Okay! Feeling much better today. Time for some answers!
I think that's a big part of the tragic of the SL: They got a gift from their friends which cost them their existence as far as the SL could see, and then they discovered that they could use the gift but didn't understand it really. And others could, too - use it to destroy everything. And it was the SLs fault for getting the gift but not understanding it; if they had never bothered the Consolat so much all this would never have happened (at least I think that's the SLs trauma, even if that interpretation is lacking). But because the problem exist because of them it's on them to make sure it isn't a problem that ends existence. We know where that downward spiral ended.
This post deserves some
attention.
That's what I expected the Fourth Sorrow to be - but that turned out not to be the case. So I guess I'm a bit unclear on why this is a Sorrow.
Staying at the Sorrow to Witness or Remember will answer this.
- Not a "Shiplord wish"; a "problem that the Shiplords wish [to be] solved". Basically I'm asking if there's some problem that the Shiplords as a people asked the Teel to solve, other than the philosophical / strategic goal of preventing or persuading other species from trying to Bad End the universe. Like, for example, is there something fundamentally broken in the physical / soul-space machinery that allows the Secrets to exist? Are knowing Secrets inherently corruptive, or incur some other sort of cost? Are SEZs decaying? Growing? Are the Secrets, specifically the one(s) created by the Consulat, changing?
- This is kind of an odd concept to me; it seems weird that being the opposite of introspective does not mean that the Teel, or for that matter the Shiplords, would be completely unable to understand the introspection of another species, but okay. No spoilers; I get it.
- I mean, yes, obviously we'll need to look into this in more depth personally, but this sort of gets back to the first two questions as well. I know from a game mechanics perspective that this whole journey of discovery is important; on the other hand time is very pressing and there seems little reason that this Last Memory should contain so little information that it's willing or able to share.
- Again, see above. Why are the remaining Secrets being held as Secret by the Last Memory? Humanity already knows more than enough to destroy the universe thrice over, and the Teel are essentially entrusting us with the fate of existence by giving us what they have; why are they keeping what could be important data vital for humanity's survival, well, Secret?
- Oh, now that is interesting! This implies that the Origin does not have some sort of Secrets command console interface, or if it does it's not one that either the Teel or the Shiplords ever discovered, and the Shiplords are doing the part of tracking down Secret-capable species on their own.
- Ugh, nothing at all? Lamest treasure room ever. I joke, but honestly it's kind of astonishing how little everyone in the expedition is prioritizing what should be one of the primary goals of this expedition, that being the acquisition of resources, technologies, or actionable intel to help the overall tactical / strategic posture of humanity and their allies against the active, ongoing Shiplord extermination campaigns. I'd been kind of hoping that we would be acquiring stuff like that this whole time, just sort of incidentally to the main mission, but there's been nothing so far and that's disappointing.
- Broadly? The Shiplords know at some level that they're broken. They know that what they're doing is wrong, but they also can't see any way out of the spiral they've become part of that would actually work. The statement of "all we had to do was trust them" is relevant to this. They knew how to fix the problem, but they didn't know how to do it. And this goes back to the very core of how the Secrets were made. The way that the Consolat appeared to die to give them the universe, and how deeply that damaged them. And they don't know how to make that better. There is no human comparison, and it could be that the Sorrows are a horribly twisted attempt by the Shiplords to make others understand them. If it is, it doesn't excuse them, but knowing what they know now it's hard to avoid the possibility of that being the case.
- It's not really spoilers. I've said for most of this quest series that the way that humanity sees the world was more important than almost anything else. This is not something that's new, but it's still important. Much more on this would be spoilers, but I'd like to draw your attention to one thing in particular. The Lament referred to the Consolat's science as a deeply philosophical one, and this wasn't just limited to science. Consider how the Secrets work, how they become accessible to a species. You can do the science, but you have to believe that there's an answer, too.
- In all seriousness, this isn't a question it would be able to answer. Most races don't delve into soul science to nearly the same degree that humanity has - in truth, humanity is arguably the most advanced species in the galaxy where that's concerned. Practice gave you both the means and need to explore that field in a way that no one has since quite possibly the Consolat themselves.
- Because the Secrets aren't the answer to this problem. If they were, the Shiplords would've found it, and the point of the Last Memory was never to pass on details of the Secrets. But I accept that this is a bit of a dodge, so see below.
