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The Secrets' Crusade

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Well, I finally created an account.
On a more relevant note, I love this quest!

On an even more relevant note I think we should demand nothing in terms of direct interactions with our reality (aside from distractions and false positives) and ask for as much information as we can, within reason of course. I think a good question for the Uninvolved would be "How much/well can you see?" because while we do know they can be "locked out" of seeing parts of the galaxy, we don't know what scale they see it on.

By that I mean if they can see things on an individual level or just in broader terms (galactic level, solar system level, species level)? They could of been able to single out Mandy because she a) has a strong connection and understanding of Practice compared to most of humanity and b) is known across the solar system, making it easier to find her if you know where to look.

Let's see what kind of information they can and are willing to bring to the table.
 
Shard said:
What is the difference between Practice and the Uninvolved?
Do they know anything of the Dragons?
What do they know anything of the Secrets, particularly the 4th, and 7th-onwards?
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  1. Wrong question. What the Dragons gave you was part of something much bigger, something that each of the Uninvolved possess. Power that makes the greatest Words that you've ever spoken seem like firecrackers. I said once that the Uninvolved as a combined power could smack down an invasion by the Raksha from Exalted. I was not exaggerating. Between them all, they wield power that's hard to really express. A close point of reference here would be how powerful the Sublimed are in the Culture-verse. I drew a lot of inspiration for the Uninvolved from there, at least in terms of form. The difference between humanity and an Uninvolved, though? One exists in what I I'd call physical reality. One doesn't. And as others have already hypothesised, that matters.
  2. I'm afraid they don't. They can guess what the Dragons did, what they were trying to do, but beyond that? No. From what Amanda can extrapolate from the gestalt she was given, the Dragons burnt themselves out to give humanity Practice. Becoming an Uninvolved requires death, it requires sacrifice. But it's done in such a way as to protect the race that's undertaking the process. What the Dragons did...well, they weren't trying to protect themselves. They were trying to protect humanity.
  3. They recognise the existence of three other Secrets beyond those you know. The Fourth, Seventh and Eighth. The gestalt was deliberately vague on what those Secrets involve, however, and Amanda can guess why. What happened to the membership of projects before Insight when they tried to seek out new Secrets makes for an...example. It drove them insane. And all things considered, Amanda isn't interested in pushing that unless she knows that her mind will survive the process.

FeepingCreature said:
The problem here is that at some point the SL would designate them as an enemy and then just kill them regardless. It is not at all a given that they are safe where they are, if the SL truly wanted to find them.
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I mean, yes, if the Shiplords truly wished to dedicate themselves to that, they could. But it would cost them, too. The Shiplords, as far as Amanda can read this, have very successfully undertaken a campaign of cultural trauma that makes most Uninvolved severely unwilling to contemplate striking first. As long as the status quo leaves them alone, well, there's a reason that Tahkel called the mindset hypocritical. But it's founded in an inisdious and utterly ancient complex of fear. And that's very hard to fight if you've been subjected to it too.

There are perhaps two races, in all of the galaxy, that have escaped this. One is the Neras. The other is humanity.

Zaealix said:
The Shiplords are under Oath during those Practiced Communications.
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Zaealix said:
We know Amanda managed to put Lina back together after she exploded?/Kept her from dying?/helped fuel the rage so it didn't burn her out?
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  1. I'm a little confused by what you mean here. Are you referring to the occasions on which the Shiplords have talked to humanity?
  2. Kalilah, not Lina. And Amanda basically poured her own power into Kalilah, countering the destruction of her soul with Mending. And she got very, very lucky. Anything but a nat 100 would have had...negative long term consequences.

MTB said:
That matches. Still leaves the mindboggling 'why would you nurture your enemies such that you have to deploy a galaxy-wide detection net and develop specific weapons to keep them at bay - if you could have killed them easily anytime before?'.
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There is a reason for this, but the Uninvolved don't know it. They're not old enough. Tahkel believes that at least some of the answer to this question is hidden in one of those five places that the Shiplords have obscured and sealed from the Uninvolved. Essentially, this is a question that won't be answered here and now. Later on, perhaps.

FalloutCow said:
Well, I finally created an account.
On a more relevant note, I love this quest!
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Welcome! I hope you continue to enjoy and contribute to the quest!

MTB said:
@Snowfire (and I hope the question wasn't already asked) - could Uninvolved serve as Practice teachers?
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Not really. It would be like trying to teach someone to build channels for a river when all they have is a well.
 
MTB said:
That matches. Still leaves the mindboggling 'why would you nurture your enemies such that you have to deploy a galaxy-wide detection net and develop specific weapons to keep them at bay - if you could have killed them easily anytime before?'.
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This could loop back to the old "the Uninvolved counter/buffer against some other threat" hypothesis.

