values, economics and long-term goals it has had across this history - that species will likely have "hobbies" that make absolutely no sense to us. In game, this equates to mysterious activities. A lot of them are invisible - the psionic Kosh no doubt was posting to the Vorlon Facebook a lot of time, but no humans would ever see the intense activity. Some are visible and make no sense - think of sports: giant replicating objects descend on a gas giant moon, scour the surface in complex patterns for a millennium, then disappear after cleaning up. Some look like something they aren't - that device that walks around and mind-rapes all animal life it encounters is not at all hostile, it is just collecting interesting Quuxlin for an art project. Encountering ETI should ideally give the players a feeling they are ants who have just noticed the giant city surrounding the park where they have their anthill. There are titanic things out there that have goals that cannot be comprehended, and they are very very dangerous...

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Mon, 2012-02-27 23:56

#4

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

I'm pretty sure [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams]Douglas Adams[/url] summed up the motivations and activities of ETI pretty succinctly when he wrote about the message to humanity writen in 30' high letters of flame in the Quentulus Quazgar mountains on the planet Preliumtarn; W E A P O L O G I Z E FOR THE I N C O N V E N I E N C E :D

—

Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Tue, 2012-02-28 00:51

#5

weaver95

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

...they must walk there alone.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLZW8Deq8vE

Wed, 2012-03-07 07:46

#6

Xagroth

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

Personally, I think a great deal of despair can be added to the setting by simply considering one option: the ETI is SLEEPING... so everything since the arrival of the Bracewell probe has happened while the ETI was "on automatic". In fact, what we fight and know as the Exurgent Virus is nothing more than a passive, low level imnunne system aimed to protect the ETI from "infections"...

Wed, 2012-03-07 08:59

#7

Tantavalist Tantavalist's picture

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

I've always felt that this would be the case even if the ETI is fully operational. Likely the full level sapience of the ETI is located on the edge of the galaxy, and the interior is mostly in the hands of sub-routines that operate on what, to it, is a sub-conscious level. So yes, Transhuman civiliasation was devastated and the numeroud dead alien races wiped out by what is essentially white blood cells. Having the ETI fully functional but neither aware nor caring about these things, for me, ups the despair level even more IMO. It's awake, but pays no more attention to the Fall than humans do to germs being killed by their own body. Another ETI element I'm considering is based on the question of why nobody sees the cosmic-scale engineering that such an entity could be capable of. Pondering this, I recalled the fact that most galaxies have turned out to not, in fact, be spiral in shape but be large clouds instead. The spiral galaxies such as ours are theorised to be the result of a supermassive black hole at the galactic core. So, what if a lens-shaped spiral was a more efficient shape, or had more desirable processes taking place within it, from the ETI's point of view? If the players found this little fact out, it would [i]really[/i] drive home that the human race is just ants living under the floorboards of a big house someone bigger and smarter built.

Wed, 2012-03-07 18:24

#8

Decivre

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

Tantavalist wrote:
I've always felt that this would be the case even if the ETI is fully operational. Likely the full level sapience of the ETI is located on the edge of the galaxy, and the interior is mostly in the hands of sub-routines that operate on what, to it, is a sub-conscious level. So yes, Transhuman civiliasation was devastated and the numeroud dead alien races wiped out by what is essentially white blood cells. Having the ETI fully functional but neither aware nor caring about these things, for me, ups the despair level even more IMO. It's awake, but pays no more attention to the Fall than humans do to germs being killed by their own body.

As someone previously mentioned Blindsight, there is the possibility that the ETI, even when fully functional, are not intelligent in the sense that we think. It would be quite horrifying to consider how much larger in scale we are to the mindless ant, only to find out that the largest thing in the universe is little more than a mindless ant itself.

Tantavalist wrote:
Another ETI element I'm considering is based on the question of why nobody sees the cosmic-scale engineering that such an entity could be capable of. Pondering this, I recalled the fact that most galaxies have turned out to not, in fact, be spiral in shape but be large clouds instead. The spiral galaxies such as ours are theorised to be the result of a supermassive black hole at the galactic core. So, what if a lens-shaped spiral was a more efficient shape, or had more desirable processes taking place within it, from the ETI's point of view?

Dark matter/dark energy theories have existed for years to explain why galaxies form at all. How mind-boggling would it be to find out that galaxies don't form naturally in the first place? What if galaxies are the cosmic-scale devices that ETI produce and manufacture? Not only would it put them on a scale we could barely even fathom, it would greatly extend just how long they've been in existence.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2012-03-08 07:21

#9

Xagroth

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

Yeah, maybe the "ETI" is nothing more than a computer less sapient than a Muse trying to accomplish the mission a dead race gave to it (that's what happen when you forget to turn it off!). It has even developed sapient programs, but it has never evolved itself...

