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Power Games (Nanoha fanfic)

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Aleph said:
Discussed here and in the following post. Administered Worlds have to have certain quality-of-life and legal standards - these are required to join the TSAB and falling short of them can lead to sanctions, intervention and eventually dismissal. If there are active wars going on, the TSAB will probably require them to be resolved before the planet can join - but remember that Earth is pretty overpopulated by dimensional standards, and most planets have a far, far lower population due to the increased living space made available by other worlds (also all the apocalypses and gigadeath events in relatively recent dimensional history).

Earth would hopelessly and hilariously fail to qualify on even some of the most basic requirements for TSAB membership - even if you look only at First World countries, most of them have poverty conditions for parts of the population that don't live up to the quality-of-life expectations for an Administered World. The attitude from significant parts of the TSAB would, in fact, stand a decent chance of mirroring the kind of comments made about "African nations with starving children/poverty". Including the part where said comments ignore that a) Africa is not one country, it's a lot of different nations (most of which the person making the comment probably can't name) and b) quite a few of them actually have rising GDPs, steadily improving laws and decent representation in their governments.

In practice, the answers to the first two questions are irrelevant because the third answer is "hell no". Who would go to the trouble of travelling a minimum of 5 light years to the closest star - when you can't go FTL - to find an uninhabitable world that has no common protein bases even if it's in the Goldilocks zone (which it probably isn't) and which needs to be completely terraformed (which nobody in the modern day has the tech to do) before you can live on it in anything other than sealed habitation domes? When, you know, there are hundreds of Type-1b planets that are completely habitable and ripe for the colonising up for grabs within a light-hour.

There's just no point, because travelling dimensionally to other Earths (and the Types 2-4 that have been terraformed to support a human-friendly ecosystem in the distant past) is far more rewarding in every possible way by several orders of magnitude. Any alien polities orbiting other stars have probably done something similar and spread dimensionally on their homeworlds as well, instead of expanding interstellar.
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You know, I know you're never going to touch on something like this, but the idea of one of these polities getting hit by a Gamma-ray burst seems like it could be interesting. Only dimensional sea assets would be left, as all life in the polity in all universes would be wiped out at once with no warning. It's a apocalypses that makes the Al Hazard catastrophe seem like nothing. But the people left would be largely the most technical, people who lived in deep dimensional sea station, people on ships, cargo carriers, and so on.

So they have to rebuild from nothing. Like, long run they're more likely to fail then succeed, but long odds have rarely been a barrier to a story.
 
Gamma ray burst would probably be the same across Type 1a equivs, maybe even 1b and 1c equivs. But when you get to say Type Fours like mid where the PoD predates the formation of the inner planets? Not so much.
 
The insides of a star are very much a chaotic, non-deterministic system, so no, a gamma ray burst would not be perfectly identical across all Type 1s.
 
So @Aleph @EarthScorpion just as a totally interrelate theoretical what sci-fi franchisee would mesh the best with the Game-verse? It go's without saying some kind of changes would need to made for such a crossover to work, but I would still like to know in a sort of "Were never going to do it, so [CENSORED] let's have some fun" kind of way.

Me personally I think Destiny could work. A nice blend of Clark's third law played both straight and inverted, and at least one antagonist faction that if added could represent a threat to all parties involved. Though that is just me.
 
Kintty said:
Something that only we would have or be particularly good at... huh, nothing coming up.
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If I remember right, ES and Aleph said Earth has the best telescopes in Dimensional space, along with the best astronomers (to the point an astronomer was discovered to be plagiarizing Earth science journals) and the best knowledge of astrophysics to the point that the best minds in D Space can't disprove our theories.

That means Earth is the leader in actually thinking of interstellar colonization.

And the moment we send a manned spacecraft to the outer solar system...all of D Space will be watching us with abated breaths.
 
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kilopi505 said:
If I remember right, ES and Aleph said Earth has the best telescopes in Dimensional space, along with the best astronomers (to the point an astronomer was discovered to be plagiarizing Earth science journals) and the best knowledge of astrophysics to the point that the best minds in D Space can't disprove our theories.