In which case the galaxy has been turned into a giant Uninvolved farm, and the Shiplords' anti-Uninvolved weaponry and detection net are the fence keeping the livestock they thus farm from intruding on the farm itself.

Another issue is that, based on @Snowfire 's more recent comments, the Shiplords' entire approach to galactic rule seems to be to prevent any race from arising that doesn't fear them. And it looks like each individual Uninvolved entity is a gestalt of the race that ascended. So by traumatizing an entire species, they traumatize the Uninvolved that arises from that species, making it more likely to avoid involvement against them even if it theoretically has the power to do so.


I've got a sort of... plan vote... thingy.

[k] Bargain with the Uninvolved
-[k] Offer to the Uninvolved
--[k] Assistance with storing their memories
--[k] Ask if there are other ways in which we can be of assistance to them.
-[k] Ask, do not demand, of the Uninvolved
--[k] Some. We very much need the help, but don't want them to endanger themselves with the following ideas:
--[k] Ask if they can act sporadically in irrelevant locations to distract the Shiplords, then safely escape before the Shiplords arrive.
--[k] Ask if they can provide Practice-like support for other members of the Coalition, operating from under Orrery defenses.
--[k] Ask if they can assist us with scaling up our FTL travel operations. We're short on high-end FTL drives.
-[k] Ask of Tahkel
--[k] Much information. As Tahkel points out, information is the key to our standing a chance in this conflict, where others did not. Unless it would impose some unreasonable cost to answer...
--[k] What does Tahkel know or surmise of how Practice works, and how it came to be?
--[k] We created this Void Crystal. Does Tahkel have any idea or speculation as to what it does, or for that matter what it is?
--[k] Sharing the Secrets would be out of the question, because the attempt to seek Secrets directly with Practice is literally mind-blowing. But...
---[k] Can Tahkel safely tell us in a word or two what the Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth Secrets are about, in the sense that we know the Third is 'electromagnetism' and the Fifth is 'gravity control?' (Do not try this if Amanda thinks she can't handle it, or even worries she can't. This is a stretch goal)
---[k] Of the eight known Secrets, are there any the Shiplords themselves definitely do not possess? Could be good to know.
---[k] We have inferred that the Shiplords forbid the First Secret to limit access to interstellar travel, and the Second to prevent the creation of new life (including AI machine life) that might be able to defeat them. Can Tahkel confirm or corroborate these inferences? What does Tahkel believe the explanation is?
--[k] Ask about the Shiplords and their (small-s) secrets.
---[k] When we tried to have Insight-focused Practice scry directly on the Shiplords, we had this 'Nightfall' thing happen. Our Practice users got hit with some really harsh backlash. In retrospect, knowing what we know now, that sounds like Project Insight triggered anti-Uninvolved defenses. Does Tahkel know if the Shiplords deploy such defenses to prevent observation?
---[k] Why do the Shiplords seem to have a great preoccupation with sacrifice? What is the relationship between sacrifice, their own technology and small-p practices, Practice, and the Uninvolved? Do any of these things relate to the Secrets?
---[k] In general, do the Uninvolved have information about the Shiplords' presence in the material universe, and if so, can Tahkel share it?
 
1. Yes-I refer to it as under Oath because it seems like we have to use Practice on them to get them to even try to communicate with us, and hopefully, that same power also compels them to answer truthfully. Because, yanno, if they've still the capacity to LIE to us...

2...YIKES! We've to remember that-because well, if Amanda died trying to save Kaliah...That'd be that 'Sacrifice' note the Shiplords want us to start playing. If they confirmed that? They'd happily throw a titanic Regular Fleet, fencing us in until some such Sacrifice happens, and then leaving. I could see them doing that, again and again, until that pervasive FEAR arose...

...As for the Neras...We haven't met them yet, have we? I have a terrible suspicion that the Neras basically either burnt out or sacrificed their own racial soul, and when the Shiplords confirmed it, they left that race to sit, because they destroyed the mechanism by which they could become Uninvolved, which is important.
 
Zaealix said:
1. Yes-I refer to it as under Oath because it seems like we have to use Practice on them to get them to even try to communicate with us, and hopefully, that same power also compels them to answer truthfully. Because, yanno, if they've still the capacity to LIE to us...

2...YIKES! We've to remember that-because well, if Amanda died trying to save Kaliah...That'd be that 'Sacrifice' note the Shiplords want us to start playing. If they confirmed that? They'd happily throw a titanic Regular Fleet, fencing us in until some such Sacrifice happens, and then leaving. I could see them doing that, again and again, until that pervasive FEAR arose...

