- Location
- United states
Again this doesn't really fit since the update is still going on.
Slivers Adrift in Infinity [MTG/RWBY]
Again this doesn't really fit since the update is still going on.
- Location
- Maybe?
I'm aware it doesn't fit, I just wanted to offer my 2 cents on how to generally represent our position. I don't think we need to lie to Ironwood, and any conversational path that does not make it clear that we are a sentient bioweapon with exponential scaling is implicitly misleading him. The emphasis should be "you're already facing something like that, we want to fight it too, you'll have a lot easier time negotiating with us than the Grimm."
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
Maybe we should explain how reality works from our perspective? Explain a bit about mana, its colors and what they represent. How we can feel Grimm as being black mana constructs. And then continue on with how we can help (in exchange for reasonable payment since that would be useful for keeping our hive going during the winter).
That way we can move away from the whole 'slivers are the enemy' towards how we can help in a fundamental way. And do that without emphasizing anything that paints us as a major threat to be dealt with as soon as possible.
As for the exponential bioweapon thing... Note that we aren't actually exponential, we are linear based on our mana bonds. Humans are exponential, they can multiply based on their amount of existing population. Also I'm not sure we actually know about the bioweapon thing, IIRC we know we were used as forced soldiers but didn't know we are a created species rather than a natural one.
That way we can move away from the whole 'slivers are the enemy' towards how we can help in a fundamental way. And do that without emphasizing anything that paints us as a major threat to be dealt with as soon as possible.
As for the exponential bioweapon thing... Note that we aren't actually exponential, we are linear based on our mana bonds. Humans are exponential, they can multiply based on their amount of existing population. Also I'm not sure we actually know about the bioweapon thing, IIRC we know we were used as forced soldiers but didn't know we are a created species rather than a natural one.
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
Oh, speaking of which, for the next quest I'm thinking of having slivers reproduce conventionally, with the hive and queen spawn serving as ways to get a much higher special chance with more variety. Do people have any thoughts about this idea?
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
It is counter to canon tbh. Slivers do not reproduce naturally. At least not without a specialized sliver (that is brood sliver) allowing them too.
I'm not a 100% sure but actually spawning specials is actually also something that I think isn't supposed to happen. They are supposed to show up in response to adversity faced by slivers nearby.
You can change these things of course, but then real question becomes why? What are you hoping to gain here?
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
Actually canon is a lot less clear on both those points. There are flavortexts that point in both directions - Crystalline Sliver's references a planned breeding program, which would be impossible without general breeding and a direct mechanism of inheritance, for example, or Dormant Sliver "Triggers the hive's period of Aetheric Fertility". Reflex Sliver makes mention of being special from birth, as does Spinneret Sliver. Though specials still spawn in response to adversity, obviously.
As for what I'd gain, I think it makes a lot more sense - slivers are supposed to be an invasive uber predator, and it doesn't make sense for them to be handicapped by such a poor method of reproduction.
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
Well, there is one obvious method for breeding stuff like crystalline slivers... You breed regular slivers and proceed to blast them with magic until it stops working.
Dormant sliver is a similar case as brood sliver I think, an adaptation the slivers gained from the adversity of not having a queen.
Reflex and spinneret might simply be slivers adapting while still in their eggs in response to conditions faced by nearby slivers.
But yeah canon isn't quite as clear you would like sometimes. But I think it is at least true that while the queen was still alive she was the source of all the slivers.
It isn't a bug, its a feature. Yeah, slivers were meant to act as an invasive species... But they were also meant to be controlled. Having a single queen in a location under the bad guy's control was a large part of how he planned to keep that control.
- Location
- Europe
Realistically, Sliver Queen can lay an absurd amount of eggs. They are like uber ants in that regard. When mana amount starts exceeding what a queen can use they just form extra.
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
That's not them being bred, though, thats them being trained or adapted or something.
Mmm, possibly. It might also have been a preexisting adaptation, however.