That means Earth is the leader in actually thinking of interstellar colonization.

And the moment we send a manned spacecraft to the outer solar system...all of D Space will be watching us with abated breaths.
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From what we've seen it's more likely that they notes us for real when we figure out FTL.
 
kilopi505 said:
If I remember right, ES and Aleph said Earth has the best telescopes in Dimensional space, along with the best astronomers (to the point an astronomer was discovered to be plagiarizing Earth science journals) and the best knowledge of astrophysics to the point that the best minds in D Space can't disprove our theories.

That means Earth is the leader in actually thinking of interstellar colonization.

And the moment we send a manned spacecraft to the outer solar system...all of D Space will be watching us with abated breaths.
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So basically, Earth is the "Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training" trope incarnate. It completely disregarded magic as an option, but in turn achieved technical progress that is unheard of elsewhere.
 
kilopi505 said:
the moment we send a manned spacecraft to the outer solar system
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You know, it amused me when I started thinking about this.

Mostly because it would mean that we decided* it would be easier to get to the outer solar system than the next dimension over.

*much like the rest of UA-97's history, and that joke in D-space about how magic is easier to figure out than making a wheel, we proceed take the longest possible route to figuring out anything to do with magic.
 
Tallamee said:
You know, it amused me when I started thinking about this.

Mostly because it would mean that we decided* it would be easier to get to the outer solar system than the next dimension over.

*much like the rest of UA-97's history, and that joke in D-space about how magic is easier to figure out than making a wheel, we proceed take the longest possible route to figuring out anything to do with magic.
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Well...it's safer.

No need to worry about Dimensional quakes or Lost Logia or anything magic.
 
justinkal said:
Aren't bootleg forms of FTL at least theoretically permissible under the restrictions of Relativity and Causality, things like wormholes that reduce the distance between two points?
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Yes. Now find a source of negative energy the size of Jupiter for each second you want that wormhole open. Oh, and you need to travel the long way first - you can't just open it up where you want, you open it up, then move it where you want STL.

There's a bunch of other annoying weird, and interesting bits of behavior, but it's horribly impractical, on a scale so vast your imagination cannot grasp it, not because you're dumb, but because you're human.

Even if the models that allow those kinds of wormholes are valid, we will never use them for interstellar travel. Wait, let me rephrase that. We will never use them at all.
 
kilopi505 said:
Well...it's safer.
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Except for the part where it is quite explicitly not safer. We can still get hit by dimensional quakes from neighboring dimensions. Lost Logia can still end up on earth, as they have three* times now (at a minimum). And then there are the other possible threats that are entirely native to our dimension, like Gamma Ray Bursts.

*The Jewel Seeds, the Book of Darkness, And the Marriage.

justinkal said:
Aren't bootleg forms of FTL at least theoretically permissible under the restrictions of Relativity and Causality, things like wormholes that reduce the distance between two points?
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TheLastOne said:
Yes. Now find a source of negative energy the size of Jupiter for each second you want that wormhole open. Oh, and you need to travel the long way first - you can't just open it up where you want, you open it up, then move it where you want STL.
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If I were to lay odds on what Alhazred was trying to do when their home-world wend up like the largest bomb in history, an attempt to hack the universal speed limit would be what I would choose*.

*Mostly because I lack the creative genius of some people, and that would be something sort of reasonable that somebody like a Priest-King might think of trying
 
Tahu1809 said:


We have like, a third of the math for this. So while per WoG FTL is not possible in the game verse it it theoretically possible in Real Life. We just need to figure how to Dark Mater.
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This digression has nothing to do with this story. Why don't you take it to the appropriate threads rather then try and cram in a HFY.
 
Aleph said:
"The master," Chrono said quietly. "It's a 97er, isn't it? Like Takamachi. That's why the Wolkenritter haven't been killing; they're under orders not to." He cocked his head. "A native-born mage who orders their knights to avoid killing when it gains them nothing... is that the sort of criminal who deserves to be eternally frozen?"
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When Chrono says "Like Takamachi." here does he just mean that she's also a 97er or does he think Takamachi would also order the Wolks not to kill?
 