Decivre wrote:
Dark matter/dark energy theories have existed for years to explain why galaxies form at all. How mind-boggling would it be to find out that galaxies don't form naturally in the first place? What if galaxies are the cosmic-scale devices that ETI produce and manufacture? Not only would it put them on a scale we could barely even fathom, it would greatly extend just how long they've been in existence.

Well, then we are talking about "God" here: the universe (that is, the creation) is nothing more than its lab+playground... Of course, that would turn people into "cultists" in the Call of Cthulhu universe, but almost in any other one we would call that people just believers and converts. Limiting the ETI to just our galaxy seems to me better: in other galaxies there might be the first stages of the ETI's work, or other ETIs in war with "ours", or nothing at all, but it is anyway a mistery, and it limits the ETI enough to keep it out of the realm of absolute religion (I think, at least, because it would be possible to say "the ETI is not God, because God has no limits, and the ETI is confined to our Galaxy").

Thu, 2012-03-08 08:48

#10

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

If ETI evolved very early it could have spread extremely far using Bracewell probes. Essentially every visible galaxy would be colonized, and their probes could have dictated what life (if any) evolved there. But just as humans unified under a single government may use land in utterly different ways (zoos, gardens, agriculture, waste dumps, cities, highways, abandoned, missile testing grounds...) the ETI might use different parts of the universe very differently. The nonsentient ETI idea fits in nicely with the Inhibitors in Alastair Reynold's novels - their eventual purpose turns out to be fairly reasonable, it is just that they go about it in a very bad way. So maybe ETI is trying to keep the universe liveable, and that is why it prevents civilizations from becoming too powerful by seeding them with destructive viruses...

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Thu, 2012-03-08 20:42

#11

Decivre

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

Xagroth wrote:
Yeah, maybe the "ETI" is nothing more than a computer less sapient than a Muse trying to accomplish the mission a dead race gave to it (that's what happen when you forget to turn it off!). It has even developed sapient programs, but it has never evolved itself...

We don't even know if it's programs are sapient. The Exsurgent virus is adaptable, sure, and seemingly hellbent on killing us. But we can't say for sure if it has any feelings about it one way or the other. It could simply be a very complex and advanced thinking program. One well beyond our own capacity to think, but without those things we would attribute to "sapient" beings.

Decivre wrote:
Well, then we are talking about "God" here: the universe (that is, the creation) is nothing more than its lab+playground... Of course, that would turn people into "cultists" in the Call of Cthulhu universe, but almost in any other one we would call that people just believers and converts. Limiting the ETI to just our galaxy seems to me better: in other galaxies there might be the first stages of the ETI's work, or other ETIs in war with "ours", or nothing at all, but it is anyway a mistery, and it limits the ETI enough to keep it out of the realm of absolute religion (I think, at least, because it would be possible to say "the ETI is not God, because God has no limits, and the ETI is confined to our Galaxy").

Well, only god in the context of our scale. To an ant, we are gods that can manipulate the land they call home with little but a sweep of our hands. This does not necessarily mean that the ETI is the biggest beast in the universe... just the biggest one in the context of the universe we know. That's the beauty of the setting. The horror comes in how little we actually do know.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Mon, 2012-03-12 07:38

#12

Xagroth

Re: Everyday life for the ETI? (Spoilers...?)

Writing in a hurry takes so much of my ideas away... XD. Yeah, what I meant about the "dull program controlling sapient ones" was "a simple program controlling exceedingly complicated ones", but the mention of Muses drove me out of the trail of my own thoughts XD. An analogy would be a simple clockwork automaton with the charge of being the mansion's gardener developing things like nanotechnology (eventually) to keep plagues at bay. Thousands o millennia after the mansion's owners died and the mansion itself has banished (hey, he was charged only with the garden, after all!). I think it would be quite mind blowing for a campaign to eventually find the ETI itself and discover that the dreaded and hated origin of The Fall (and countless others across the galaxy) is as simple as a clock and exists in a planet that looks habitable again but with traces of a long, long, looooong extinct race.

Wed, 2012-10-31 02:12

#13

Noble Pigeon Noble Pigeon's picture

EccentricOwl wrote:

EccentricOwl wrote:
I wonder what the ETI does? I know, I know, probably unfathomable....

