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The Secrets' Crusade

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Dmol8 said:
Think Eldar and Slaanesh. Thing Stellaris and End of the Cycle. They weren't Tyranids, they became one of the Five. Specifically the Chloros/Khloros Cowl more commonly known as Thanatos/Death.

There are four other ways a fuck up like this can happen: The Pure Archer/Conquest, The Scarlet Swordsman/Civil War, The Mourning Judge/Pestilence/Strife/Famine and the Golden Maceman/Tyrant.
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I mean, I'm figuring your alternate names for the Christian-eschatology Horsemen of the Apocalypse are just a translation thing... But, uh, this setting is under no obligation to line up with that particular mythos. Just to be clear.

There are a LOT of ways that the process of turning a normal biological sapient species into a psychic super-powerful gestalt entity can go horribly wrong, not four or five that happen to closely align with Earth mythological figures.
 
This. This does beg a question that needs answering. That we desperately need to know.

Snowfire said:
You'd watched for millennia as the galaxy grew and changed around you, until the myriad races that had followed your own had shaped it into something nigh unrecognisable. This wasn't a complaint; you could look out and see so much to admire in those ambitious youths. The desire to make something more of the galaxy, to create something better for those that came next, that was to be treasured. That had been the first lesson your race had ever been taught by another.
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Let me begin a little bit back. The story told in this Star System, tells us of an era, eons past, when Shiplords were not the force of oppression, but instead uplifting.

This is, perhaps, THE turning point of their history. Though that is not guaranteed.

But the question I want to know is - did the Shiplords of that era take away the same lessons as Humanity of Practice? Did those lessons come from the same knowledge that we just obtained?
 
Simon_Jester said:
I mean, I'm figuring your alternate names for the Christian-eschatology Horsemen of the Apocalypse are just a translation thing... But, uh, this setting is under no obligation to line up with that particular mythos. Just to be clear.

There are a LOT of ways that the process of turning a normal biological sapient species into a psychic super-powerful gestalt entity can go horribly wrong, not four or five that happen to closely align with Earth mythological figures.
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No. Look these are failure states of technologically advanced polities that turn up a lot in science fiction. Like a lot lot.

There is the whole devoured thing that we saw this update.

There is the whole unable to let go of a conflict thing that we just came from with that nanite tomb planet.

There is the whole forced enlightenment/uplift thing that is nothing more than conquest prettied up.

There is the whole Highlander (yes it's a science fiction series, most people don't like being reminded of that though) there can be only one when there is only one left and that one mind rules an entire oversoul.

And there is the whole we will punish you until you don't even dare think about doing anything close to the dangerous/forbidden actions that the Shiplords of today do to all races as they see themselves as the stern parents of the galaxy protecting the naive irresponsible children by penaly conditioning them.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
So is the entire Shiplord system a machine designed principally to control who becomes, and who stays, an Uninvolved via culling and deeply destructive manipulation, all for the purpose of avoiding a Von Neumann soul and/or a species being exterminated not just in body but in soul?
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That's probably one part of it. But we don't have the information we need to look at a complete picture. Information such as what is between the stars such that the Shiplords specifically warn races against lingering in the space between the stars. We've seen glimpses of what lay between the stars (the unknown beings that observed the contact fleet journeying to Sol), but we don't know if there are far more malevolent forces that lurk between the stars.
 
Faraway-R said:
This. This does beg a question that needs answering. That we desperately need to know.

Let me begin a little bit back. The story told in this Star System, tells us of an era, eons past, when Shiplords were not the force of oppression, but instead uplifting.

This is, perhaps, THE turning point of their history. Though that is not guaranteed.

But the question I want to know is - did the Shiplords of that era take away the same lessons as Humanity of Practice? Did those lessons come from the same knowledge that we just obtained?
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Furthermore, what was the surrounding context?

The Hijvin, or some portion thereof, clearly turned themselves into some kind of pseudo-"Uninvolved" monstrosity, which an elder Uninvolved then destroyed for the sake of the peace of the galaxy.

Why did the Hijvin do this?

The Hijvin, we learn from the update, were already at war with (we infer) the Shiplords, who were in turn seen in those days as benevolent uplifters who seem to have been aiding in the creation of Uninvolved. Note the following passage:

That had been the consensus of your kind. You would watch, of course, and be prepared to protect reality from any action like that of the |||||||. But the race facing your past teachers had none of the mastery required, and that had been enough to calm many voices that might otherwise have sought to act.

