The Practice War [Complete]
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Just what is so special about the Ulfberht Class anyway?
It seems that there is actually very little indication about what makes them superior.
Is it just that they have the new generation Gravity Disruptors, nanomachine damage control, ammo fabrication, nano-armor, point defense and ECM without obvious signs of retrofit?
It seems that there is actually very little indication about what makes them superior.
Is it just that they have the new generation Gravity Disruptors, nanomachine damage control, ammo fabrication, nano-armor, point defense and ECM without obvious signs of retrofit?
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
... I should change my user name to 'Cassandra' ...
@Snowfire
- What do our experts think the shiplords will fight like? A swift approach and a hammer blow, a slow grind or both (if the hammer blow fails)?
In the former case we should evacuate all non-military staff from the orbitals and shipyards; in the latter case we need more of them to keep the installations up and running. - If I understood your comments about the FTL drive correctly the shiplords can do intra-system jumps - now at mars, then at the shipyards, next at an orbital. Did I understand that correctly?
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
They actually don't have the nano-armour or ECM. What makes them special is that they're the result of a Practiced Miracle. Their hull strength is on par with a Calypso class, their energy weaponry will match Shiplord effective ranges and will hit harder than any other mobile platform you have. Put more simply, the Miracle took the idea of the Dauntless class as swords and then turned it up past 11.
Heh.
Going off the last attack you faced and data 'recovered' through Project Insight, expect a mix of the two. FTL usage to reduce the outer system in a series of hammer blows, then a steady grind into the inner system where the FTL drives won't function.
Not exactly. The FTL that you and the Tribute Fleet have access to won't function within a sphere just inside the asteroid belt. Outside of that, both sides can use their drives as fast as they can recharge them.
The Practice War: Dark Souls Edition
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@Snowfire
Have you ever read the lore behind Star Control 1 and 2? ...maybe I shouldn't say more in fear of giving the GM ideas.
But the following kinda would fit here.
Have you ever read the lore behind Star Control 1 and 2? ...maybe I shouldn't say more in fear of giving the GM ideas.
But the following kinda would fit here.
The most extensive details come from an investigation by The Captain of the Androsynth homeworld during the events of Star Control II. Initially the lander crew discovers evidence of a relatively recent, massive land war, though strangely no evidence of an invasion from space nor any corpses. Upon examining the remnants of scientific research institutes in the civilization's ruins, the crew discovers incomplete computer records that detailed the Androsynth's DF research and their scientists' subsequent breakthrough — contact with an extra-dimensional, alien life form. The fragmentary records show that, soon after this contact event, several requests were made for information about "reality aberrations", the "mosquito mange", ghosts, poltergeists and other similar malevolent entities, requests that grew more and more urgent, almost frantic, up until the abrupt end of the computer record. Science Officer Bukowski of The Flagship, who investigates the ruins, himself almost goes mad as he learns more about the Androsynth's final moments; he destroys the computers, knowing that the information therein is dangerous, that even knowing could alert "Them" and would put the whole of Humanity in danger. "They" had already detected Bukowski, and were "moving toward him". /end quote
Said scientist dies from unknown causes, with wounds appearing on his corpse even after he had died....
Said scientist dies from unknown causes, with wounds appearing on his corpse even after he had died....
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I haven't, but fear not. I already know what happened to Project Insight, and it's rather unlikely that you'll be able to give me any more ideas than I already have.
Wait a sec.
I swear that wasn't meant to sound so menacing...
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When you gaze into the Abyss...
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
All right. I've been meaning to write this for a while, but given recent—events, I probably need to hurry up so as not to be preemptively jossed.
—
Let's talk about the nature of reality.
First of all, to get this out of the way: Yes, Practice War is a game. It exists in our minds, and the mind of Snowfire. It's not real, although if you're into Tegmark, you'll note that it (or rather, something like it) should exist somewhere in the Level 4 multiverse. If you're not... well, it's not real, and Snowfire can do whatever he wants.