...As for the Neras...We haven't met them yet, have we? I have a terrible suspicion that the Neras basically either burnt out or sacrificed their own racial soul, and when the Shiplords confirmed it, they left that race to sit, because they destroyed the mechanism by which they could become Uninvolved, which is important.
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  1. The first point of interaction with the Shiplords, they couldn't. The second, well, they probably could have. But they also didn't have to actually reply to you, and they did.
  2. Amanda's life was never on the line. Kalilah's was.
  3. You have not. But they're too curious to have burnt out.
 
Zaealix said:
1. Yes-I refer to it as under Oath because it seems like we have to use Practice on them to get them to even try to communicate with us, and hopefully, that same power also compels them to answer truthfully. Because, yanno, if they've still the capacity to LIE to us...

2...YIKES! We've to remember that-because well, if Amanda died trying to save Kaliah...That'd be that 'Sacrifice' note the Shiplords want us to start playing. If they confirmed that? They'd happily throw a titanic Regular Fleet, fencing us in until some such Sacrifice happens, and then leaving. I could see them doing that, again and again, until that pervasive FEAR arose...
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Well, they don't normally have to work nearly this hard to force sadistic choices and sacrifices on younger races. They normally have an overwhelming advantage of brute force.

3...As for the Neras...We haven't met them yet, have we? I have a terrible suspicion that the Neras basically either burnt out or sacrificed their own racial soul, and when the Shiplords confirmed it, they left that race to sit, because they destroyed the mechanism by which they could become Uninvolved, which is important.
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...The thing is, the Shiplords live in the material universe and can be threatened by purely material means. They don't need their enemies to become Uninvolved to be a threat. Furthermore, they constantly tolerate the creation of new Uninvolved entities/races ALL THE TIME and indeed appear to be subtly encouraging it (see one of the species in the Group of Six, the oldest one, which is partially disabled by its own 'become Uninvolved' movement.

The idea that the Shiplords are actively resisting the 'threat' of more races becoming Uninvolved simply does not align with their observed behavior.
 
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@Snowfire More Qs

1. Why do Uninvolved 'Age' and 'Die' when even 2nd Secret people can potentially live forever?
2. What do the Uninvolved do in their standard existence?
3. What do they know of the Neras?
4. What happens to Uninvolved who Uninvolved to specifically fight the SLs, anyway? Did they get destroyed?
5. Do they know what forms of tyranny SLs took before the current version?
6. Do they have any special insight into what the SL said when we used Understand (the one where they believed we would greet the SLs as friend)
 
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@Simon_Jester - perhaps put a question in 'is there or was there an SL Uninvolved?' - one of the speculations was that the SL are the remains of a race trying to become Uninvolved. If the answer is 'no', the extended question would be 'could that happen at all - leftovers during 'becoming Uninvolved'?
 
Shard said:
1. Why do Uninvolved 'Age' and 'Die' when even 2nd Secret people can potentially live forever?
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We don't actually know that people benefiting from the Second Secret CAN truly live forever, even in principle. We know a material body can be kept alive indefinitely using the Second Secret, but we have no clear way of knowing whether a mind can remain both sapient and sane for that long, or how/if souls hold together over such long timescales.

This tech makes us "immortal" in the sense of "do not physically age in 100 years or so," which means we have not begun to stress-test how well it holds up on timescales of 100,000 years, let alone millions of years.

MTB said:
@Simon_Jester - perhaps put a question in 'is there or was there an SL Uninvolved?' - one of the speculations was that the SL are the remains of a race trying to become Uninvolved. If the answer is 'no', the extended question would be 'could that happen at all - leftovers during 'becoming Uninvolved'?
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From the sound of it, I'm pretty sure the answer is "we don't know" or that this is information we'd already have from the gestalt we've been given...?
 