...

The "|||||||" alluded to are probably referring to another defining crisis in Shiplord history, probably again involving the terrifying potentialities the Uninvolved or pseudo-Uninvolved are capable of. Again, something we need clues about.

Meanwhile, we also need clues about why the Hijvin were fighting the Shiplords in the first place. Did the Shiplords impose restrictive prohibitions on them, that they rebelled against? Were the Hijvin simply jealous? Some combination of the two? Some unknown conflict between the Hijvin and a third-party sapient species that the Shiplords became involved in?

Knowing how and why this happened will do a lot to contextualize what the Shiplords did in the aftermath of the destruction wrought by this Uninvolved. It will also help us understand what policy changes the Shiplords made in the aftermath, helping us to understand their motives more clearly.

...

We know enough to infer that the basic motive behind all the Shiplord actions is the desire to impose a galactic order in which no force or entity is capable of threatening galactic civilization in its present form. That is, nobody can destroy the Shiplords, nobody has the means to create some kind of psychic hell-swarm and devour every mind in the universe, the Uninvolved can't just drop gridfire on people they don't like even if they want to, and so on, and so on.

The question is, how did the Shiplords work themselves around into a position where they honestly believe that "the only way" is this endless avalanche of brutality and destruction of all other races? How do we convince them to stop, other than by the customary obvious expedient of blowing up all their stuff?
 
Dmol8 said:
No. Look these are failure states of technologically advanced polities that turn up a lot in science fiction. Like a lot lot.

There is the whole devoured thing that we saw this update.

There is the whole unable to let go of a conflict thing that we just came from with that nanite tomb planet.

There is the whole forced enlightenment/uplift thing that is nothing more than conquest prettied up.

There is the whole Highlander (yes it's a science fiction series, most people don't like being reminded of that though) there can be only one when there is only one left and that one mind rules an entire oversoul.

And there is the whole we will punish you until you don't even dare think about doing anything close to the dangerous/forbidden actions that the Shiplords of today do to all races as they see themselves as the stern parents of the galaxy protecting the naive irresponsible children by penaly conditioning them.
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You are significantly misinterpreting a lot of things, or tying together stuff from other settings in ways that don't apply here and isn't relevant. Furthermore your list is defined heavily by what you chose to leave off the list. The things you chose to include are basically "tropes applied to powerful ancient species in fiction."

There are many other tropes that you aren't listing. By selectively including only the specific things that let you put together a nice coherent list of "these five things are the Horsemen of the Spacepocalypse," you create the illusion (even to yourself) that those five are all there are. Moreover, you promote uncommon tropes ("only one mind rules an oversoul," when the opposite is often true in fiction) as co-equal with common tropes ("imperial overlords who abusively enforce strict restraints.")

There is no grand unified field theory of fiction. Specific tropes ("powerful species in space that bring about bad results for galactic civilization") can be expressed in diverse ways, some of them popular, some of them unpopular. There is no insight to be gained from trying to force-fit what you see in a setting into such a list and then try to 'deduce' insight from the force-fitting process.
 
Simon_Jester said:
You are significantly misinterpreting a lot of things, or tying together stuff from other settings in ways that don't apply here and isn't relevant. Furthermore your list is defined heavily by what you chose to leave off the list. The things you chose to include are basically "tropes applied to powerful ancient species in fiction."

There are many other tropes that you aren't listing. By selectively including only the specific things that let you put together a nice coherent list of "these five things are the Horsemen of the Spacepocalypse," you create the illusion (even to yourself) that those five are all there are. Moreover, you promote uncommon tropes ("only one mind rules an oversoul," when the opposite is often true in fiction) as co-equal with common tropes ("imperial overlords who abusively enforce strict restraints.")

There is no grand unified field theory of fiction. Specific tropes ("powerful species in space that bring about bad results for galactic civilization") can be expressed in diverse ways, some of them popular, some of them unpopular. There is no insight to be gained from trying to force-fit what you see in a setting into such a list and then try to 'deduce' insight from the force-fitting process.
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o_O OK and what am I supposed to make as a reply to this argument?

You didn't say if I used all the "tropes applied to powerful ancient species in fiction". So I can't tell if your argument is that I only used "powerful ancient species" tropes and not other tropes on top of that or if the problem is that I didn't use all the "powerful ancient species" tropes.

