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Shades of Fermi...

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Thu, 2009-04-02 12:46
#1
GregH GregH's picture
Shades of Fermi...
One of the few things mentioned from discussions about EP is that while there is evidence of other civilizations, almost all said evidence is in the form of ruins and relics (case in point, Buckley's lovely-spooky spiderweb civilization). That said does it appear that some... thing is culling various alien intelligences? Or is the bulk of the remmnants of other races simply due to the passage of millennia and the likelyhood that not everyone is going to crawl out of the sea at the same time?
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Thu, 2009-04-02 22:15
RobBoyle RobBoyle's picture
I don't want to say much
I don't want to say much right now, but you've hit on an essential part of the backstory for the game.
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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

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Sun, 2009-11-08 06:47
7thSeaLord 7thSeaLord's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
GregH wrote:
One of the few things mentioned from discussions about EP is that while there is evidence of other civilizations, almost all said evidence is in the form of ruins and relics (case in point, Buckley's lovely-spooky spiderweb civilization). That said does it appear that some... thing is culling various alien intelligences? Or is the bulk of the remmnants of other races simply due to the passage of millennia and the likelyhood that not everyone is going to crawl out of the sea at the same time?
My totally off-the wall guess to these questions would be ... both. Sort of.
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"Do it? ... Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago." Ozymandias, The Watchmen
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Mon, 2010-05-17 19:25
Kitsune1842 Kitsune1842's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
The easy answer is...Yes.
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Mon, 2010-05-17 23:05
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
My guess is that the Pandora gates only open onto worlds/solar systems without intelligent native life, whether that's because it hasn't developed yet or it was all wiped out by the Exsurgent Virus.
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Mon, 2010-05-17 23:25
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
nick012000 wrote:
My guess is that the Pandora gates only open onto worlds/solar systems without intelligent native life, whether that's because it hasn't developed yet or it was all wiped out by the Exsurgent Virus.
It's possible that whatever built the pandora gate that's on those planets may very well be the one who killed the native intelligent life. :D
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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]
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Wed, 2010-05-19 16:43
King Shere King Shere's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
nick012000 wrote:
My guess is that the Pandora gates only open onto worlds/solar systems without intelligent native life, whether that's because it hasn't developed yet or it was all wiped out by the Exsurgent Virus.
I had the impression that these Gates open in this solar system. I don't think the gates "discriminate" to where they open. Exsurgent Virus probably using it like any other available transmission media.
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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/tc_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/exh_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [i]"To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult."[/i] Plutarch
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Tue, 2010-06-01 04:50
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
King Shere wrote:
nick012000 wrote:
My guess is that the Pandora gates only open onto worlds/solar systems without intelligent native life, whether that's because it hasn't developed yet or it was all wiped out by the Exsurgent Virus.
I had the impression that these Gates open in this solar system. I don't think the gates "discriminate" to where they open. Exsurgent Virus probably using it like any other available transmission media.
They're like stargates from Stargate; plug in the coordinates, and the wormhole opens, and connects the two gates on either end, only the destination database is a part of the Gate itself rather than stored seperately like in Stargate. As for the Exsurgent Virus, personally I think that they're probably the Bracewell probes responsible for the infection of the TITANs in the first place; they were waiting for us to find them all along, and when a Seed AI found them, and investigated their function in depth (rather than the rather superficial fashion the Prometheans did to design the user interface), infection occurred.
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Tue, 2010-06-01 18:06
Dry Observer Dry Observer's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
nick012000 wrote:
They're like stargates from Stargate; plug in the coordinates, and the wormhole opens, and connects the two gates on either end, only the destination database is a part of the Gate itself rather than stored seperately like in Stargate. As for the Exsurgent Virus, personally I think that they're probably the Bracewell probes responsible for the infection of the TITANs in the first place; they were waiting for us to find them all along, and when a Seed AI found them, and investigated their function in depth (rather than the rather superficial fashion the Prometheans did to design the user interface), infection occurred.
