Remove ads

GODSTAR - a Science Fantasy Civilization Quest

Reader mode
Remove ads
Turn 6 Rumors and Reports
  • Threadmarks
    • Machine Army of All-Under-Heaven – Secure Your Gains – 33% vs 66%

    The Commander-in-Chief of the Machine Army is on the backfoot since the failure to finish off the Tech Barons. He withdraws most of his troops from what territory he has seized, leaving a local garrison to bring the new lands up to spec. The liberated serfs are reorganized on farming collectives, mechanization begins, the borders are secured. The leader of the garrison is Moses 1-Piston, himself the child of a serf who married a Machine Soldier, and he has a foot in both cultures.

    Which is exactly why he declares independence from the Machine Army of All-Under-Heaven. With the support of the liberated serfs, he also gains the loyalty of most of the garrison and crushes any who remain loyal to the Holy Mountain. He even embarks on a campaign to seek out the rogue machines from the last war and bring them back into the fold, ending the threat of their uncontrolled spread and gaining immediate industrial capabilities.

    He declares his new state the Machine Army of Living Metal. The Commander-in-Chief is outraged and declares mobilization to regain the rebellious province, but Moses 1-Piston is already reaching out to potential allies.

    League of Five Shields – Take Advantage – 72%

    With their neighbors in chaos, the League of Five Shields is able to take some of the serf revolts under their wing, integrating them into the League. According to your informants, they have also reached out to the Machine Army of Living Metal for negotiations regarding a mutual defense pact.

    Tech Barons – Staunch the Bleeding – 58%

    With all their rivals distracted, the Tech Barons are able to stabilize their borders and crush some pockets of resistance. While they haven't really recovered much territory and remain on the back heel, they're not in danger of collapsing at the moment.

    Islander Folk – Integrate Western Islands – 82%

    Your informants in Sanctuary's dockyards and inns have compiled some interesting reports on the doings of the Islander Folk in the New World. It seems that along the eastern coast of this continent is a chain of islands inhabited by seafaring people quite similar to the Islander Folk. Merchants and opportunistic pirates organized into an extended clan system, the Islander Folk have begun a campaign to integrate them economically and politically. Strategic marriages, trade agreements, and exchanges of technology and culture similar to what is happening between you and Sanctuary have seen some success, giving the Islander Folk a foothold in the New World.
     
    Last edited:
  • Threadmarks
    • Remove ads
    Paradisea (Turn 6)
  • Informational


    • Map update. Couple notes:

    You're depicted as holding the former LoS territory because you de facto control it, although opinion there is overwhelmingly in favor of joining you.

    There are other people living in the New World, but you don't know anything about them so that part of the map is blank.

    As usual, a lighter shade indicates cultural or political influence without direct control.
     
  • Informational
    • Hunter531 said:
    I am willing to agree with you, assuming we don't need to use that action to integrate our newly conquered territory.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    I'd imagine that integrating territory would be in a different category than our Diplomacy action every turn since it's more internal than external (specifically, if anything, I'd expect to see it under Social Science), but if I'm wrong then yeah, integration comes first, then League of Five Shields, then the rebels.
     
    Last edited:
    Remove ads
    Mitigating Alchemical Waste (etranger01)
  • Sidestory
    • A Potential Method for Mitigating Alchemical Waste
    by Etan Ten-Beakers

    The advent of industrial alchemy has been a fantastic boon to the people of the Great League, and promises to reap a far greater harvest in the future. However, this technological advancement is not without its unfortunate consequences. Foremost among them is the issue of waste. Alchemical reactions are not perfectly self-contained; they are inefficient and sometimes messy, leading to the emission of noxious byproducts, including gases, liquids, and solids. Many of these byproducts are harmful to the living world, or would be if we had not developed appropriate safeguards alongside the products themselves. Despite the efficacy of these safeguards, however, the storage of these byproducts remains time-consuming, energy-intensive, and occupies substantial underground space. I believe that we can improve on this method.

    My speculation is as follows: alchemical byproducts are not without their own dormant utility. Whether a result of a wasteful reaction or simply rendered inert by the conversion process, these byproducts contain within them useful elements and reagents, buried or otherwise in a form not of immediate value. If we were to develop a method of cycling these byproducts through another process, a kind of re-cycling, perhaps they or at least a notable percentage of them could be transmuted back into a useful form.

    As an example, the Internal-Realization Elixir used to correct an improperly assigned birth gender is a vital part of our healthcare system, but its production consumes a substantial amount of valuable quicksilver, which is crucial in many transformative reagents. More to the point, much of that quicksilver does not end up in the elixir itself (thus saving the recipient from heavy-metal toxicity). Instead, it is rendered inert and the waste product is stored away underground. If we could reactivate that inert quicksilver, we could re-cycle it back into additional elixirs, thus reducing the wait times for the gender-affirmation process, which all agree are highly undesirable.

    I believe this can be done through a simple two-stage process of separation and reactivation. Separation would require the development of specialized filters and tuned attraction devices that draw the specific inert elements of the byproduct apart into separate containers. For example, an attraction device that could pull the inert quicksilver out of the suspension of multi-hue carnation extract, or a filter dividing the dense quicksilver from the much lighter extract, would separate the rarest element of the I-R elixir out, rendering it susceptible to further treatment.

