The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
The Holy World of Hearthside
Here's a picture of Hearthside. Most of their power comes from solar as you might expect. The City of Eternal Noon is located at the substellar point. The Eternal Hearth is the chief lighthouse for all of the Bright Way. In stead of a star hearth, the sanctuary is located under an oculus that lets in the light from Focus overhead. The light shines on a large mirror, symbolically making Focus itself the star hearth for the lighthouse.
I squished it, and skewed it, and turned it all around!
I tweaked the Star and Gear a bit. It has a different color palette. The star is now gold instead of pure yellow, and there's an arch representing the Claravian halo. The normal star and gear sans arch is still the traditional holy symbol for the Bright Way, but I like the idea that icons would be framed like this.
Re: I squished it, and skewed it, and turned it all around!
I liked more previous symbol...lurker wrote: ↑09 Oct 2024 13:40
I tweaked the Star and Gear a bit. It has a different color palette. The star is now gold instead of pure yellow, and there's an arch representing the Claravian halo. The normal star and gear sans arch is still the traditional holy symbol for the Bright Way, but I like the idea that icons would be framed like this.
RTFM
“Take these and toss them in the shredder!” Skywatcher shoved a loose pile of claw-written papers into his slave’s chest. The sound of something heavy slamming against the fortified security door echoed down the darkened hallway, followed by muffled barked orders, then another slam.
Whitepaw looked down at the notes hastily thrust at her. A light held in her tail feebly illuminated the text. Network diagrams, node tables, firewall rules. Decades, no, centuries worth of meticulous documentation poured out in the anchorite’s own ink. “This… this is our entire network segment,” she gasped.
“Yeah, now shred it. All of it,” growled Skywatcher. “I already wiped the backup drives. If those scripture-thumping zealots want their precious noosphere they’ll have to work for it.”
“Body,” Whitepaw yipped meekly. “The network is the body of the noosphere, not the noosphere itself.”
Skywatcher wrinkled his muzzle, exposing his fangs. “I KNEW you were one of them. When I was your age, I believed in all that cloaca butter, too. Then I grew up. I swear each new slave I get is more pious than the last. If you’re not going to help me, then get out of my way!” He tore the papers back from her and spun around, his tail striking her in the chest. She toppled backward. Her shoulder hit a half-empty equipment rack stacked precariously with unmounted equipment. Whitepaw landed on her back just as the rack teetered over and fell in turn, burying her in a mound of inert electronics and knocking the wind out of her.
SMASH!
The noise of the collapsing equipment rack was drowned out by the sound of the security door being torn from its hinges. Sunlight streamed through the breach. Mechanical footfalls thumped down the hall and into the office. From her spot on the floor Whitepaw saw the hulking form of a mini mech lope into the room. Its body looked like some prehistoric monster wrought in polymerite and steel. Its torso was too short, and its forelegs were too long. Its forepaws were curled into fists, the knuckles bearing the weight of the mech’s front end rather than its palms. This was no knight of the sun. The mech’s right foreleg bore the sign of the Partisans, a black paw held palm out in defiance. The Partisans’ credo was scrawled in Outlander below the black paw, “The skies are empty. We are alone.”
Skywatcher stared open-mouthed into the mech’s visor. The pilot’s mouth was half-open, his tongue protruding slightly, but his eyes were closed, and his head flopped seemingly lifeless to one side.
“An Immortal,” Skywatcher stammered. The pilot couldn’t have been older than Whitepaw herself, at least in body. Who knows how long he had been in metabolic suspension plugged into that mech. His fur clung in ragged wet mats to his gaunt expressionless face. It looked like it could be white, but the neurogel he was pickled in turned it yellow. His eyes did not see. His paws did not feel. His heart did not beat. His body was dead, but his brain was frighteningly active, kept alive by the amnion.
Whitepaw had heard stories of these Immortals. They started out as gel heads recruited by the disorganized secularist warlords dotted across the Outer Belt. They were usually terminally addicted teens who couldn’t be unplugged without flatlining. Their amnion would be integrated into a mech, and their nervous system would be connected to the mech’s sensor suite and control system. They say the Partisans found a way to slow down a person’s time perception while in suspension, allowing them to react with lightning speed to what was going on around them. Whether this was true or not, they were legendarily hard to dispatch. After Firefly the Apostate united the secularist warlords under the Partisan banner, he turned these Immortals into his elite shock troops. Oddly fitting given the Great Leader himself never left his own amnion even after returning from his failed missionary journey. Undead soldiers for Litchlord Firefly. The dregs of society proved to be poorly disciplined soldiers, so he started recruiting otherwise healthy men, using suspension capsules scavenged from unlaunched womb ships abandoned by the fleeing missionaries. The device of the missionaries, two enmeshed gears symbolizing the union of two noospheres, was still visible on the side of the capsule. The Partisans deliberately left it uncovered in an act of blasphemous mockery of the faith.