However, he shouldn't. Precisely because it's a game, though this also applies to stories: Deviations from reality should be for good reason. That's a general rule, and I have no reason to think that Snowfire doesn't abide by it. Which means we can treat it like we would reality, and any deviations are likely to mean something.
So, what sort of deviations have we got...?
For the most part the story is pretty realistic. There are a few obvious issues, and I'll get to those later, but let's first look at what isn't a hint. The FTL, for example: Yes, FTL is (probably) impossible in our universe, so it's a deviation, but it's a simple one. It can be accounted for by altering the laws of physics a bit, leaving you still with a simple universe.[1]
Shiplord expert systems, weapons, defences and engines — none of these are described in sufficient detail to say for sure that they're aphysical, even in our universe. There's definitely no reason to suspect that they're aphysical in all of them[2].
There are two exceptions. Luckily for me, neither one is particularly subtle.
———
Practice
Potentials act, outside of Miracles, as if they've been merged with a post-human intelligence. In the case of Marcus that's to the point that he was literally mistaken for one, but it's a general issue. They don't even have the decency to be traditional magical girls, with a few notable exceptions; the boost is almost entirely to their intelligence, social skills not excluded.
Sometimes, as with Miracles or Project Insight, or on smaller scales with individual Potentials, this devolves to outright reality warping. In combination with the next deviation that becomes concerning, but it's the intelligence boost that really breaks things here. It isn't native; their brains can't support it, and even if they could, we've been shown that it isn't fully integrated. Marcus' view of the cybernetic fight was a bizarre analogy rather than the actual events.
This means that it can't be part of the base laws of physics. Intelligence is complicated. It can evolve, but evolution would never have produced anything like this. We're looking at something which might as well be outright magic, and where we know that the magician has to be considerably smarter than human.
During a Miracle, when the synchronisation is closest, the Potentials end up losing their memories of the event entirely. That's a little concerning as well. Okay, next.
———
Secrets
The opening chapter doesn't treat Secrets as special. They're numbered in order of discovery, and it's implied that they're only named this way because of someone's excessive sense of drama[3]. Everything we've seen in the story since then, however, does.
There are Secrets of the Universe, a fixed set—and it's suggested that, no matter what order you discover them in, the Sixth Secret will always be the Sixth Secret. Nanotech is a real thing, of course, but it isn't something like that; in particular, it isn't a distinct thing from biotech. In our own world, the fields feed on each other, and actual hard-nanotech will probably be so closely intertwined with biotech that it's hard to even see the edges.
In the Practice War, Secrets are disjoint things and it's possible to determine that the Sixth Secret is, specifically, the Sixth. Needless to say, this isn't how science works.
It looks a whole lot more like someone's grand strategy game.
— — —
If we could be sure that Practice would remain reliable, even though it follows aphysical rules, then that would be fine—but we have no reason to believe that. Were we ever told that Practice is one of the apparently-official Secrets of the Universe, or are we breaking the rules? If we're cheating, then what will happen once the umpires notice?
It's important to note that none of the above need be some sort of fundamental feature of the universe. We're living in an old galaxy, and while the Shiplords are the most powerful of the Involved, that very statement itself guarantees the existence of more powerful entities that are apparently uninvolved. Some of them may have chosen to turn the galaxy into their own playground, following artificial rules, instead of just going away. There's no guarantee that typical SF elder-race tropes are in effect.
Of course, there's no evidence that anything troublesome at all will happen. Maybe the Things lurking beyond Insight are actually nice, and it's only the loss of time and laboratory equipment that's our consequence for this crit-fail.
But I know which one would be more interesting to read about.
————————————
1: For example, you could run the whole thing on Newtonian physics as adapted to QM; that'd give you FTL by outrunning light, though it'd also mean photons have variable speed.
If you want to maintain relativity, you could swap the time dimension for another space dimension, giving you 4+0 instead of 3+1; this would provide a weird sort of time dilation where moving 1 LY takes 1 year from the perspective of the crew of the ship, but ships can move infinitely fast from the perspective of their home planet. You'd need some sort of cryonics.