What even are the tropes I'm not including in my argument and why are they relevant to my argument from your point of view? The one mind ruling an oversoul is a common bad end for the creation of an oversoul in science fiction.

So this last part of your argument is that there is no point to a meta-fictional analysis of a work? Am I getting this right?
 
So the Other Way the Shiplords wish there was would demand something to non-destructively avert the outcome of the Hjivin War. None of the Shiplords' system really cares about mundane interactions of normal races, up to and including highly destructive warfare in the material world, except that those wars (or warfighting capabilities) inevitably represent a threat to the integrity of their defense against corrupt Uninvolved.

That Other Way would have to allow (at least some of):
  • Preventing an Uninvolved ascension based on fundamentally corrupt motivations
  • Preventing an Uninvolved ascension from being hijacked by some corrupt element within
  • Preventing an Uninvolved ascension from being corrupted by some outside force
  • Arresting corrupt Uninvolved without resorting to the cosmically destructive forces seen here
  • Healing the corruption of an Uninvolved once they have set themselves upon the path of the Hjivin
  • Maybe also preventing normal Uninvolved from deploying weapons like what was used here for any reason, but that's probably asking to change the fundamental, functional nature of what an Uninvolved is and how they operate.

Furthermore, we probably set off either a cosmic tripwire (could have been set by the Shiplords or the Uninvolved) or we woke up something related to the corruption of the Hjivin. If we're lucky, it was just something to scare off the planet's native life. Really though there's no way the parties involved wouldn't be watching to make sure the Hjivin or whatever was behind them stayed down.
 
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Dmol8 said:
o_O OK and what am I supposed to make as a reply to this argument?

You didn't say if I used all the "tropes applied to powerful ancient species in fiction". So I can't tell if your argument is that I only used "powerful ancient species" tropes and not other tropes on top of that or if the problem is that I didn't use all the "powerful ancient species" tropes.

What even are the tropes I'm not including in my argument and why are they relevant to my argument from your point of view? The one mind ruling an oversoul is a common bad end for the creation of an oversoul in science fiction.

So this last part of your argument is that there is no point to a meta-fictional analysis of a work? Am I getting this right?
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My argument is that your metafictional analysis is based on the idea that there are a specific list of applicable things that are relevant to your analysis.

But you got to pick and choose which things would go on that list, and which ones wouldn't. You did this picking and choosing to line the things on your list up with a fairly clear "horsemen of the apocalypse" theme, complete with using imaginative (presumably translated from another language) names for those 'horseman' identities like "the Pure Archer." Presumably the term "Pure Archer" is in some way associated with the Biblical 'horseman' of Conquest, or with some other mythological point of reference.

And it is remarkable that you can provide such specific names, names that are rich in mythology and symbolism and historical allusions, for the categories. After all, obviously there is nothing about an ascended ancient species or oversoul that is literally associated with a "Pure Archer" or a "Chloros Cowl" or "Golden Maceman" or anything else. It's not as if the Hijvin were literally wearing a giant green hood, or their collective devouring gestalt oversoul was physically wielding a bow and arrow or a mace. These images do not inherently connect to the things you're talking about, but rather to some other mythological thing that in turn symbolically connects to the story you're analyzing.

And that's the problem.

...

See, your ability to do that strongly suggests that you are curating your list, and interpreting the archetypes associated with it, so that they will line up with your preconceptions.

The myth of the Procrustean bed is relevant here- of the man who makes a great show of being hospitable to travelers, and gives them a bed to sleep in for the night, but if any man is not tall enough to fit the bed's length exactly he stretches them out to fit as if they were on a rack, and if a man is too tall to fit he chops off their feet to amke them fit.

And that's, again, the problem. By the way you categorize things, and the choice of imagery you use to describe them, you are subjecting the literary themes of works to Procrustean analysis, or at least suggesting that a Procrustean analysis is possible and desirable.

...

As another analogy, consider the theory of the four humors, cornerstone of traditional European medicine*. This pseudoscientific theory held that the condition of the human body was governed by four bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, 'black bile,' and 'yellow bile'). There was an elaborate list of correspondences and symbolism connecting the four humors (two of which arguably do not exist in the forms the ancients believed in them) to the four classical elements (air, water, earth, fire). And to various seasons of the year, various herbs and foods and diseases and precious stones, and God knows what all else.