The mech wordlessly strode forward and lifted Skywatcher by the neck. The anchorite let out a few choking gasps, straining with a rear paw to grab some blunt object to toss at the metal brute. He managed to grab the heavy metal head of a loose network cable and send it flying at his attacker. It bounced off the mech’s free forepaw and landed uselessly back on the floor. The pilot’s tongue gave a barely perceptible twitch as though he were laughing at his victim’s futile struggling. The mech’s writing claw and inner thumb moved to grip the sides of the Farspeaker’s head, preparing to twist it off like a bottle cap. Whitepaw bit her tongue to stop herself from yelping. Skywatcher had not been a particularly kind master, but nobody deserved to die like this.
The pilot’s left ear flicked lazily as he processed an unheard order from his handlers waiting outside. He loosened his grip on Skywatcher’s head, then tossed him carelessly over the mech’s back and caught him again in the coils of the mech’s tail. The Immortal turned and plodded out of the room. Skywatcher looked helplessly at the pile of equipment Whitepaw was hiding under. The tail constricting his midsection didn’t keep him from wheezing out desperate prayers, seeking refuge in the faith he had scorned not three minutes earlier.
Whitepaw lay still, forgotten for the moment, at least she prayed so. She heard harsh barking coming from outside. Two more Partisans were questioning the anchorite. Skywatcher uttered a few raspy oaths to please his lightless captors. They didn’t seem impressed.
“You can either give us your network documentation willingly, or we can squeeze it out of you,” one of them growled.
“Please, by the empty sky,” he gasped. “Hard copies. I’ve got hard copies in the office where you found me.”
Whitepaw shuddered. If she hadn’t been seen before they’d surely find her when they came back inside. She dug her claws into her palms and shut her eyes tight. “Don’t focus on the pain,” she told herself. “No matter how much it will hurt, at least it will be over quickly. Then I won’t have to worry about the war anymore.” She uttered a final prayer. “O Uncreated Light, please shine upon me, the least of thy little ones.”
THUMP!
A dull tremor shook the floor underneath her.
THUMP!
And then another, and then even more. The two Partisans began shouting incoherently. “A Knight—no there’s three,” one of them barked. There was more yelling, then the shriek of metal on metal as the Immortal engaged the interloping mechs. The din of combat seemed to stretch on forever. The Knights’ mechs were much larger than the Immortal. There were three of them, and each one was manned by both a Knight controlling the mech’s movements and main weapons, and a squire covering secondary weapons and managing the mech’s systems. Even with all those advantages, the Immortal’s preternatural reaction time would make any victory for the Knights hard won.
There was an almighty crash as the outer wall and roof of the building were torn away. Sunlight flooded what was left of the office. Whitepaw opened her eyes and saw one of the Knights’ mechs looming over her. It was proportioned much more like a yinrih, with recognizable head, torso, and limbs. Its head turned down to face her. It lifted one of its great metal paws and began deftly removing the debris piled on top of her.
She stood up and shook the dust from her fur. A hatch on the mech’s underbelly lowered, revealing the two yinrih within. The knight pulled off his HUD visor and jumped out. “Praise the Light, you’re alive! Are you hurt?”
“I think I’m OK,” Whitepaw muttered as she stared at the aftermath of the fight. The other two knights had alighted their own mechs. The Immortal was in pieces. The amnion and its occupant lay off to one side, the tubes and wires that had connected it to the mini mech spilled out behind it. The rest of its body was scattered far and wide. He hadn’t gone down easily though. The mech that had freed Whitepaw from the rubble was missing its tail, and one of the others had a tail-wide dent on one side of its face, shattering its optics and stripping off the whiskery antennas on that side of its muzzle. The two Partisan handlers stood silently beside one of the mechs. All eight paws were shackled together, the mech’s rear paw rested on the chain, anchoring it in place.
One of the squires approached Skywatcher, dipping his head respectfully. “My reverend anchorite, could you show us the documentation for your segment of the network?”
“Choke on it, fundy!” Skywatcher spat. “I wiped the data drives, and good luck finding what’s left of my notes in that rubble.”
“Another Preservationist,” the squire called over to his knight. “You know, we could have let those Partisans tear you in half. They would have killed you even if you gave them what they wanted.”
“Found ’em!” Whitepaw and her rescuer trotted up to the rest of the group. The knight had Skywatcher’s notes wrapped in his tail. “This kind young lady showed me where they were.”
“You eggless wretch!” Skywatcher barked at Whitepaw.
“You are free, and your debt is forgiven.” The knight addressed Whitepaw while glaring at the anchorite.
“By whose authority?!” growled Skywatcher.
“By the decree of her radiance, high hearthkeeper Iris,” the knight responded.
“Just get over there.” One of the knights bound Skywatcher and led him to one of the mechs, far away from his former captors.
“So, what’s going to happen to the Immortal?” asked Whitepaw.
“Well,” said her rescuer pointing his muzzle at the suspension capsule, “He is currently profaning a blessed instrument of our Holy Work. He’s going back to Hearthside with us, and we’ll hand him off to an order of rehabilitators. They’ll try to wean him off the gel, but by the time most of these poor lickers get plugged into those mini mechs their psyche is so integrated into the simulacrum generated by the amnion that they’ll die without it. If that’s the case they’ll get his metabolism running again and he’ll live out his natural life in sim.”