The FTL system, as described in-story, is more complicated than either of these options—but it's still feasible under simple physics, for example with the system I described here.
2: What does it mean for something to be "Aphysical in all universes"?
On the face of it, it's a contradiction in terms. There's no limit to how complicated the laws of physics can be, though you might have philosophical objections to infinities or outright uncomputable rules. That being said, if you like Occam's razor to apply—or if you go one further, and like your universes to be the output of a universal dovetailer—then there's a point at which the simplest explanation for your experience is that it's generated by a simulation, the programming for which was produced by intelligent thought.
In an old universe that thought may be internal, rather than there being some Dark Lords of the Matrix setting everything up, but it makes relatively little difference for us.
3: Well, yes, it's probably someone's sense of drama. It just need not be Earth's.
—
Let's talk about the nature of reality.
First of all, to get this out of the way: Yes, Practice War is a game. It exists in our minds, and the mind of Snowfire. It's not real, although if you're into Tegmark, you'll note that it (or rather, something like it) should exist somewhere in the Level 4 multiverse. If you're not... well, it's not real, and Snowfire can do whatever he wants.
However, he shouldn't. Precisely because it's a game, though this also applies to stories: Deviations from reality should be for good reason. That's a general rule, and I have no reason to think that Snowfire doesn't abide by it. Which means we can treat it like we would reality, and any deviations are likely to mean something.
So, what sort of deviations have we got...?
For the most part the story is pretty realistic. There are a few obvious issues, and I'll get to those later, but let's first look at what isn't a hint. The FTL, for example: Yes, FTL is (probably) impossible in our universe, so it's a deviation, but it's a simple one. It can be accounted for by altering the laws of physics a bit, leaving you still with a simple universe.[1]
Shiplord expert systems, weapons, defences and engines — none of these are described in sufficient detail to say for sure that they're aphysical, even in our universe. There's definitely no reason to suspect that they're aphysical in all of them[2].
There are two exceptions. Luckily for me, neither one is particularly subtle.
———
Practice
Potentials act, outside of Miracles, as if they've been merged with a post-human intelligence. In the case of Marcus that's to the point that he was literally mistaken for one, but it's a general issue. They don't even have the decency to be traditional magical girls, with a few notable exceptions; the boost is almost entirely to their intelligence, social skills not excluded.
Sometimes, as with Miracles or Project Insight, or on smaller scales with individual Potentials, this devolves to outright reality warping. In combination with the next deviation that becomes concerning, but it's the intelligence boost that really breaks things here. It isn't native; their brains can't support it, and even if they could, we've been shown that it isn't fully integrated. Marcus' view of the cybernetic fight was a bizarre analogy rather than the actual events.
This means that it can't be part of the base laws of physics. Intelligence is complicated. It can evolve, but evolution would never have produced anything like this. We're looking at something which might as well be outright magic, and where we know that the magician has to be considerably smarter than human.
During a Miracle, when the synchronisation is closest, the Potentials end up losing their memories of the event entirely. That's a little concerning as well. Okay, next.
———
Secrets
The opening chapter doesn't treat Secrets as special. They're numbered in order of discovery, and it's implied that they're only named this way because of someone's excessive sense of drama[3]. Everything we've seen in the story since then, however, does.
There are Secrets of the Universe, a fixed set—and it's suggested that, no matter what order you discover them in, the Sixth Secret will always be the Sixth Secret. Nanotech is a real thing, of course, but it isn't something like that; in particular, it isn't a distinct thing from biotech. In our own world, the fields feed on each other, and actual hard-nanotech will probably be so closely intertwined with biotech that it's hard to even see the edges.
In the Practice War, Secrets are disjoint things and it's possible to determine that the Sixth Secret is, specifically, the Sixth. Needless to say, this isn't how science works.
It looks a whole lot more like someone's grand strategy game.
— — —
If we could be sure that Practice would remain reliable, even though it follows aphysical rules, then that would be fine—but we have no reason to believe that. Were we ever told that Practice is one of the apparently-official Secrets of the Universe, or are we breaking the rules? If we're cheating, then what will happen once the umpires notice?