Another "puzzle-box" form of the basilisk hack, then. That might (further) explain why the Factors warned transhumanity away from them, and offer another reason why they're so hard for mere mortals to look at. Look to close, with a sufficiently powerful mind, and the insights you get may destroy you...
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Wed, 2010-06-02 04:19
nick012000 nick012000's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
Also, if the Pandora Gates are the Bracewell Probes, then they probably detect the presence of sentient life in their solar system through the use of the Ego Sense sleight with an interplanetary range. Exsurgent synths can use psi, after all, and who knows how capable a psi-capable Seed AI would be (and the Pandora gates are definitely large enough to hold a Seed AI, even with merely transhuman technology).
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Wed, 2010-06-02 04:46
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
nick012000 wrote:
Also, if the Pandora Gates are the Bracewell Probes, then they probably detect the presence of sentient life in their solar system through the use of the Ego Sense sleight with an interplanetary range. Exsurgent synths can use psi, after all, and who knows how capable a psi-capable Seed AI would be (and the Pandora gates are definitely large enough to hold a Seed AI, even with merely transhuman technology).
Actually, it's very possible that level 3 Exsurgents are effectively organic seed AI... their minds having achieved such great capacity for thought that they can literally use their understanding of the universe to bend it to their will. That may even be why we haven't been able to find TITANs anymore... perhaps they found it more economical to shed their machine bodies and hide amongst us in organic forms that make them look human.
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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]
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Wed, 2010-06-02 11:20
Dry Observer Dry Observer's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
I like the notion that the Exsurgent virus and the Exsurgents, whatever their intended purpose, don't remotely represent the full technology of the ETIs. I think most people take that as a given, but I suspect one reason Exsurgent psi is so odd and hard to fathom isn't just the nature of the power. In part it may be because the ETIs have deliberately empowered their servants with technologies that, while formidable from our perspective, are both hard to reverse engineer and ultimately developmental dead ends. I say this because the Exsurgent virus seems to be aimed at civilizations and technologies vastly inferior to the ETIs. Therefore, if they were ever being studied by a superior or roughly equal civilization/peer competitor, they wouldn't want to have their best secrets, or anything close to them, literally scattered in every nook and cranny of the galaxy. The virus, to my mind, is probably their technological equivalent of the mousetrap. A clever little snappish thing that you really shouldn't stick your finger in when set, and which can be cunningly positioned and baited but otherwise... is just some spring steel, a trigger, and a bit of cheese.
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Wed, 2010-06-02 18:26
Decivre Decivre's picture
Re: Shades of Fermi...
Dry Observer wrote:
I like the notion that the Exsurgent virus and the Exsurgents, whatever their intended purpose, don't remotely represent the full technology of the ETIs. I think most people take that as a given, but I suspect one reason Exsurgent psi is so odd and hard to fathom isn't just the nature of the power. In part it may be because the ETIs have deliberately empowered their servants with technologies that, while formidable from our perspective, are both hard to reverse engineer and ultimately developmental dead ends. I say this because the Exsurgent virus seems to be aimed at civilizations and technologies vastly inferior to the ETIs. Therefore, if they were ever being studied by a superior or roughly equal civilization/peer competitor, they wouldn't want to have their best secrets, or anything close to them, literally scattered in every nook and cranny of the galaxy. The virus, to my mind, is probably their technological equivalent of the mousetrap. A clever little snappish thing that you really shouldn't stick your finger in when set, and which can be cunningly positioned and baited but otherwise... is just some spring steel, a trigger, and a bit of cheese.
Actually, I think that the ETI might be using other intelligent life as a sort of testbed for new technologies. In fact, this may be the way that the ETI develops new technology. By waiting until a species has successfully achieved seed AI development, they can use them as a sort of "intelligent lab rat": forcing them to adapt quickly by prodding them with a threat (the Exsurgent virus) and researching how things pan out, or absorbing the technology developed by their test subjects. Perhaps psi was a technology created by some previously existing species as a means of combating the Exsurgent virus, which failed and led to their species being annihilated; their technology being absorbed.
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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]
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