“What about me?” she asked.
“Like I said, you’re free. We can’t make you do anything. I’d suggest that you accompany us back to Hearthside as that’s the furthest away from the front. A lot of freed slaves want nothing to do with their former work, but we can set you up with the Farspeakers there if you wish. You’d be paid justly as an apprentice, depending on your experience you could be made an anchoress.” His voice caught on his next words. “A lot of slaves want nothing to do with the Faith, either. It hurts me that we pushed people away like that, but again, we can’t force you to do anything.”
“But you didn’t do any of that,” Whitepaw interjected. “You saved my life.”
“You’re right,” said the knight. “It may not be our fault personally, but it is our responsibility as Wayfarers to fix what the Preservationists broke. The Bright Way singing liturgies on Hearthside is the same Bright Way extorting and enslaving people on Yih.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Whitepaw. “I'll help make things right, too.”
Whitepaw looked down at the notes hastily thrust at her. A light held in her tail feebly illuminated the text. Network diagrams, node tables, firewall rules. Decades, no, centuries worth of meticulous documentation poured out in the anchorite’s own ink. “This… this is our entire network segment,” she gasped.
“Yeah, now shred it. All of it,” growled Skywatcher. “I already wiped the backup drives. If those scripture-thumping zealots want their precious noosphere they’ll have to work for it.”
“Body,” Whitepaw yipped meekly. “The network is the body of the noosphere, not the noosphere itself.”
Skywatcher wrinkled his muzzle, exposing his fangs. “I KNEW you were one of them. When I was your age, I believed in all that cloaca butter, too. Then I grew up. I swear each new slave I get is more pious than the last. If you’re not going to help me, then get out of my way!” He tore the papers back from her and spun around, his tail striking her in the chest. She toppled backward. Her shoulder hit a half-empty equipment rack stacked precariously with unmounted equipment. Whitepaw landed on her back just as the rack teetered over and fell in turn, burying her in a mound of inert electronics and knocking the wind out of her.
SMASH!
The noise of the collapsing equipment rack was drowned out by the sound of the security door being torn from its hinges. Sunlight streamed through the breach. Mechanical footfalls thumped down the hall and into the office. From her spot on the floor Whitepaw saw the hulking form of a mini mech lope into the room. Its body looked like some prehistoric monster wrought in polymerite and steel. Its torso was too short, and its forelegs were too long. Its forepaws were curled into fists, the knuckles bearing the weight of the mech’s front end rather than its palms. This was no knight of the sun. The mech’s right foreleg bore the sign of the Partisans, a black paw held palm out in defiance. The Partisans’ credo was scrawled in Outlander below the black paw, “The skies are empty. We are alone.”
Skywatcher stared open-mouthed into the mech’s visor. The pilot’s mouth was half-open, his tongue protruding slightly, but his eyes were closed, and his head flopped seemingly lifeless to one side.
“An Immortal,” Skywatcher stammered. The pilot couldn’t have been older than Whitepaw herself, at least in body. Who knows how long he had been in metabolic suspension plugged into that mech. His fur clung in ragged wet mats to his gaunt expressionless face. It looked like it could be white, but the neurogel he was pickled in turned it yellow. His eyes did not see. His paws did not feel. His heart did not beat. His body was dead, but his brain was frighteningly active, kept alive by the amnion.
Whitepaw had heard stories of these Immortals. They started out as gel heads recruited by the disorganized secularist warlords dotted across the Outer Belt. They were usually terminally addicted teens who couldn’t be unplugged without flatlining. Their amnion would be integrated into a mech, and their nervous system would be connected to the mech’s sensor suite and control system. They say the Partisans found a way to slow down a person’s time perception while in suspension, allowing them to react with lightning speed to what was going on around them. Whether this was true or not, they were legendarily hard to dispatch. After Firefly the Apostate united the secularist warlords under the Partisan banner, he turned these Immortals into his elite shock troops. Oddly fitting given the Great Leader himself never left his own amnion even after returning from his failed missionary journey. Undead soldiers for Litchlord Firefly. The dregs of society proved to be poorly disciplined soldiers, so he started recruiting otherwise healthy men, using suspension capsules scavenged from unlaunched womb ships abandoned by the fleeing missionaries. The device of the missionaries, two enmeshed gears symbolizing the union of two noospheres, was still visible on the side of the capsule. The Partisans deliberately left it uncovered in an act of blasphemous mockery of the faith.
The mech wordlessly strode forward and lifted Skywatcher by the neck. The anchorite let out a few choking gasps, straining with a rear paw to grab some blunt object to toss at the metal brute. He managed to grab the heavy metal head of a loose network cable and send it flying at his attacker. It bounced off the mech’s free forepaw and landed uselessly back on the floor. The pilot’s tongue gave a barely perceptible twitch as though he were laughing at his victim’s futile struggling. The mech’s writing claw and inner thumb moved to grip the sides of the Farspeaker’s head, preparing to twist it off like a bottle cap. Whitepaw bit her tongue to stop herself from yelping. Skywatcher had not been a particularly kind master, but nobody deserved to die like this.