It's important to note that none of the above need be some sort of fundamental feature of the universe. We're living in an old galaxy, and while the Shiplords are the most powerful of the Involved, that very statement itself guarantees the existence of more powerful entities that are apparently uninvolved. Some of them may have chosen to turn the galaxy into their own playground, following artificial rules, instead of just going away. There's no guarantee that typical SF elder-race tropes are in effect.
Of course, there's no evidence that anything troublesome at all will happen. Maybe the Things lurking beyond Insight are actually nice, and it's only the loss of time and laboratory equipment that's our consequence for this crit-fail.
But I know which one would be more interesting to read about.
————————————
1: For example, you could run the whole thing on Newtonian physics as adapted to QM; that'd give you FTL by outrunning light, though it'd also mean photons have variable speed.
If you want to maintain relativity, you could swap the time dimension for another space dimension, giving you 4+0 instead of 3+1; this would provide a weird sort of time dilation where moving 1 LY takes 1 year from the perspective of the crew of the ship, but ships can move infinitely fast from the perspective of their home planet. You'd need some sort of cryonics.
The FTL system, as described in-story, is more complicated than either of these options—but it's still feasible under simple physics, for example with the system I described here.
2: What does it mean for something to be "Aphysical in all universes"?
On the face of it, it's a contradiction in terms. There's no limit to how complicated the laws of physics can be, though you might have philosophical objections to infinities or outright uncomputable rules. That being said, if you like Occam's razor to apply—or if you go one further, and like your universes to be the output of a universal dovetailer—then there's a point at which the simplest explanation for your experience is that it's generated by a simulation, the programming for which was produced by intelligent thought.
In an old universe that thought may be internal, rather than there being some Dark Lords of the Matrix setting everything up, but it makes relatively little difference for us.
3: Well, yes, it's probably someone's sense of drama. It just need not be Earth's.
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There actually is a way to have FTL work in our reality without fracturing causality or relativity.
It would require a point of view from outside of everything that can see all points at once, but if it existed then it works. (Thus explaining why FTL works in any story/movie. We are that point. )
Weird thing is there are theoretical ways to FTL, but no real ways to practically test them. Mass of a star or power output of one stuff...
It would require a point of view from outside of everything that can see all points at once, but if it existed then it works. (Thus explaining why FTL works in any story/movie. We are that point.
)Weird thing is there are theoretical ways to FTL, but no real ways to practically test them. Mass of a star or power output of one stuff...
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
So you'd need Oversight?There actually is a way to have FTL work in our reality without fracturing causality or relativity.
It would require a point of view from outside of everything that can see all points at once, but if it existed then it works. (Thus explaining why FTL works in any story/movie. We are that point.
Weird thing is there are theoretical ways to FTL, but no real ways to practically test them. Mass of a star or power output of one stuff...
Honestly, I'd love to hear more about that. It's the first I've heard of it outside of fiction.
— — —
@Snowfire You're giggling right now, aren't you.
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Well, that or souls are actually a thing. If you start from the assumption that sapience is somehow "special" to the universe - in much the same way that nanotech is special to the universe, producing a distinct category of its own (the sixth secret), I might add - then from that perspective, it shouldn't be that surprising that practice works the way it does.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Part of my argument is that sapience can't be special to the universe; it's too complex. Souls can't exist, unless they work similarly to the souls of Exa Pico, which... drop most of the baggage implicit in the "soul" term, and wouldn't produce anything like what we've seen.
It's not that the universe can't behave as if it is, and I'd agree with the claim that this universe indeed does. However, if it does, then someone must have done the work to make it so. It wouldn't have happened by accident.
Which could be done inside of the universe, or done by the makers of the universe. Doesn't much matter which. Either way, it means the mechanics aren't necessarily reliable.
Yeah....Robert L. Forward designed a gravity drive that obeyed both Newton and Einstein based theories by generating mass fluctuations which would have caused spacetime to ripple, thus generating what Einstein stated what Gravity was and frame drag the ship.