Man, do the people out to wank Earth ever stop? I mean, I don't think we've seen a single update go by without someone going off on that tangent.

@Aleph, some feedback for this book. It goes without saying that your characterization and world building are great, so not much more to say there. That said, I don't think this one really holds up to the standards you set with Game Theory.

Part of that for me is it lacks the sheer off the rail nature of Game Theory- I was never quite sure what you were doing next, and the twists there were great. Power Games felt way more like it was hewing to stations of canon- sure, you had all your wonderful new characters, and the introduction of Mirage and the Nanoha swap was a surprise, but nothing really altered the story of A's. Instead, it felt like this whole book was setup for what comes next- which while interesting, lacked the same grip for me that Game Theory did.

The other bit that keenly disappointed me was the interaction between Nanoha's group and the Wolkenritter- or rather the lack there of. I was looking forward to seeing how the two groups played off each other given the changes you introduced, and that... never materialized. Instead they fought a few times and that was basically it- none of the rapport building that I found compelling from A's. I suspect that your building something up for the coming books, but see above.

Overall, this felt like a transition book, mainly used to setup plothooks for down the road rather then being its own self contained story. And while not quite a rehash of canon, it was close enough to lose interest from me, particularly on the Wolkenritter side- I was really looking forward to seeing what you would do with the relationships from A's.

On the plus side, you have a lot of interesting plot hooks set, and I look forward to seeing what you do with them, particularly now that you're pretty much entirely free of canon. Have fun screwing with all our heads in the future!
 
Kylar said:
Man, do the people out to wank Earth ever stop? I mean, I don't think we've seen a single update go by without someone going off on that tangent.
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Well I didn't say anything about FTL. All I said was that Earth would end up sending manned space missions to the outer solar system. Which is something that I'm quite sure wasn't said to be attempted by anyone, even including Al Hazard, in the Gamesverse because going to other dimensions is the much easier solution for colonization.

Farthest the Magic users ever got, according to Aleph, was some small habitats on Venus and Mars. Getting to Jupiter's moons would already outdo Dimensional Space by a huge margin.

It's the logical result of not discovering how to travel to other dimensions, or magic. At least...it is to me.
 
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kilopi505 said:
Well I didn't say anything about FTL. All I said was that Earth would end up sending manned space missions to the outer solar system. Which is something that I'm quite sure wasn't said to be attempted by anyone, even including Al Hazard, in the Gamesverse because going to other dimensions is the much easier solution for colonization.

Farthest the Magic users ever got, according to Aleph, was some small habitats on Venus and Mars. Getting to Jupiter's moons would already outdo Dimensional Space by a huge margin.

It's the logical result of not discovering how to travel to other dimensions, or magic. At least...it is to me.
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No. It's not.

Oh, they can totally go to the Outer System. There's just no point. Oh yeah, sure, go to the uninhabitable radioactive hellholes of Jupiter's moons. And then you can... uh, take some pictures or whatevs. And then come back, because you're sure as hell not going to be staying there long term if you have any other options.

(Incidentally, manned missions are pretty dumb IRL anyway. Send robots instead, so you don't need to heft meatbags, their life support, all the fuel needed to carry that extra mass, and you don't need to more than double the fuel so you can come back)
 
hmm question how knowledgeable are the major powers of D space on the subject of nuclear physics? Cause it occurs to me that is a path of science that they might legitimately not have gone down that is actuality could be applied to magic.
 
SpeckofStardust said:
hmm question how knowledgeable are the major powers of D space on the subject of nuclear physics? Cause it occurs to me that is a path of science that they might legitimately not have gone down that is actuality could be applied to magic.
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Al Hazard had nuclear power plants, according to...chapter 8 I think. Or 9.
 
Look, we've been though this dull, dull song and dance several times before. You're not going to find "omg so awesome" Earth advantages in basic elements of science.

(In fact, modern Dimensional Space does not use nuclear fission, which is dirty and it's a pain dealing with the byproducts. They do, however, use nuclear fusion for electricity generation - because containment is soooooooooo much easier to deal with when you have magical forcefields)
 
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