The pilot’s left ear flicked lazily as he processed an unheard order from his handlers waiting outside. He loosened his grip on Skywatcher’s head, then tossed him carelessly over the mech’s back and caught him again in the coils of the mech’s tail. The Immortal turned and plodded out of the room. Skywatcher looked helplessly at the pile of equipment Whitepaw was hiding under. The tail constricting his midsection didn’t keep him from wheezing out desperate prayers, seeking refuge in the faith he had scorned not three minutes earlier.
Whitepaw lay still, forgotten for the moment, at least she prayed so. She heard harsh barking coming from outside. Two more Partisans were questioning the anchorite. Skywatcher uttered a few raspy oaths to please his lightless captors. They didn’t seem impressed.
“You can either give us your network documentation willingly, or we can squeeze it out of you,” one of them growled.
“Please, by the empty sky,” he gasped. “Hard copies. I’ve got hard copies in the office where you found me.”
Whitepaw shuddered. If she hadn’t been seen before they’d surely find her when they came back inside. She dug her claws into her palms and shut her eyes tight. “Don’t focus on the pain,” she told herself. “No matter how much it will hurt, at least it will be over quickly. Then I won’t have to worry about the war anymore.” She uttered a final prayer. “O Uncreated Light, please shine upon me, the least of thy little ones.”
THUMP!
A dull tremor shook the floor underneath her.
THUMP!
And then another, and then even more. The two Partisans began shouting incoherently. “A Knight—no there’s three,” one of them barked. There was more yelling, then the shriek of metal on metal as the Immortal engaged the interloping mechs. The din of combat seemed to stretch on forever. The Knights’ mechs were much larger than the Immortal. There were three of them, and each one was manned by both a Knight controlling the mech’s movements and main weapons, and a squire covering secondary weapons and managing the mech’s systems. Even with all those advantages, the Immortal’s preternatural reaction time would make any victory for the Knights hard won.
There was an almighty crash as the outer wall and roof of the building were torn away. Sunlight flooded what was left of the office. Whitepaw opened her eyes and saw one of the Knights’ mechs looming over her. It was proportioned much more like a yinrih, with recognizable head, torso, and limbs. Its head turned down to face her. It lifted one of its great metal paws and began deftly removing the debris piled on top of her.
She stood up and shook the dust from her fur. A hatch on the mech’s underbelly lowered, revealing the two yinrih within. The knight pulled off his HUD visor and jumped out. “Praise the Light, you’re alive! Are you hurt?”
“I think I’m OK,” Whitepaw muttered as she stared at the aftermath of the fight. The other two knights had alighted their own mechs. The Immortal was in pieces. The amnion and its occupant lay off to one side, the tubes and wires that had connected it to the mini mech spilled out behind it. The rest of its body was scattered far and wide. He hadn’t gone down easily though. The mech that had freed Whitepaw from the rubble was missing its tail, and one of the others had a tail-wide dent on one side of its face, shattering its optics and stripping off the whiskery antennas on that side of its muzzle. The two Partisan handlers stood silently beside one of the mechs. All eight paws were shackled together, the mech’s rear paw rested on the chain, anchoring it in place.
One of the squires approached Skywatcher, dipping his head respectfully. “My reverend anchorite, could you show us the documentation for your segment of the network?”
“Choke on it, fundy!” Skywatcher spat. “I wiped the data drives, and good luck finding what’s left of my notes in that rubble.”
“Another Preservationist,” the squire called over to his knight. “You know, we could have let those Partisans tear you in half. They would have killed you even if you gave them what they wanted.”
“Found ’em!” Whitepaw and her rescuer trotted up to the rest of the group. The knight had Skywatcher’s notes wrapped in his tail. “This kind young lady showed me where they were.”
“You eggless wretch!” Skywatcher barked at Whitepaw.
“You are free, and your debt is forgiven.” The knight addressed Whitepaw while glaring at the anchorite.
“By whose authority?!” growled Skywatcher.
“By the decree of her radiance, high hearthkeeper Iris,” the knight responded.
“Just get over there.” One of the knights bound Skywatcher and led him to one of the mechs, far away from his former captors.
“So, what’s going to happen to the Immortal?” asked Whitepaw.
“Well,” said her rescuer pointing his muzzle at the suspension capsule, “He is currently profaning a blessed instrument of our Holy Work. He’s going back to Hearthside with us, and we’ll hand him off to an order of rehabilitators. They’ll try to wean him off the gel, but by the time most of these poor lickers get plugged into those mini mechs their psyche is so integrated into the simulacrum generated by the amnion that they’ll die without it. If that’s the case they’ll get his metabolism running again and he’ll live out his natural life in sim.”
“What about me?” she asked.
“Like I said, you’re free. We can’t make you do anything. I’d suggest that you accompany us back to Hearthside as that’s the furthest away from the front. A lot of freed slaves want nothing to do with their former work, but we can set you up with the Farspeakers there if you wish. You’d be paid justly as an apprentice, depending on your experience you could be made an anchoress.” His voice caught on his next words. “A lot of slaves want nothing to do with the Faith, either. It hurts me that we pushed people away like that, but again, we can’t force you to do anything.”