Spinneret is explicitly adapting to include the strengths of what it's parents ate, and reflex could go either way.
I don't think so? I'll admit I haven't read any of the MTG books with slivers in them, but I don't think I've heard anything about that. Also there are the Shadow Slivers, which mention tracing their lineage, implying they were able to reproduce on their own.
That assumes that Volrath engineered them with that intention in mind, something I'm not so certain about. I think theres a good chance he found the slivers, or at least had relatively little influence in shaping their society. We know he had to build metallic sliver in order to help control them, which seems like a step he would have skipped if he could.
Of course, the real answer here is that most of this stuff was probably written by interns with relatively little idea what the other interns were writing and only moderate efforts to fit to any kind of canon.
- Location
- Maybe?
I think it's pretty unambiguous that we're either a bioweapon or transdimensionally invasive; our reproduction rate and size don't match up. On any reasonable evolutionary history we'd have a much much slower breeding rate, because there's no point in spamming children as fast as we can if we're occupying a stable niche, especially considering how big they are, and in any sort of competetive environment, even accounting for red queen, we'd either be dead or dominant too quickly for selection effects to cause our current state of biology. The ability to reproduce as fast as we do is too powerful to be cheap, anatomically speaking, so evolution would have long since selected it out as a waste of energy, unless it was actively useful. Evolved or created, our mode of reproduction only makes sense if we enter and dominate new ecosystems again and again and again.
Also you're right that we're not exponential - actually it's more interesting because our border grows linearly but our army strength grows quadratically to cubically, since our growth rate depends on mana which depends on area controlled, which grows in two dimensions, plus compounds in time the fewer losses we take. So the bigger we get, the harder we steamroll, and once we start winning we don't stop.
In a very real sense, Ironwood's decision at this moment in time determines the future of Remnant.
Also you're right that we're not exponential - actually it's more interesting because our border grows linearly but our army strength grows quadratically to cubically, since our growth rate depends on mana which depends on area controlled, which grows in two dimensions, plus compounds in time the fewer losses we take. So the bigger we get, the harder we steamroll, and once we start winning we don't stop.
In a very real sense, Ironwood's decision at this moment in time determines the future of Remnant.
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- Location
- United states
Why do people try to apply real world science to a fantasy setting? You have no idea how often I make up fanstasy stories in my head involving crazy ideas without heavily thinking about the science stuff and real world physics. Also should point out that science and natural evolution goes out the window on Remnant since humans were created by gods.
- Location
- Colorado, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Comrade
I actually rather enjoy combining some semblance of science and rationality with very exotic fantasy. I won't claim to be particularly good at it, so there will likely be a great many contradictions, but even so I find the effort rewarding. Though I'm gonna have to look a few things up to parse that last post. XD
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
Something you need to remember is that we are geared for a much more dangerous world than the situation we are in. Beacon's proximity has been sheltering us a lot. Yeah we can reproduce fast right of the bat but that only adds because we aren't losing slivers right now.
If you look at the situation where slivers came from you need to keep in mind that regular slivers aren't quite apex predators there. Dragons and other big monsters like them exist there and the locals tend to be both decently armed and trigger happy.
But as we spread out we will lose more slivers. We have been coasting on having a hugely powerful hero unit right now but she can't be everywhere at once.
In particular the nature of the Grimm will make this tricky for us since they can for the most part deal with losses even better than we can. Hunter hit and run would be quite effective too as long as they aren't stupid enough to get bogged down. And if they figure out to target specials first we have a real problem.
Also while right now we only met one magic user using mana and he has been on our side we were explicitly told there is at least one more. And that one should be able to take away our mana bonds, possibly by using Grimm as proxies to do it since I figure it is Salem.
I notice that sliver quests have a tendency to look at the strengths of slivers while ignoring their vulnerabilities. And magic quests in general have a tendency to ignore the vulnerability of your mana base leading to escalating silliness. And then people get disappointed when the quests devolve into a stomp and end shortly afterwards.