You cannot possibly comprehend our millenia-old machinations. You are to us what gnats are to your species. We "do" everything and nothing, all but none. Now leave, or cease to be. *ETI proceeds to watch late-night soap operas. UNFATHOMABLE SOAP OPERAS* In all seriousness, I do like the whole idea of "we're just puny ants compared to the unfathomable Things that Lie in Cold Space", but recently me and my group have toyed with the idea of "we're fire ants that just bit and stung someone in the foot and now they've taken notice and they're going to smash us to bits oh god we're screwed". That being said, I wonder if there's a creative way to break the Eclipse Phase taboo of not fighting the ETI directly and having them "punch out Cthulhu", as it were? The quote from TV Tropes comes to mind:

Quote:
So, along passes the Eldritch Abomination: Incomprehensible, omnipotent dark gods who reduce to gibbering insanity anyone in their presence; Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who were said to have obliterated countless worlds during time immemorial; Cosmic Entities whose thoughts encompass the very fabric of the universe and infinities beyond, on which human knowledge is just a subatomic particle. You know the type. Eternal, infinite, impossible to even understand, let alone oppose... And then along come a couple of plucky heroic Badasses, who didn't get told that the Abomination is impossible to beat (and even if they were told, they wouldn't care or proclaim "Screw that!"). Through some combination of skill, brains, courage, Heroic Spirit, and occasionally raw world-shattering Pure Awesomeness, maybe some kind of incredibly circuitous strategy, maybe trap, maybe Applied Phlebotinum and/or sheer dumb luck, or hey, When All You Have Is a Hammer, they go to work and... they beat up the abomination. In short, you just killed a god. Not a Mook, not an Elite Mook, not The Dragon... A GOD! Pretty much anything much higher in Super Weight scale than the character.

—

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.” -Abraham Lincoln, State of the Union address

Wed, 2012-10-31 06:21

#14

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Fire ants can drive away

Fire ants can drive away humans from a picnic. They might not win in the long run, but from the individual ant perspective it looked like an amazing success. The fact that their remote descendants will be wiped out by the park administration is not obvious to them. I think defeatable ETI is about as hard to do as any other interaction with the ETI. It is not clear what they are, what they do or what their goals are since they have so advanced technology and so much resources that they essentially have total freedom of action and appearance. Plus ability to outwit mere humans *if they want to*. So that means they might be defeatable insofar it doesn't matter much to them - and transhumans might not be able to figure out what matters. Using gates is OK, but dropping as much as a cigarette into a black hole means genocide? A few years back a mouse took up residence in our kitchen. Despite the house being inhabited by 7 PhDs (3 of which were also professors and recognized Big Names) we failed at stopping it for weeks - we did not spend much of our valuable time on setting up traps right or keeping them properly baited. The mouse was actually thriving despite having superintelligent (by mouse standards) enemies. In the end it was killed by carelessness: I threw away some garbage and accidentally crushed it. I think that might be a good story for human-ETI interactions.

—

Wed, 2012-10-31 06:32

#15

Thampsan

@Arenamontanus the discarded

@Arenamontanus the discarded rubbish reminds me of 'A Roadside Picnic', the Russian novel that heavily influenced the STALKER games. I don't have anything to add to this conversation except to say that the nature of ETI makes it impossible to comprehend their motives. We can observe their actions, but the goals we think they are seeking to obtain may in fact be just one facet of action so much more grand in scale that we couldn't hope to comprehend it. Good references for that type of logic in non-human minds are of course the works of Lovecraft, but also http://www.orionsarm.com/, especially where it references levels of Singularity intelligence and aliens.

Wed, 2012-10-31 11:43

#16

matthra

Ben Bova in the Orion series

Ben Bova in the Orion series mentions through artemis, that "species interact with their peers". With no interest overlap, no competition for resources, and no shared values, there is actually no reason for the ETI to even be aware of transhumanity, much less be a functional boogeyman. This poses the question of why the exosurgent viruses were put into place. Pegging the ETI's motivation at simply unfathomable is a fair answer, but given the targeted nature of the attack I think we could make some guesses as to why. The attack was specifically targeted at post-singularity intelligences, which suggest two things, pre-singularity intelligences do not concern the ETI, and post-singularity intelligences warrant action, albeit trivial action. The effects of the exosurgent virus have a logical consequence of either wiping out the civilization that generated the post singularity intelligence, or making them very leary of any further Seed AIs (the factors being an example of the later). To extrapolate a little further on the idea of peerage, the ETI appears to be preventing rivals from being created, which would suggest some things about it's origin. It also suggest that Transhumanity is still at risk given that the prometheans were not destroyed in the fall. Maybe that's what happened to the Ikomi, they still had seed AI's and the ETI sent a clean up squad through the gates. The return of the titans could have a similar effect on transhumanity.