It would be technically inertia-less, as the whole ship would accelerate at the same speed, meaning that the entire ship will only feel 1G of inertia, even if it's pulling 500Gs worth of acceleration.
Theoretically, you could use a similar drive to purposefully curve spacetime into a Warp Drive.
It does require you to be able to make black hole dense superconductive material in a torus particle accelerator and spin it up to near light speed to do it, though.
It would be technically inertia-less, as the whole ship would accelerate at the same speed, meaning that the entire ship will only feel 1G of inertia, even if it's pulling 500Gs worth of acceleration.
Theoretically, you could use a similar drive to purposefully curve spacetime into a Warp Drive.
It does require you to be able to make black hole dense superconductive material in a torus particle accelerator and spin it up to near light speed to do it, though.
It would require a point of view from outside of everything that can see all points at once, but if it existed then it works. (Thus explaining why FTL works in any story/movie. We are that point.
I haven't read anything about this so this is basically my own musings, but as I see it, one of the main problems with FTL is that "instantaneous" travel isn't actually well defined, and depends on your reference frame.So you'd need Oversight?
Honestly, I'd love to hear more about that. It's the first I've heard of it outside of fiction.
Take a look at this image. You have a "future" light cone, a "past" light cone, and a plane of the "present". However, the problem is that when you change your speed, while the past/future cones stay put, the "present" plane actually get turned. As it happens EVERYTHING that isn't in the past/future cones can be made the "present" by controlling your speed.
So if you have instantaneous teleportation, then by accelerating and the doing a transition, you can wind up "back it time", at least according to the original reference frame. This isn't actually a problem yet since you don't wind up in your past light-come (which is the true, reference-agnostic past), but it rapidly becomes a problem if you change your speed again, and transition again; now you can wind up in the past light cone of where you started. Oops.
That problem generalizes even if you replace "teleportation" with "going X% over the speed of light".
Now, one solution is to fix a universal reference frame in which FTL works; without being able to do the change-frames-then-transition trick, we avoid paradox (caveat: this works in special relatively; I don't have enough of an intuition for general relatively to say what problems if any would happen there). Of course, this does break symmetry between reference frames, which makes physicists sad. More practically, it would seem a bit strange if the "true" frame happened to exactly correspond to Earth's reference frame, so we would probably end up in a strange situation where it turns out that any STL travel we do on interstellar distances ends up being "faster" in one direction than another, at least if you use the true frame for timekeeping.
Yep, it's kinda a thing in RL, they figured out that if you exist outside of our universe, you exist outside of what we would percieve as spacetime, which would mean that past, present and future are useless concepts to you as you would not be able to see the difference between any of those three.
Couple that with the ability to see all of the universe at any given time, you would be able to travel to any point in space at any given time.
'Time is nothing but a stubborn illusion' is something what a few scientists brandy about, only to be mocked because it would make most scientific endevours moot, as as most experiments do, in fact, incorporate time as part of the analysis and results.
Ok so forgive me, it's been ages since I was active in any scientific community.
But as I understand it, quantum mechanics is still reliant on the whole design of Observer/Observed when it comes to it's workings yes?
This theory, while nothing more than that, a theory, WOULD allow for FTL travel in our universe while still allowing Relativity and Causality to function. True it's closer to a belief than a theorem, as it's basically untestable (outside someone going FTL and finding out one way or another), but it's great for hand-waving away problems in a story.
You didn't mention to them that one of the other main arguments against this theory is that it could, in a twisted way, be used to explain God or something similar, a omnipresent observer. (Or it could be used to explain that we're all simulations on a computer, and that's the programmer watching the output...)
But yea. It gets weird on the theoretical side of science. I don't even want to speculate how it's changed in this story with the proven existence of souls, and the meta-science that's been developed from there.