And it was all nonsense, but it was nonsense you could construct clever pretty arguments in support of, so it hung together and persisted.

That is the danger of a complex pretty meta-analysis in which one says "X1 is like X2 and Y1 is kind of like Y2 and Z1 isn't like Z2 but it would make things so much more elegant if it was so we'll pretend it is..."
 
Simon_Jester said:
My argument is that your metafictional analysis is based on the idea that there are a specific list of applicable things that are relevant to your analysis.

But you got to pick and choose which things would go on that list, and which ones wouldn't. You did this picking and choosing to line the things on your list up with a fairly clear "horsemen of the apocalypse" theme, complete with using imaginative (presumably translated from another language) names for those 'horseman' identities like "the Pure Archer." Presumably the term "Pure Archer" is in some way associated with the Biblical 'horseman' of Conquest, or with some other mythological point of reference.

And it is remarkable that you can provide such specific names, names that are rich in mythology and symbolism and historical allusions, for the categories. After all, obviously there is nothing about an ascended ancient species or oversoul that is literally associated with a "Pure Archer" or a "Chloros Cowl" or "Golden Maceman" or anything else. It's not as if the Hijvin were literally wearing a giant green hood, or their collective devouring gestalt oversoul was physically wielding a bow and arrow or a mace. These images do not inherently connect to the things you're talking about, but rather to some other mythological thing that in turn symbolically connects to the story you're analyzing.

And that's the problem.

...

See, your ability to do that strongly suggests that you are curating your list, and interpreting the archetypes associated with it, so that they will line up with your preconceptions.

The myth of the Procrustean bed is relevant here- of the man who makes a great show of being hospitable to travelers, and gives them a bed to sleep in for the night, but if any man is not tall enough to fit the bed's length exactly he stretches them out to fit as if they were on a rack, and if a man is too tall to fit he chops off their feet to amke them fit.

And that's, again, the problem. By the way you categorize things, and the choice of imagery you use to describe them, you are subjecting the literary themes of works to Procrustean analysis, or at least suggesting that a Procrustean analysis is possible and desirable.

...

As another analogy, consider the theory of the four humors, cornerstone of traditional European medicine*. This pseudoscientific theory held that the condition of the human body was governed by four bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, 'black bile,' and 'yellow bile'). There was an elaborate list of correspondences and symbolism connecting the four humors (two of which arguably do not exist in the forms the ancients believed in them) to the four classical elements (air, water, earth, fire). And to various seasons of the year, various herbs and foods and diseases and precious stones, and God knows what all else.

And it was all nonsense, but it was nonsense you could construct clever pretty arguments in support of, so it hung together and persisted.

That is the danger of a complex pretty meta-analysis in which one says "X1 is like X2 and Y1 is kind of like Y2 and Z1 isn't like Z2 but it would make things so much more elegant if it was so we'll pretend it is..."
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Uh the Hijivin were literally trying to carry their own underworld with them to go around dragging other souls into it. So yes they do have an actual association with the Chloros Cowl.

And while I'm at it the Zlathbu were building an actual Grey Goo swarm which has always had an association with Famine/Locust Swarms in Science Fiction and they were doing so in response to their own grief and shame caused by the Tribute Fleets coming to their systems repeatedly. So that is the Mourning Judge down.

As for the Golden Maceman? It is associated with a lack of objective truth, a lack of critical thought and a rejection of any sort of moral framework because of having crossed in one's own mind the moral horizon. The Shiplords hide the truth of their own motivation, they don't think enough about what it is they are doing until it blows up in their face and then they decide to just add new restriction to prevent the specific failure state they had just encountered, instead of understanding the underlying problems that caused said failure state to begin with, and they keep going on that they did what they had to do while being disgusted with what they had to do.

Also I'm not doing Procrustean analysis. I don't care if it fits perfectly, what I care about is that there are elements that the critical lens I'm using can pick up on. See originality is rare so most works have at least some element of a remix of other older works and what I'm suggesting here is that we are dealing with a version of a really old Failed Empires trope.

Well if we visit another one of the coordinates and it turns out the events in that system don't correspond to any of the five I'll point that out and admit that I was wrong.
 