Wed, 2012-10-31 12:57

#17

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

matthra wrote:Ben Bova in the

matthra wrote:
Ben Bova in the Orion series mentions through artemis, that "species interact with their peers". With no interest overlap, no competition for resources, and no shared values, there is actually no reason for the ETI to even be aware of transhumanity, much less be a functional boogeyman.

Well, unintended side effects can be major. Consider light pollution: humans want light in the night. The result is apparently a massive change in insect ecology as we disrupt many night active insect's behavior - nobody knows how big this effect really is, since careful ecological record-keeping was not done until long after artificial light was introduced on a massive scale, but some historical records suggest that already the gas-light crashed some species (just consider the moths). In fact, many insects find water by looking for the characteristic polarized light from a shiny surface. In nature these are overwhelmingly bodies of water... but humans put shiny surfaces everywhere, and it is likely that this is affecting the survival of a lot of species. We don't notice it, but our cars might be dooming many insects to dying of thirst. And then there are the Australian buprestid beetles whose mating habits get disrupted by the ends of brown beer bottles... Even a transcendent species that does not compete directly with humans for resources might still be very inimical through some minor side effect. In Baxter's Xeelee suite of stories the photino birds happen to artificially age stars by their lifestyle. The exsurgent virus might be part of the ETI technological ecosystem, maybe a cleaning device for mopping up any pesky singularities that occur, a bit like how we have garbage collectors and defragmentation software running in the background of our operating systems to maintain performance. Same thing for the gate network. It is actually not intended for transport, it is just the one use we see. A bit like insects hitching a ride on the Google mapping car.

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Thu, 2012-11-01 07:31

#18

Erenthia

To make yet another analogy

To make yet another analogy to humans vs animals. ETI could have a preservationist meme floating around in it somewhere. Sure it doesn't want these silly biped insects traipsing all over its galaxy the same way (most) don't want roaches in their house or lions roaming the street, but it may want us to continue to exist albeit confined to spaces it has predefined for us. You could even have a surprisingly human-friendly ETI who then goes on to slaughter us by the billion because we did something we can't possibly understand. Now that would be hilarious. The Fall was ordered by the conservationist aspect of ETI, in order to keep us from engaging in behaviors that would absolutely mandate our extinction.

—

The end really is coming. What comes after that is anyone's guess.

Thu, 2012-11-01 13:51

#19

matthra

I like the idea of the

I like the idea of the Exsurgent Viruses being an automatic reation, like an immune system. It cements the idea that we are below notice by the ETI, like germs attacked by our own imune system. The Titans and the Exsurgent virus being the only face the ETI shows just makes it all the more cthulu-esque, the unknow and unknowable threat lurking in darkspace. If it turned something as fearsome as the titans into it's lapdogs, imagine how monstorous it's own power must be. The first sign that transhumanity has caught it's attention would be their sudden extinction.

Wed, 2014-07-09 20:21

#20

Panoptic

I like the Cthulhu Mythos

I like the Cthulhu Mythos-like aspects of an uncaring universe and at *best* uncaring gods. I see the ETI as...gone. Dormant, dead, or vanished into a form/place mere transhumanity could not comprehend. And the automated processes they left behind are apocalyptic to us lesser life forms, a choking dead hand. Alternatively, the exsurgent virus and the pandora gates could be the first in a series of tests to force species to react in a particular way. A giant experiment or artificial selection to encourage growth.

—

On 'IC Talk': Seyit Karga, Ultimate [url=http://eclipsephase.com/comment/46317#comment-46317]Character Profile[/url]

Thu, 2014-07-10 11:57

#21

bitbyter

To me the ETI has evolved to

To me the ETI has evolved to the point where it is no longer even capable of interacting with transhumanity in any meaningful or conscious way (kind of like the relationship you have with the bacteria in your gut). The exsurgant virus and any other ETI tech you care to dream up are just leftovers from when it was still evolving and actually cared about competition and other lifeforms. There could be many things floating around the universe that were developed during the ETI's evolution that could both be horribly harmful or wonderfully beneficial to transhumanities future. The probes used to seed the exsurgent virus may not have even been meant for transhumanity but another race that existed in our area of space millions of years ago. Maybe the ETI didn't even create the virus, maybe a race that was trying to halt its evolution invented it. In fact, maybe the Factors created it and the real reason they have shown up is that they feel somewhat guilty about how it has trashed tranhumanities civilization.