(edit) Actually.... It would not shock me if in this story's far far past, some super race went and did something like create a universal observational point (like what the Time Lords did in Dr Who), and that's one of the Secrets that allows for FTL. And each Secret was likewise some otherwise unbreakable rule, or civilizational game-changer. (Nano Machines are one of our golden dream techs for a reason)
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@GamingGeek, that's because it's mostly dismissed, because 'if time is a useless concept, then science is, because we observe time when trying to do science and trying to do science without time goes into very, very weird places or goes nowhere, thus pointless to think about time in that way' is pretty much the top.
Saying stuff like 'our concept of time or physics may not apply to other galaxies because we aren't stablizing the fuzzy quantum foam that makes them up because we aren't there observing the galaxy at point blank range and effecting it via quantum zeno effect (or something) and our understanding of the universe, but some other alien race that doesn't have our view of the universe might be there instead' is pretty much a good way to get funny looks off most scientists who like their universe to be stable and rational, which is the dominant means of thinking right now.
Saying stuff like 'our concept of time or physics may not apply to other galaxies because we aren't stablizing the fuzzy quantum foam that makes them up because we aren't there observing the galaxy at point blank range and effecting it via quantum zeno effect (or something) and our understanding of the universe, but some other alien race that doesn't have our view of the universe might be there instead' is pretty much a good way to get funny looks off most scientists who like their universe to be stable and rational, which is the dominant means of thinking right now.
...you do realize I'm offering up the whole theory as a handwave excuse for stuff happening in a story like this yes? Not in a 'I believe in this' way.
You're taking my comments far more seriously than they're worth. Yes, these are not widely believed in ideas. They have no way to be tested or checked against at this time, so that's all they'll ever be. Ideas.
To everyone else, please don't take anyone's word for anything on a public forum, even one like SV. Investigate them, yes. Think about them, sure. But don't ever blindly accept stuff.
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
You have faster than light scanners built off of the same technology as your lagless comms. Light cones and relativity is not something I am willing to deal with in this quest, mainly because I do not want to deal with the physics involved.
So. Let's talk about the nature of reality. Specifically the one that the Practice War takes place within.
A few points to start with:
- The FTL capabilities granted by the First Secret are more akin to instantaneous space folding then anything else. This is theoretically possible in reality, but the power cost would be immense. Due to it being a Secret, it bends the universe over a table and informs it that conventional laws of of physics need not apply. It does seem to be intensely range limited, however.
- The Secrets do have some overlap with each other, but seeing them as a tree of some sort is actually a good way to look at it. Like any tree, those branches can mingle or cross over with each other. Exactly how far this metaphor goes before it breaks down is directly proportional to my tiredness level - which is currently reasonably high and rising.
- What Potentials do...I have a post that covers this as well as some other things here. That page has some good stuff, actually, so I'd read it in depth if you haven't already.
- Um...there was...ok, I'm too tired to answer anything more coherently. Sorry folks.
I have most of the day tomorrow free to write and answer questions if people have them, so if this chain of discussion has brought some to mind, post them and I'll get back to you once I'm awake.
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Robinton
Probably petting Schrödinger's cat
- Location
- Scientifically proving a miracle
Great post!
Let's also include deviations in the actions of rational-ish beings:
- The Shiplords take Tribute, but don't forbid military or research on new Secrets.
- (Arguable) Nobody's unleashed an Optimizing AI (as far as we can tell). (Strictly speaking, in a reality where Souls exist, Optimizing AIs are significantly less likely to be Game-Breakers, due to what I might as well call "GM Intervention".)
- Maybe something-something the Uninvolved something?
Bizarre analogy or bizarre computer-interface tech?
Explanation ideas:
- Mental censoring by the Practice beings. Motives could include "not letting us know this is a game", "not letting us draw too much attention from the Uninvolved", and "sloppy programming".
- Our minds cannot handle the full truth, so they drop the excess data.
- Something with souls - if this blurs the boundaries between souls... Maybe the data to create the Miracle is distributed across several minds/souls, and when the links between souls collapse at the end, the resulting nonsense data gets treated the same way as the nonsense data we interpret as (most?) dreams?