    Following that, I believe that the inert reagents, such as the quicksilver in question, can be reactivated through immersion in an active leyline. The inert quality of the byproduct is a consequence of its magical energy being rendered out of it, like a bottle of water being emptied. By dipping the quicksilver — the "empty bottle" — back into the stream, we can refill it, or at least some portion of it, reclaiming its utility for future use.

    Though I have discussed only one medical elixir in this text, I believe that the principle can be more broadly applied, and will reduce the amount of unusable alchemical waste produced by our industrial processes. This will, I hope, be of some utility to the people of the League.
     
  • Sidestory
    • etranger01 said:
    A Potential Method for Mitigating Alchemical Waste
    by Etan Ten-Beakers

    The advent of industrial alchemy has been a fantastic boon to the people of the Great League, and promises to reap a far greater harvest in the future. However, this technological advancement is not without its unfortunate consequences. Foremost among them is the issue of waste. Alchemical reactions are not perfectly self-contained; they are inefficient and sometimes messy, leading to the emission of noxious byproducts, including gases, liquids, and solids. Many of these byproducts are harmful to the living world, or would be if we had not developed appropriate safeguards alongside the products themselves. Despite the efficacy of these safeguards, however, the storage of these byproducts remains time-consuming, energy-intensive, and occupies substantial underground space. I believe that we can improve on this method.

    My speculation is as follows: alchemical byproducts are not without their own dormant utility. Whether a result of a wasteful reaction or simply rendered inert by the conversion process, these byproducts contain within them useful elements and reagents, buried or otherwise in a form not of immediate value. If we were to develop a method of cycling these byproducts through another process, a kind of re-cycling, perhaps they or at least a notable percentage of them could be transmuted back into a useful form.

    As an example, the Internal-Realization Elixir used to correct an improperly assigned birth gender is a vital part of our healthcare system, but its production consumes a substantial amount of valuable quicksilver, which is crucial in many transformative reagents. More to the point, much of that quicksilver does not end up in the elixir itself (thus saving the recipient from heavy-metal toxicity). Instead, it is rendered inert and the waste product is stored away underground. If we could reactivate that inert quicksilver, we could re-cycle it back into additional elixirs, thus reducing the wait times for the gender-affirmation process, which all agree are highly undesirable.

    I believe this can be done through a simple two-stage process of separation and reactivation. Separation would require the development of specialized filters and tuned attraction devices that draw the specific inert elements of the byproduct apart into separate containers. For example, an attraction device that could pull the inert quicksilver out of the suspension of multi-hue carnation extract, or a filter dividing the dense quicksilver from the much lighter extract, would separate the rarest element of the I-R elixir out, rendering it susceptible to further treatment.

    Following that, I believe that the inert reagents, such as the quicksilver in question, can be reactivated through immersion in an active leyline. The inert quality of the byproduct is a consequence of its magical energy being rendered out of it, like a bottle of water being emptied. By dipping the quicksilver — the "empty bottle" — back into the stream, we can refill it, or at least some portion of it, reclaiming its utility for future use.

    Though I have discussed only one medical elixir in this text, I believe that the principle can be more broadly applied, and will reduce the amount of unusable alchemical waste produced by our industrial processes. This will, I hope, be of some utility to the people of the League.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    In recognition of this work, a boon:

    The particular treatment Etan is talking about here is just the most extreme and resource-intensive type of transition available, a sort of one-shot full-body transformation potion. Alchemical replacements for hormone replacement theory have been available for a while and have only gotten more accessible with chemical synthesis.

    Still, the author offers some interesting possibilities for reclaiming alchemical waste, and Alchemical Recycling will be available sooner and at lower cost.
     
    I was in favour of abolishing the societies since I dislike the 'warrior' concept and all its baggage. I thought that between the War Council's abortive power grab and the chance to see in the League of Strength how badly such a concept can go, that this was the best opportunity to do so.

    However, the information about the war magic has brought me around - while I still dislike the warrior concept, I do see the value in the lifelong mystic specialisation here, provided it is very strongly reformed.
     
    [X] The Warrior Societies will be abolished entirely.
    Their property will be seized, their traditions abolished. A way of life will end. New recruits will be chosen from the Grand Army to serve as officers and to learn elite war magics.

    elite warrior societies never go well
     
    [X] The Warrior Societies will be reformed.

    Question- how sincere was the war council? Did it believe its own propaganda about a continuing state of war being necessary and intend to hold elections eventually, or was it cynically grabbing for power?
     
    EBR said:
    [X] The Warrior Societies will be reformed.

    Question- how sincere was the war council? Did it believe its own propaganda about a continuing state of war being necessary and intend to hold elections eventually, or was it cynically grabbing for power?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Mostly likely a little of both. People rarely do things for one reason. The culture and political power of the Warrior Society was in decline but we were also threatened by the Machine Army.
     
    EBR said:
    [X] The Warrior Societies will be reformed.

    Question- how sincere was the war council? Did it believe its own propaganda about a continuing state of war being necessary and intend to hold elections eventually, or was it cynically grabbing for power?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    As Cassie said, it was a bit of both. For one thing, they genuinely didn't expect the level of pushback they got and ultimately backed down from using violence to get their way.
     
    Reader mode
    You must login or register to reply here.
    Remove ads
    Back
    Top