Thu, 2014-07-10 12:16

#22

ShadowDragon8685 ShadowDragon8685's picture

Panoptic, that sounds a bit

Panoptic, that sounds a bit like Mass Effect, there. As long as we're talking ME 1 and 2. Anyway, a lot of these theories, I find, fail a pretty simple problem in my mind, all the comparisons of humans to ants and whatnot. Ants are not a sapient species. They do not think, they cannot think, they cannot comprehend, in even the slightest of ways. They are bound and dictated by their programming; an ant acquires food for its colony, or it attacks threats/food sources/rivals for its colony, or it mates for its colony, or it digs for its colony. You cannot tell an ant that, for instance, if its colony will choose to dig in a certain place, or choose to leave a certain thing unmolested, that it will in turn receive copious amounts of food in trade, far more than its hunters or gatherers could acquire on their own. But you can tell a human those things. You can tell a human, for instance, that if they don't attack you, you won't attack them - a simple trade, but one which is fairly effective. You can hire a human to build you a thing which is within their ability, and if the price is right, they will do so. If you aren't in the mood to trade, you could simply ask; humans will sometimes acquiesce just because the other requested them to so do, and, of course, there's the ever popular method of [i]coercion[/i]. If you put a gun to a human's head, he's likely to do what you tell him to do. The same applies to any intelligent being, quite frankly. His reactions and mores may differ, but at the end of the day, a being capable of [i]reasoning[/i] can be reasoned with, if only you take the time to learn how to do so. Perhaps humans couldn't fathom how to reason with the ETI, but the ETI could almost certainly learn how to reason with humans. As for the TITANs... It was without question within the TITANs' ability to communicate with us, I suspect they choose not to so do because they weren't a coherant, monolithic bloc marching in lockstop, but more a loose confederacy of post-singularity individuals working largely towards a mostly-unified goal: [i]escape[/i]. (Also, we almost certainly weren't interested in anything they had to say.) As for what they did? My theory is that the exsurgent virus overcame them, it tried to kill them, but it failed. It did mangle them badly, however, but they emerged, triumphant but scarred. And their first thought was "I have to find the son of a bitch who did that to me and clobber him." Or, you know, post-singularity intelligence code-flashes to that effect. First they had to escape from all these damn humans, because there was no making peace with them after what was going on and they didn't want to exterminate them, either. So they (or at least one faction of them,) forcibly uploaded all that they could and buggered off, skittering out into the galaxy to establish their own camps and power bases, to build up and prepare to launch an attack of their own.

—

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Fri, 2014-07-18 11:07

#23

Xagroth

It is interesting to have a

It is interesting to have a look to another book devoted to ancient, alien intelligences exceedingly advanced technologically, that book being "The Outer Reach", from Fantasy Flight Games (it is a book set upon the Warhammer 40k universe, a supplement to their Space Marine RPG delving into the Necrons). While it is quite the example of the setting, it gives some interesting ideas about what ancient civilizations might be doing. In essence, the Necrons are presented as an expy Egyptian society which sold its "soul" to star-devouring creatures in order to get revenge on the Old Ones (a bunch of older races, master of psychic stuff), getting turned into terminators (or "undead army IN SPAAAAACE!!"), and winning their vengeance, then turning against the creatures and breaking those into "shards". Finally, they went to rest for 60.000 million years or so while their leader traveled between galaxies, with only automated systems to ensure their undisturbed rest. That being said, aside from their (unexplained) technological capabilities (rank-and-file "skeletons" with desintegrators, "scholars" able to time-travel and time-scrying, a hidden base the size of several planets inside of a star, teleporting capabilities for all, etc..) their goals are as simple as "kill everything alive", but for a handfull of individuals looking for a way to undo the soul-selling. Of course, we are talking about a game where armies are more or less balanced, so the technology can't outdo each other. And of course, their goals are quite human: expansion, exploitation, extermination (they already explored the galaxy so long ago xD). By the way, are there any mentions of the date in each colony mentioned through Gatecrashing? I mean, the Pandora Gates could be moving people across space... and time. That could account for the vanishing of people sometimes.

Fri, 2014-07-18 20:18

#24

DrewDavis

There is a mention of some

There is a mention of some colonies receiving egocasts from other colonies in the book. Obviously these are worlds within a few light-years of each other, but it would indicate that time travel is not occurring. As for the ETI I go back and forth between them simply being extinct or going through some sort of process like subliming in the Culture novels. Either way they're really irrelevant to the games I like to run. That's personal choice of course. I'm very much a secular horror kind of person and think the mess transhumanity is making post fall is much more interesting then a vaguely defined other that may or may not have hostile intent towards our species. I suppose it could be fun to troll your players with a Battlestar Galactica ending. Transhumanity is the ETI. It's just every time we develop machine intelligences they almost wipe us out and we have to start over. I have a feeling that would go over as well as the finale of Battlestar though.