Hey, that's what I was wondering!
(And I was prepared to quote half a dozen uses of the word in the first page alone!)
"Has been made." Could a volcano ever be a target for Practice? Or a pebble someone picked up off the beach? Or a treebranch?
Sweet!
As far as FTL goes, is there any problem with saying "instantaneous teleportation is possible, from the perspective of the reference frame that is the average of the starting reference frame and the destination reference frame"? I think that should avoid time paradoxes, in Special Relativity at least.
So, questions:
- As mentioned, could a volcano ever be a target for Practice? Or a pebble someone picked up off the beach? Or a treebranch?
- What do we know about the Uninvolved?
- Do Potentials ever get fuzzy nonsensical memories as if they'd dreamed intensely, after a Miracle?
- Platonic Form. Hmm... Does that mean that two objects, that are physically identical, but were originally built by a non-Potential with two different end goals in mind, would be interpreted differently by Practice? Or does Practice only consider the viewpoint of the Potential?
- "Miracle." Anything else you can tell us?
- What does a normal person see when connected to a network? How does this differ from Marcus' experience?
- Has Mary (or anyone else) noted any obviously inexplicable actions any theoretically-rational party has undertaken?
- Could we use Portals to generate energy? Either via infinite Portal loop, or by lowering objects from space via portal?
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Hm. Come to think of it, Scientific Studies were more or less redone from scratch following the discovery of the Secrets in the backstory, which would fit with something insane being discovered (Like said FTL, FTL coms and FTL sensors).
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
That is a complicated question, and one that I'm actually more interested in seeing you find out the answer to IC than telling you OOC. The 'has been made' descriptor is important here though, as it gives a direction for the Potential to build off of. What classifies as something that has been made is more complicated.
- See the answer further up. At present, IC knowledge points to answers of hell no, it depends and maybe.
- Very little. They're powerful and ancient, but occupy and function on a very different level of reality to yourselves. This makes motives and directly traceable actions hard to pin down, and humanity has been more focused on the Shiplords as a clearly present existential threat.
- They remember the feeling, the clean and precise workings of power, but they don't remember what they actually did beyond focusing their Practice to bring forth a new form. An example here from the start of the quest would be that a Potential with the right Focus could turn a dinner knife in a blade capable of cutting through atomic bonds. This is theoretically possible for human science, but would require labs and workshops and all the other trappings of the hypertech needed to create that sort of thing. A Potential just does it, although it takes time normally. The general way in which a Potential works is that they take a device, or an object, and put it through the motions of what they want it to do. The more one understands, the less actual physical work they need to do, but the more draining it seems to become. As was shown in Requiem for a Dream, reality takes exception to cheats. Cheat too much and it'll hurt you bad.
- Above all, Practice works through the Focus of a Potential. There isn't enough power to fill the imprint that Dragons left, but a Focus can compress that power, like when you hold your thumb partway over a hosepipe. What results has the same mass, but travels much further because of how pressure works. But the Focus of a Potential means that their power can only be applied to that which is part of the Focus. So one Potential could take a knife and turn it into a weapon. Another wouldn't be able to do anything with it, because all the possible extensions of 'Knife' lie outside of their Focus.
- Not more than I think I've given. Specific questions might be useful here, although I can't promise to be able to answer them (spoilers).
- Normal people can't connect in the way Marcus can. There are limited implant based interface technologies available at this point, allowing for some interaction with networks, but Marcus take that many steps further. He's a key, someone who can open doorways and break past locks, and part of that applies to himself as well. The problem is, he's also still human, and a human cannot process an infospace properly. So he designed the interface he used on the Subnet Hub to work with his Focus and help him cheat. The fights in the infospace weren't exactly analogy, but they weren't the truth either; the description is how Marcus would describe it, but it's a grey area.
- That is...a rather large question. Could I ask for a bit more in the way of specifics, please.
- You don't have portals. You're not even sure if they're a viable application of First Secret technology, but even if they were it would require breaking one of the core Directives, and I don't think you want to go doing that.