“But you didn’t do any of that,” Whitepaw interjected. “You saved my life.”
“You’re right,” said the knight. “It may not be our fault personally, but it is our responsibility as Wayfarers to fix what the Preservationists broke. The Bright Way singing liturgies on Hearthside is the same Bright Way extorting and enslaving people on Yih.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Whitepaw. “I'll help make things right, too.”
Last edited by lurker on 17 Oct 2024 01:08, edited 1 time in total.
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- cuneiform
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Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
I’m really interested to read First Contact, pt 2
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
If you don't mind a non-narrative writing style, I have this summary that details the first few hours of First Contact from a human perspective. The stories will be written from the yinrih's point of view.
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- cuneiform
- Posts: 195
- Joined: 29 Aug 2024 17:27
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
How far is Earth from Focus? How long does it take to travel between?
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
While I'm contemplating drifting away from hard numbers, the current canon says Focus is 25 light years from Earth. Womb ships can travel at 0.1c, and the Dewfall arrives in the early 2020s (older lore says specifically in mid 2020 at the height of the pandemic), so they left around the time the US was founded in the late 19th century. Since yinrih live for over 7 centuries on average and the missionaries are in their mid 100s, most of the missionaries' friends and family are still alive, albeit a fair bit older than them biologically.HolyHandGrenade! wrote: ↑11 Oct 2024 15:01 How far is Earth from Focus? How long does it take to travel between?
The Knights at the time of First Contact
At the time of First Contact, the Knights of the Sun take many different forms depending on where around Focus they happen to be. On Hearthside they serve as the law enforcement and military. In more pious enclaves like Wayfarers' Haven they serve in a similar capacity. Wayfarers' Haven also sends its own knights to serve in the Spacer Confederacy's federal police. Within Partisan Territory they often manifest as terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective. Within the Allied Worlds they're usually relegated to community service and charity work, but on Welkinstead where practicing Wayfarers make up a statistically significant part of the population, they can legally serve as private security contractors. Lighthouses in more populous areas around Focus usually have a knight or two attached to serve as security guards so the lighthouse can remain open and freely accessible to the public at all times, as lighthouses are forbidden from locking their doors. Lodestar served in this capacity before the glassing of Pilgrim's Rest.
The knights as a whole are lead by a grand master. The organizational units that have a presence in a local area are called chapters, and each chapter is lead by a master (aka chaptermaster). The grand master is the chaptermaster for the principle chapter, which is an orbital monastery located within the orbit of Hearthside very close to Focus.
Many, if not most, knights no longer have mechs, but they are still heavily linked to mechs in the popular imagination, and many novice knights choose to take mech pilot training out of a sense of tradition. Lodestar trained as a pilot himself, and was able to construct a mech while on Earth using the Dewfall's fabricator and raw materials he bought using some loose pocket change, which was worth literal billions during the brief window between First Contact and the establishment of the mass router trunk between Earth and Wayfarers' Haven
Especially within the Allied Worlds where knights aren't part of everyday life, the old image of the lone knight and his squire striding forth in their mech to right wrongs and fight for justice has become a heavily romanticized trope, even in secular fiction.
The knights as a whole are lead by a grand master. The organizational units that have a presence in a local area are called chapters, and each chapter is lead by a master (aka chaptermaster). The grand master is the chaptermaster for the principle chapter, which is an orbital monastery located within the orbit of Hearthside very close to Focus.
Many, if not most, knights no longer have mechs, but they are still heavily linked to mechs in the popular imagination, and many novice knights choose to take mech pilot training out of a sense of tradition. Lodestar trained as a pilot himself, and was able to construct a mech while on Earth using the Dewfall's fabricator and raw materials he bought using some loose pocket change, which was worth literal billions during the brief window between First Contact and the establishment of the mass router trunk between Earth and Wayfarers' Haven
Especially within the Allied Worlds where knights aren't part of everyday life, the old image of the lone knight and his squire striding forth in their mech to right wrongs and fight for justice has become a heavily romanticized trope, even in secular fiction.
More on primitive society, the Kindling, and language
Just some brainstorming on how vulpithecin social structure works and how it handles conflict. Just as a reminder, The childermoot is the basic reproductive unit of society. It consists of up to twelve sires and dams. The resulting offspring are called a litter. Several childermoots taken together form a shire, which is a group that controls a defined geographical area and its associated resources. A shire is lead by the oldest males in the group, called variously sheriffs, reeves or patriarchs. When a litter reaches sexual maturity, they are ejected from the shire but the empty nesters remain to help younger moots raise their pups. The patriarchs are taken from this group of empty nesters.