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- Location
- United states
When you put it like that it might be best if we slowly expended around Beacon and only begin moving large numbers of Slivers once they can't be sustained on our current home after making number of preparations. We should also look into making specific Slivers so that we can actually send out specials without hurting ourselves.
FullNothingness
Mostly DHMO.
IMO we should focus on continuing to work on establishing ourselves here and make sure we can make it through the winter. Pick up some basic tech like being able to save food for ourselves, maybe learn farming and so on. Also spend some time on figuring out knowledge from our racial memories.
After that we should take a leaf out of the pages of the local humans and only expand to defensible places, at least at first. Spreading out does make us more vulnerable but natural barriers, constructed defenses and proper preparation should still help a lot.
For example I wouldn't be uninterested in taking over Mountain Glenn if we get a chance. It think it has impassable mountains on a lot of sides, probably has partially finished constructed defenses still around, has an existing mostly secure trade route to Vale and conveniently has lots of underground caverns we could use for hives. Most of the downsides of the place don't really bother us that much since slivers don't tend to suffer from bad morale, like living underground, our entire population can fight and if it comes down to tunnel fighting slivers are much better at that than humans are. Downside of the place for us is that it doesn't seem hugely suited for getting food. But we could either trade for that, improvise some farms by breaking up some of the construction or forage from the surrounding terrain (though that does make us more vulnerable again).
The place also probably produces quite a bit of black mana right now which could make taking it a strategic victory since the black mana to maintain and summon that many black constructs has to come from somewhere. Odds are at least part of the motivation for attacking and destroying villages and such is that few methods are as effective at creating black mana nodes as mass murder. I imagine part of the process of Grimm killing a village is claiming the bonds to the area. Taking them from the Grimm should be an attack on their powerbase, especially if we can bend the places away from black mana again over time.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Something of a headcanon on how the Queen in the quest came about is that she's a hybrid of the Rathi Slivers and the Riptide Project Slivers. The reason I say this is that the Slivers of Rath, direct descendants of the original Sliver Queen and the ones most likely to have the genome needed for a new Sliver Queen to be born, looked extremely fugly. Spines and exposed tendons were the norm. Although that might have more to do with being on Rath than genetics, given all the zombie cyborg sympathizers around who are fully willing to do awful shit, probably including deliberate spreading of necrotic and carcinogenic plagues. So Rathi Slivers might have been rotting alive and covered in cancer...
However, Riptide Project Slivers have a smooth hide, without any spiny carapace or exposed muscles, and as such are able to be adorable. The catch is that they are significantly mutated from the Rathi Slivers they were cloned from, so they likely lack the traits for a proper Sliver Queen. I mean, they're the lot that birthed the four-headed Sliver Overlord, who can mind-control other Slivers. And would be high priority for a Legendary to get because it has Sliver fetching for an ability, which means that we could pick almost any Sliver we want. QM decides how that works, but the Overlord's important function in-game is letting you have the Sliver you need.
A mix of the two, however, could have similar looks to the Sliver Hivelord, with a smooth carapace that has gaps to smooth hide. Which can be cute, especially if the carapace is soft.
However, Riptide Project Slivers have a smooth hide, without any spiny carapace or exposed muscles, and as such are able to be adorable. The catch is that they are significantly mutated from the Rathi Slivers they were cloned from, so they likely lack the traits for a proper Sliver Queen. I mean, they're the lot that birthed the four-headed Sliver Overlord, who can mind-control other Slivers. And would be high priority for a Legendary to get because it has Sliver fetching for an ability, which means that we could pick almost any Sliver we want. QM decides how that works, but the Overlord's important function in-game is letting you have the Sliver you need.
A mix of the two, however, could have similar looks to the Sliver Hivelord, with a smooth carapace that has gaps to smooth hide. Which can be cute, especially if the carapace is soft.