So, if we can take a step back from this debate as to metacontextual analysis for a moment - and possibly more, because I'm not really seeing the relevance of debating another person's approach to that. It's theirs, after all, and that sort of thing is personal and therefore the strict opposite of objective. If people have any direct questions to ask of this event, I'll be happy to try and answer them. If people in fact have any direct metacontext questions, I'd be happy to answer those too. The main reason I'm not doing reply sections here is because I'm unsure what are direct questions and what aren't, and I don't want to just splurge out stuff here.

But for now, could I ask for some votes? We only have two at the moment.
 
Snowfire said:
So, if we can take a step back from this debate as to metacontextual analysis for a moment - and possibly more, because I'm not really seeing the relevance of debating another person's approach to that. It's theirs, after all, and that sort of thing is personal and therefore the strict opposite of objective. If people have any direct questions to ask of this event, I'll be happy to try and answer them. If people in fact have any direct metacontext questions, I'd be happy to answer those too. The main reason I'm not doing reply sections here is because I'm unsure what are direct questions and what aren't, and I don't want to just splurge out stuff here.

But for now, could I ask for some votes? We only have two at the moment.
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I'd like to know if there were grinders involved in what Hijivin did? Also was this the first time an Uninvolved birthing went wrong as far as the vision can tell us? As for voting? I'm tired right now. I'll do it in the morning.
 
I'm not voting. I don't really care which perspective we see the next part from. All of them should be interesting.

I didn't really think the bad thing the shiplords were so afraid of would be the unbidden, but I was expecting them to be around somewhere. I didn't think they would be this dangerous, though. Liberal application of gridfire seems like a good reaction.
 
I do have a couple questions, actually. By the end of the event, the energy/soulspace signal (?) given off was enough to break through the attenuation of the scar, right? It seemed like partway through it was iffy, and then by the time it got to lightning arcing off Mir and cutting into the walls that sounded like a much greater escalation.

Also, do we know anything about the response of other Uninvolved that followed behind the POV speaker? Or whether the speaker even survived its efforts to contain the weapon?


Who do we want to see the viewpoint of as they watch the Away Team set off a holocron of ancient and terrible gods?

[X] Jane Cyneburg
 
@Snowfire

I'm honestly sorry, but it's hard for me to form an opinion about whose viewpoint scenes should be written from. That's normally the kind of decision the author makes, and they normally make it for a reason, because the big question is "how can I make this compelling? Which perspective is likely to be most interesting?" And frankly the answer to that question has more to do with which perspective you think you can write best than it does with which one we want to read most.
 
Himmelhand said:
I do have a couple questions, actually. By the end of the event, the energy/soulspace signal (?) given off was enough to break through the attenuation of the scar, right? It seemed like partway through it was iffy, and then by the time it got to lightning arcing off Mir and cutting into the walls that sounded like a much greater escalation.

Also, do we know anything about the response of other Uninvolved that followed behind the POV speaker? Or whether the speaker even survived its efforts to contain the weapon?
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  1. Mary: According to my readouts, we should have been fine. But it's just that. Should have been. There's been no response from the Shiplords yet, though, and you'd think that they'd react rather impressively to anything practice-like. Especially in this system.
  2. None. The warning ends at the point where the Uninvolved who loosed the weapon counters it.

Simon_Jester said:
@Snowfire

I'm honestly sorry, but it's hard for me to form an opinion about whose viewpoint scenes should be written from. That's normally the kind of decision the author makes, and they normally make it for a reason, because the big question is "how can I make this compelling? Which perspective is likely to be most interesting?" And frankly the answer to that question has more to do with which perspective you think you can write best than it does with which one we want to read most.
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I think I can write most of these perspectives very well, however I can see the point you're making. I'm not sure if I have an answer to it yet, but I'll think about it overnight and get back to you all. Thank you for putting this out here.
 
[X] Iris

Could the Shiplords be the de-evolved forms of the Uninvolved that struck the blow?
Like, they did what was necessary, but it was still a betrayal of the premise of the Uninvolved, so as penance they returned to the physical universe to prevent a situation like this from occurring again.
 
carterhall said:
Could the Shiplords be the de-evolved forms of the Uninvolved that struck the blow?
Like, they did what was necessary, but it was still a betrayal of the premise of the Uninvolved, so as penance they returned to the physical universe to prevent a situation like this from occurring again.
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Aha! This I can actually answer! They are not. You have confirmation that the Shiplords are both older than this conflict and have never gone Uninvolved.
 
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