As a rule, conflict within a shire is settled nonviolently, with patriarchs and other older males usually acting as mediators. Inter-shire competition uses threat displays that escalate to violence when displays don’t work. In addition to other shires, danger can come from the interstitial group of nomadic maids and bachelors–the newly mature adults that were ejected from their natal shires. These nomads may raid resources from shires for themselves, or they may give those resources to a shire they wish to join once they form their own moot. These maids and bachelors also compete and cooperate among themselves. This social interaction helps these young adults decide who they wish to form their own moot with.
Moot selection highly favors exogamy, with prospective sires and dams being from as many different shires as possible. A newly formed moot may do one of two things. usually they will join a pre-existing shire, at which point the sires and dams will lay their eggs and incubate their womb nest. The shire the moot joins may be the natal shire of one of the sires or dams, or it could be a completely different shire. For any number of reasons a moot may choose not to join an existing shire, and may strike out on their own to form a lone childermoot. This lone moot, if successful, will form the nucleus of a new shire, but it may also simply dissolve without other moots joining them.
One difference between tree dwellers and presapient yinrih is that tree dwellers passively deposited their ink by walking and climbing, with more frequented spots acruing more ink, but presapient yinrih actively marked using their ink. Males would mark the watering holes of potential prey, and females would mark trees that were safe to eat from. Maids and bachelors also marked to advertise their desire to form a moot.
The Kindling was essentially instantaneous, with sapient pups being conceived by nonsapient parents. Language developed rapidly. Sapient maids and bachelors would usually encounter one another after leaving their nonsapient littermates. A simple pidgin formed among these nomads, with a spoken language growing form their vocalizations and a written language growing in parallel from their marking behavior. Sapient yinrih highly preferred other sophonts to form moots, making their litters contain only sapient pups. These second-generation sophonts picked up the spoken and written pidgins of their parents, developing new grammar and syntax. In rare cases, two or more first-generation sophonts were born to a single litter, or sapient pups from different moots within the same shire would encounter one another before their nomad phase, whereupon a pidgin would develop much earlier.
As a rule, conflict within a shire is settled nonviolently, with patriarchs and other older males usually acting as mediators. Inter-shire competition uses threat displays that escalate to violence when displays don’t work. In addition to other shires, danger can come from the interstitial group of nomadic maids and bachelors–the newly mature adults that were ejected from their natal shires. These nomads may raid resources from shires for themselves, or they may give those resources to a shire they wish to join once they form their own moot. These maids and bachelors also compete and cooperate among themselves. This social interaction helps these young adults decide who they wish to form their own moot with.
Moot selection highly favors exogamy, with prospective sires and dams being from as many different shires as possible. A newly formed moot may do one of two things. usually they will join a pre-existing shire, at which point the sires and dams will lay their eggs and incubate their womb nest. The shire the moot joins may be the natal shire of one of the sires or dams, or it could be a completely different shire. For any number of reasons a moot may choose not to join an existing shire, and may strike out on their own to form a lone childermoot. This lone moot, if successful, will form the nucleus of a new shire, but it may also simply dissolve without other moots joining them.
One difference between tree dwellers and presapient yinrih is that tree dwellers passively deposited their ink by walking and climbing, with more frequented spots acruing more ink, but presapient yinrih actively marked using their ink. Males would mark the watering holes of potential prey, and females would mark trees that were safe to eat from. Maids and bachelors also marked to advertise their desire to form a moot.
The Kindling was essentially instantaneous, with sapient pups being conceived by nonsapient parents. Language developed rapidly. Sapient maids and bachelors would usually encounter one another after leaving their nonsapient littermates. A simple pidgin formed among these nomads, with a spoken language growing form their vocalizations and a written language growing in parallel from their marking behavior. Sapient yinrih highly preferred other sophonts to form moots, making their litters contain only sapient pups. These second-generation sophonts picked up the spoken and written pidgins of their parents, developing new grammar and syntax. In rare cases, two or more first-generation sophonts were born to a single litter, or sapient pups from different moots within the same shire would encounter one another before their nomad phase, whereupon a pidgin would develop much earlier.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
A little secret about these long posts: I read everything. I just don't comment unless I feel I can point something out. Take any silence as a "like".
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This looks like some Neoplatonic Christian stuff.
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Important: I just realized shires have some similarly to how tribal territory does (i.e. the Middle East). Just so you know, that's one of the main reasons why peace in the Middle East is a synonym for impossible. I highly recommend you look into this further.
(Conversely, it appears the Great Commandment united Yinrih much like Islam did the Arabian peninsula, so maybe that too?)
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Still need to read the Apprentice update and RTFM, but here we are!
Yinrih agnostics be like
Maybe he's just the guy who popularized the use of gunpowder for spaceflight and tried it on himself a dozen times. And others too.lurker wrote: ↑29 Aug 2024 03:28 He's got SOMETHING to do with gunpowder. Did he invent it? Probably not. I don't think he was one of the Cannonized Martyrs, either, although maybe he's the one who got the idea to use projectiles to try to achieve spaceflight. On the other hand, maybe he's just THAT obsessed with explosives and will not hesitate to use them at every opportunity, no matter how impractical.
YES.