Shard said:
@Snowfire More Qs

1. Why do Uninvolved 'Age' and 'Die' when even 2nd Secret people can potentially live forever?
2. What do the Uninvolved do in their standard existence?
3. What do they know of the Neras?
4. What happens to Uninvolved who Uninvolved to specifically fight the SLs, anyway? Did they get destroyed?
5. Do they know what forms of tyranny SLs took before the current version?
6. Do they have any special insight into what the SL said when we used Understand (the one where they believed we would greet the SLs as friend)
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  1. @Simon_Jester pretty much nailed the answer to this one. As for why this is the case, best guess is that it's something to do with the mechanics of the soul.
  2. Exist, watch, learn for the most part. There are some very old stories about them having to have Involve themselves in galactic events that did not concern the Shiplords, but Tahkel wasn't around for them, and their knowledge of the events is highly limited as a result.
  3. The Neras are as old as the Shiplords, and strangely opaque to the the Uninvolved. If this is through some technique similar to how the Shiplords have cut off entire star systems from their awareness, or something else entirely, is unknown. As far as the Uninvolved have observed, however, the primary motivation of the Neras is curious benevolence. It is known that the Starhomes often take in those who choose to stay behind when a species goes Uninvolved.
  4. They're kept from doing so in a manner largely similar to Stargate, but more...aware. As in, they'll actively stop it from happening. Most of these Uninvolved end up becoming part of a group in Uninvolved society called the Forgetfuls. They essentially wall off their anger and desire for vengeance so tightly that it can't touch them anymore. You're speaking to an example of those who don't.
  5. The last change to the Directives occurred around a quarter of a million human years ago, and involved tightening the restrictions on post-Tribute use of the First Secret. According to the eldest of those Uninvolved still alive, this is a process that has repeated itself several times in their memory. It appears that the Shiplords tighten their restrictions in response to races finding ways to use them against them. The last restriction came in response to a race known as the Hyat. Their home star is one of those that has since been removed from the sight of the Uninvolved.
  6. It follows a consistent pattern that the Shiplords appear to do what they do out of a belief in its awful necessity instead of malice. Why they believe this is another matter, and not something the Uninvolved know. They're coming to you now in the hopes of your being will to find out.
MTB said:
@Simon_Jester - perhaps put a question in 'is there or was there an SL Uninvolved?' - one of the speculations was that the SL are the remains of a race trying to become Uninvolved. If the answer is 'no', the extended question would be 'could that happen at all - leftovers during 'becoming Uninvolved'?
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As far as Tahkel is aware, there was never a SL Uninvolved. And even if there were, the scale of the Shiplord empire is too advanced to be the result of a post-Uninvolved civilisation. There are often, though not always, leftovers from that process, each with often unique reasoning.

Also, as a somewhat related point, I've realised that if I use Stargate analogies to describe PW, humanity is Anubis. Just, y'know, without the whole galactic domination complex.
 
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How much can the Uninvolved tell us about Shiplord weapons and such?
Have the Shiplords made any significant technological leaps the Uninvolved can tell us about?
What about Shiplord countermeasures and tactics?
You know what they say "Know thy enemy." and learning about them as quickly as we can should help in the future.
 
Snowfire said:
  1. The Neras are as old as the Shiplords, and strangely opaque to the the Uninvolved. If this is through some technique similar to how the Shiplords have cut off entire star systems from their awareness, or something else entirely, is unknown. As far as the Uninvolved have observed, however, the primary motivation of the Neras is curious benevolence. It is known that the Starhomes often take in those who choose to stay behind when a species goes Uninvolved.
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My gut says the inverse of the Uninvolved, rather than relinquishing their material forms to take a pure soul-state existence they might have gone full materialist?

Just a hunch with no basis though.
 
FalloutCow said:
How much can the Uninvolved tell us about Shiplord weapons and such?
Have the Shiplords made any significant technological leaps the Uninvolved can tell us about?
What about Shiplord countermeasures and tactics?
You know what they say "Know thy enemy." and learning about them as quickly as we can should help in the future.
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The Gestalt Amanda got doesn't cover any of these in specific, so they'd be things to ask Tahkel IC. Also, it's been a little more than 24 hours, but I'm sure you'll forgive me (I hope).

Voting is now open.
 
[X] Demand nothing, Ask for only what they are willing to offer, Offer to record who they were.
 
[x] Plan: Ongoing Alliance
-[x] Demand of the Uninvolved
--[x] Team Up with Project Insight: While they are understandably reticent to avoid involving themselves in material affairs, the Uninvolved as a group are a wellspring of historical knowledge. If they can interact with Thoughtcasts, we can open a line of communication with them that may be undetectable to the Shiplords.
-[x] Ask of Tahkel
--[x] Focus on the Immediate: By opening an ongoing dialogue, Amanda is freed from the need to spend her time now trying to learn everything by herself. Focus the remainder of this conversation on knowledge and advice that will be valuable right away, or on matters that will bolster the hearts of Amanda and humanity.
-[x] Make an Offer
--[x] Library of Humanity: The thing the Uninvolved fear most is losing their history. In gratitude for their assistance, offer them whatever is in our power to help preserve their legacy.
 
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Snowfire said:
Can I just make the point of how utterly contrary to usual SV quester outlook this statement is? Because it really is.
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I have heard this sentiment several times before, but it doesn't really feel like it's very true to me? Might be the quests I read.

Now, SB on the other hand...
 
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Snowfire said:
Can I just make the point of how utterly contrary to usual SV quester outlook this statement is? Because it really is.
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Okay, the selfisher variant goes along the lines of 'cooperating gets me more long-term benefits than gouging every last bit I can'. Long-term benefits like a working social order in after SL galaxy, if there's something else than Uninvolved a solution for the 'monsters in the Dark' and an afterlife that's perhaps more enjoyable than what the Uninvolved currently have. For those who are better motivated by purely utilitarian motives.
 
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