- That was never the goal of this expedition. The point was to find an answer to the Shiplords that wouldn't require a third of the galaxy burnt to ashes - at minimum. Remember that Project Insight said you could win, but it also told you the cost of victory.
On the matter of the Fourth and Eighth Secrets, the Last Memory can tell you this:
The Fourth provides the means to manipulate the bonds between hadrons, allowing manipulation of matter at a level not even the Sixth can match. It appears to deal with the gamma ray bursts that would result from this sort of manipulation, and is probably part of how the Shiplords terraformed the entire galactic core. It's an incredibly useful construction and economic tool, but has limited offensive capacity. No stable strange matter, for one.
The Eighth is hinted at for how the Lament made this interface, though their use of it was deliberately incomplete to create something short of a full AI. It's the non-Second mechanism for creating artificial intelligences, that Iris has been slowly unravelling, and seems to also deal quite heavily with aspects of the soul.
Wait, did the Teel get access to the Consulat archive, the Consulat Origin, or both? Or are those actually the same place? It was kind of implied in the interludes that mentioned one or the other that they were separate entities located at different places, but they seem to be used interchangeably here.
I can now confirm that they're the same place. The archive lies upon the Consolat homeworld, that the Shiplords call their Origin.
And you're saying there were a parade of non-Shiplord species that also tried their hand at the Third Sorrow simulation, and literally none of them tried the gunboat diplomacy approach in
A Simple Question? I can understand the Shiplords having a cultural blindspot so sharply-defined that it borders on an AI restraining bolt, but that was seriously the case for dozens, even hundreds of other sapient species as well? Is there really something fundamentally odd about sapience in the PW/SC universe that makes basic empathy a unique human superpower?
Pretty much
all of the species who went through the Third Sorrow's simulations before the Sorrows were sealed off were races that fought in the War of the Sphere. This had...predictable effects on the outcomes.
Why the fuck do the Shiplords hate it so much if you don't prepare to shoot aliens before you've even met any?
It's not that. Not at all. The Shiplords have fought and bled and killed for reality's continued existence. I'm not even getting into the Tribute system here, they did that in the War of the Sphere, the war against the Gysians, and many other occasions where they had to pull races back from the brink in their earlier days. Most of the time they succeeded, but over time and failures the high-minded ideals twisted and warped until it today.
I didn't want to come right out and say the reason for this, but I think I need to. Consider the core Shiplord belief that the Consolat gave their lives to create the Secrets. Somewhere along the way in their formalisation of the Tribute system, they started to see what they did in first contact as a twisted form of payment. Our friends died to give reality this, so now you have to prove that you're worthy of their gifts.
Is that right? God no.
But that's trauma for you.
[?] Ask more of the interface?
- [?] Why are the shiplords incapable of measured retribution? Why is their response often wholesale genocide instead of killing the individuals responsible?
If you're referring to the Gysian here...their willingness to escalate straight to
ending reality when told was like setting off a nuke in the centre of the Shiplord complex surrounding the need to ensure proper use of the secrets to ensure the sacrifice of the Consolat wasn't in vain. They weren't proud of it, and the Second Sorrow I think shows the depth of that shame at the time. One that has maintained deeply enough for them never to try and kill the Gysians off, which given the current state of Shiplord existence is honestly rather impressive.
Beyond that...there aren't really many examples of being incapable of measured retribution. The Sphere? Fought a war of extinction that they didn't start then got aborted by an Uninvolved soul-nuking the entire species. The Gysian? Covered above. The Teel? Actually
won and proved their right to be given the truth. The Zlathbu? Got wiped by the early Tribute system because their nanoform started to build a stellar convertor which would make them impossible to kill except by blowing up their star. The Shiplords proceeded to blow up said star, over the strident objections of the Hearthguard.
[X] Ask more of the interface?
- [X] Why do the shiplords practice collective punishment as a baseline?
- [X] Why does shiplord technology feel wrong to the soul?
See above for the collective punishment bit. The second one...most of it doesn't. There's been no feedback from Amanda in any of the Sorrows, for example - except that one time with the vision of how the War of the Sphere ended but that's not relevant. It's damned
odd, really.
If I've missed anything, and I'm quite certain I have, please poke me about it again.