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Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EGDCh75SpQ
The way you know you've made a good thought system is when the system looks similar to a real life one, but when you try lining it up to the real one comparative-religion style, it feels like comparative religion - trying to connect two totally different systems based on where they line up.lurker wrote: ↑04 Oct 2024 20:49 The Farspeakers are orthodox Wayfarers, but they put special emphasis on the communicative aspect of the noosphere. They see the noosphere as ideas at rest in people's minds, and in transit--being communicated from one person to another through speaking writing, or other means. Farspeakers speak of the noosphere having a "body", which is any physical means of communicating ideas. Just as an individual sophont possesses a brain and nervous system that upholds his or her consciousness and gives shape to ideas, physical means of communication, most prominently the Internetwork, represent the brain and nervous system of the noosphere as a whole.
This looks like some Neoplatonic Christian stuff.
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Important: I just realized shires have some similarly to how tribal territory does (i.e. the Middle East). Just so you know, that's one of the main reasons why peace in the Middle East is a synonym for impossible. I highly recommend you look into this further.
(Conversely, it appears the Great Commandment united Yinrih much like Islam did the Arabian peninsula, so maybe that too?)
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Still need to read the Apprentice update and RTFM, but here we are!
At work. Will be back.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
I decided to drag him into the Multiverse Inn.
I didn't think of it that way but it makes sense. Although the Bright Way does not see itself as having a single founder. It was more like a bunch of nomads from across the yinrih's range meeting and being like "so you saw that thing, too, right? What WAS that?" That's why there are different interpretations of the Great Commandment. (The Farspeakers' take on it is my personal favorite, as it's a tangible goal with a clear metric for success. Helps that I'm a network admin lol.)Visions1 wrote: ↑14 Oct 2024 10:24 Important: I just realized shires have some similarly to how tribal territory does (i.e. the Middle East). Just so you know, that's one of the main reasons why peace in the Middle East is a synonym for impossible. I highly recommend you look into this further.
(Conversely, it appears the Great Commandment united Yinrih much like Islam did the Arabian peninsula, so maybe that too?)
Sometimes I feel like I'm trying to eat my cake and have it too regarding the yinrih's rise from stone age to space age. My intent was that this primitive social structure would evolve rapidly into something akin to things we see on Earth (kingdoms, republics, oligarchies, etc), and that this system was run mostly on instinct, and as sophonts they by definition can and do freely choose to go against it. But at the same time we're only talking six lifetimes to get from the Kindling to orbital flight.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
I mean, if it's crazy enough, they'd buy it. If you and your friend both met G-d, you wouldn't let go of Him or him.
I had an idea. May they make a shire meeting to discuss this.
I had an idea. May they make a shire meeting to discuss this.
At work. Will be back.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
I like this. Since the yinrih are still a single population at this point this would represent their entire species. I could also see this as the first step toward modern statehood compared to the more tribal model they're currently in. Not sure how I'd go from here to multiple independent sovereign entities though. The idea with shires is that once an area gets too crowded one or more lone moots strike out to find virgin territory and set up their own shires. I guess shires could become city-states, and then full states this way.
They still don't quite have agriculture yet.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
I think the Middle East is also a good model for that, to whatever degree. At some point, urbanization, historical events, and increased nonlineal religiosity will make shires more moot (pun intended) (less moot?). As a good model, Jewish tribal distinctions were basically erased due to the exiles they faced - ten were assimilated, tribal territories and hence their power were irrelevant in exile, and no temple meant priestly hierarchy was stunted. In the Talmud, it says a scholarly bastard - lineage so low he is forbidden from marriage - is better than an ignoramus high priest. This only makes sense in the Second Temple Era; in the First Temple Era, priesthood by definition meant religious scholarship.
I imagine therefore that the transition from family shamans to priestess will play a great role, and urbanization will break down the concept of shires into mere parlance or weird politico-religious movements. As well, I imagine some shires will be more important than others, for a while affecting politics, until the priesthood takes over.
I imagine therefore that the transition from family shamans to priestess will play a great role, and urbanization will break down the concept of shires into mere parlance or weird politico-religious movements. As well, I imagine some shires will be more important than others, for a while affecting politics, until the priesthood takes over.
At work. Will be back.
Thoughts on terraforming
I think, at least at first, the Bright Way might lose interest in the other planets of Focus after determining they're lifeless. This opens the door for Neoshamanists and other miscellaneous actors to swoop in and start getting the terraforming ball rolling.
So by the dawn of the space age, Claravian research monasteries have grown to become the vulpithecine equivalent to higher education, with young adult yinrih studying under the research monks, who by now have branched out beyond spaceflight and related disciplines to cover other hard sciences. Other groups like Neoshamanists found their own institutions of higher learning patterned after the model pioneered by the Claravian monks. Though as I wrote above, they view the endeavor of scientific research differently than the Bright Way. Wayfarers see the study of Creation as an act of worship of the Creator, expanding the Realm of the Known further into the Realm of the Knowable, getting closer and closer to the impassable boundary that separates the natural and supernatural. Neoshamanists believe that every idea already exists within the single universal noosphere, and that nobody truly invents new things, but rather comes upon that part of the noosphere where it had always existed Their own analogs to research monks map the noosphere.
One of these Neoshamanist institutions starts exploring the idea of terraforming Newhome. They engineer a kind of anaerobic microbe that very, very rapidly metabolizes several different compounds into oxygen, but because it's anaerobic, oxygen kills it, so it sets up a negative feedback loo[ that ends up killing it off just as the atmosphere becomes breathable for higher lifeforms.
After the space age dawns, various political movements advocate the settling of Newhome, with Neoshamanists being at the forefront. The first colonists have to spend centuries stranded alone in an airless wasteland with little to do besides seeding the environment with these oxygenating microbes, so they start a machine-worshiping cult, as one does.
So by the dawn of the space age, Claravian research monasteries have grown to become the vulpithecine equivalent to higher education, with young adult yinrih studying under the research monks, who by now have branched out beyond spaceflight and related disciplines to cover other hard sciences. Other groups like Neoshamanists found their own institutions of higher learning patterned after the model pioneered by the Claravian monks. Though as I wrote above, they view the endeavor of scientific research differently than the Bright Way. Wayfarers see the study of Creation as an act of worship of the Creator, expanding the Realm of the Known further into the Realm of the Knowable, getting closer and closer to the impassable boundary that separates the natural and supernatural. Neoshamanists believe that every idea already exists within the single universal noosphere, and that nobody truly invents new things, but rather comes upon that part of the noosphere where it had always existed Their own analogs to research monks map the noosphere.
One of these Neoshamanist institutions starts exploring the idea of terraforming Newhome. They engineer a kind of anaerobic microbe that very, very rapidly metabolizes several different compounds into oxygen, but because it's anaerobic, oxygen kills it, so it sets up a negative feedback loo[ that ends up killing it off just as the atmosphere becomes breathable for higher lifeforms.
After the space age dawns, various political movements advocate the settling of Newhome, with Neoshamanists being at the forefront. The first colonists have to spend centuries stranded alone in an airless wasteland with little to do besides seeding the environment with these oxygenating microbes, so they start a machine-worshiping cult, as one does.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
I've been giving thought to the exact nature of the Bright Way's hegemony during the Age of Decadence, specifically whether they ruled directly as on Hearthside, or pulled the levers of power from behind the scenes. I think I'm leaning toward the latter.
As I've stated further up the thread, the clergy's power during the age of decadence came from their monopoly over the industries that allowed an interplanetary civilization to exist: communication, power distribution, and interplanetary logistics. Space exploration is an expensive undertaking, and especially as the Bright Way began interstellar missions, they found themselves unable to fund their holy work. The research monasteries continued to serve as the birthplace of new technologies, and the clergy had always controlled the electrical grid, so their solution was to monetize these assets to fund missionary work. This was the beginning of the Bright Way's fall from religion to cyberpunk megacorp.
Part of this transformation involved the manipulation of governments. The clergy used their economic might to sway policymakers to their side, consolidating their monopolies through legislation. As centuries passed, it became an unspoken rule among politicians that when the hearthkeepers said "jump", you said "how high?" Even nations that were not under their palms had to do business with nations that were, further extending the clergy's influence.
So in the end every polity was either a direct puppet of the clergy, or in the shadow of those that were. Secular leaders persisted through the age, but they were mere figureheads.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
I like this. I do wonder if they ever said the quiet part out loud though.
At work. Will be back.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
Hearthside was essentially them deciding to say the quiet part out loud. They got so busy genuinely governing that they had to divest control of their assets on the planet, either to completely independent private firms or more likely to popularly run local governments.
The Bright Way always preached subsidiarity as a political philosophy, even if it didn't always practice it across all of Focus, but they put their money where their mouth was on Hearthside.
Speaking of Hearthside, I think The City of Eternal Noon will have a nickname like City founded on lies or some such, referencing the original corrupt overseer's scheme of falsifying miracles to manufacture a pilgrimage site, the irony being that it became a genuinely productive center of theological thought and spiritual dynamism in spite of its dubious foundress.
Re: The Lonely Galaxy Megathread (comments encouraged)
Random idea:
The Farspeakers after the War of Dissolution are gutted. The section of the network in Partisan Territory is seized by the Partisans, and it's either nationalized or privatized around the rest of Focus. On Hearthside, the Bright Way gave up direct control of their network a long time ago, but it's left unspoken that most people involved in its maintenance are Farspeakers. Much like the Knights, they evolve into a more contemplative religious order, but run a managed service provider (a contract IT department that provides both equipment and personnel) to pay the bills.
I picture them running ads like "We built the thing, of course we know how it works."
The Farspeakers after the War of Dissolution are gutted. The section of the network in Partisan Territory is seized by the Partisans, and it's either nationalized or privatized around the rest of Focus. On Hearthside, the Bright Way gave up direct control of their network a long time ago, but it's left unspoken that most people involved in its maintenance are Farspeakers. Much like the Knights, they evolve into a more contemplative religious order, but run a managed service provider (a contract IT department that provides both equipment and personnel) to pay the bills.
I picture them running ads like "We built the thing, of course we know how it works."