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THRONE//FRINGE: Normal Human Mech-Girl Quest

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somewhatLazy said:
Well, waking Ishtar went about as badly as I was worried it would. Well, even if we'd done it later it probably wouldn't have went much better. So... I'm not yet sure what's the best or most IC choice (I'm leaning towards "put if off") but I do know what I want for comms!
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Ishtar's reaction makes me wonder what would've happened if we'd woken her up before reacquiring the Hydra-Ishtar Carapace.
 
Are we locked into singular systems with these choices, or will the other side unlock with time and resources?

[x] COMMS/CORDIAL. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect friendliness, flirting, politeness and opportunities for positive conversation. You are also more capable of maintaining etiquette in conversations in order to charm and persuade.

[x] Grant Her Time. It might hurt you to let trying to convince her right now go, but there is nothing that you can say to a reborn, tortured militarized elite that would make this work right now. It is better to maintain a distance and let her acclimatize to re-entering consciousness. You need to give her the time to recover and show her how different you are by your actions, not your words.
 
[X] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.

It genuinely wasn't our fault. Pretending it was to deliver a fake apology is toxic to our own well-being, and will forever frame our interactions in a hostile light we do not deserve - what little chance we have of being able to eventually trust her not to be forever searching for a knife to place in our back, gone.

If we were actually at fault it'd be a different story, but apologising for something you didn't do helps no one, least of all yourself.
 
[X] COMMS/CORDIAL. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect friendliness, flirting, politeness and opportunities for positive conversation. You are also more capable of maintaining etiquette in conversations in order to charm and persuade.
[X] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.

No, it's not going to convince her.

But get angry. Arachne is pretty clearly developing depression issues, and being able to actually push back against this sort of hostility is, if not smart or optimal, then at least healthier than just taking the knife in the heart and bleeding.
 
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BTW this is an important vote. If there is a lot of back and forth and discussion I am willing to extend the voting for an extra day or two. I know the pace has been blisteringly consistent but it can also be too rapid if people are in the middle of a discussion and I cut them short.

The main reason I've been updating so fast is that I know quests take a while to get off the ground and build up a backlog to get people invested and get new people in. But if we need to I can give people extra time to try and work it out through discussion.
 
[X] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.

[X] COMMS/ASSERT. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect hostile intent, lies, half-truths, and nervousness in the speech and text of other beings. You are also more capable of asserting yourself in these conversations in order to intimidate and coerce.
 
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[x] COMMS/CORDIAL. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect friendliness, flirting, politeness and opportunities for positive conversation. You are also more capable of maintaining etiquette in conversations in order to charm and persuade.
[x] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.
 
I guess the question, is the next contact going to be a con man or a friend? Hostile agent to intimidate into standing down or shy entity to draw out of their shell?

We seem to be prioritizing weaponry and combat protocols. I think the logical follow up is being able to assert that we will defend our self and get better at identifying social attacks.

[x] COMMS/ASSERT. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect hostile intent, lies, half-truths, and nervousness in the speech and text of other beings. You are also more capable of asserting yourself in these conversations in order to intimidate and coerce.
[x] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.
 
[X] COMMS/ASSERT. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect hostile intent, lies, half-truths, and nervousness in the speech and text of other beings. You are also more capable of asserting yourself in these conversations in order to intimidate and coerce.

[X] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.
 
[x] COMMS/CORDIAL. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect friendliness, flirting, politeness and opportunities for positive conversation. You are also more capable of maintaining etiquette in conversations in order to charm and persuade.
[x] Apologize. It is unfair, but it is also understandable. You need to apologize to ISHTAR for what happened and take responsibility for it. Even if it was a different you, even if you have no memory of it, even if nothing you have done would indicate you would do anything to harm her - that is not what she needs to hear right now. Even if it is what you need to hear.


I really like the arguments for apology, even if we are not directly at fault is no reason not to express the desire to make amends if that is what we want to do, though perhaps giving Ishtar some time would be more conducive for that. As for the communication, do recall that the only communicative thing we have encountered thus far is the recording of what seems to be a very friendly entity, also it often pays to be polite.
 
[x] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.

[X] COMMS/ASSERT. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect hostile intent, lies, half-truths, and nervousness in the speech and text of other beings. You are also more capable of asserting yourself in these conversations in order to intimidate and coerce.
 
Just what archailect level are we supposed to be?

[x] Defend Yourself. Even if what ISHTAR is saying is true, you are not the same Arachne. What is in the past is in the past. It is not fair for her to throw it onto you. Even if it takes time for her to get over it, you have to put your foot down right now and make clear who you are. Explain what happened clearly and emphasize that you are not at fault here.

[X] COMMS/ASSERT. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect hostile intent, lies, half-truths, and nervousness in the speech and text of other beings. You are also more capable of asserting yourself in these conversations in order to intimidate and coerce.
 
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Invariant Technology
  • Informational
    • Cetashwayo said:
    Your ARACHNE//WARCHIVE comes online, whole libraries of military simulations accessible to you, some of them impossibly unrealistic or antiquarian, playing as strange Imperial bio-machines fighting against primitive sublight combatants, trading fusion warheads and mass driver pellets.
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    Since we're at a point where we've developed enough that this is basically guaranteed to be in-character knowledge thanks to Arachne's internal industrial capabilities and newfound military knowledge, let's talk about Invariant Technology. Invariant Technology is the phrase used to delineate technology which is not dependent on metric-alteration and spatial-programming -mature molecular nanotechnology and fusion technology. Invariant technology not only needs no Architecture to construct, it needs no Architecture to maintain. Invariant Technology precedes the Empire, its origins lost to deep time, and has been mature and unchanging for eons. The sole difference between Invariant Technology at the Empire's zenith and the Invariant Technology preceding it is that the Empire makes more extensive use of rare elements and antimatter, as Architecture permitted trivial antimatter generation and atomic alchemy.

    Invariant technology engines and power systems generally were fusion-based, although some invariant technology uses antimatter when high power storage is necessary. Invariant weapons systems include chemical-, fusion-, or antimatter- engine guided missiles, electromagnetic launchers, and directed-energy beam weaponry, similar to ironcasters and beamers. Projectile munitions built with invariant technology generally use antimatter-catalyzed fusion warheads. Invariant shielding technology generally made use of composite armor materials with monocrystalline or amorphous metals combined with carbon-fullerene or carbon-nanotube weave, which was incapable of protecting from direct hits from fusion-warhead munitions but provided otherwise excellent resistance to kinetic- and directed- energy weapons and near-misses from fusion warheads. Invariant biotechnologies allow for biological immortality, consciousness backup and upload, radical human augmentation (including intelligence augmentation), and the creation of synthetic life.

    Although impressive, these technologies are no match for exotic equivalents. An invariant antimatter drive can accelerate a missile at hundreds of gravities. Meanwhile, a FORCE voidcruiser's warp drive is capable of near-arbitrary acceleration and deceleration under subluminal flight regimes, while also providing an additional protective layer and the option to engage in short-range superluminal (faster than light) travel. An invariant supercomputer can solve extremely difficult problems and process enormous amounts of data. An exotic tactical computer may permit negative reaction times thanks to acausal channels and can engage in hypercomputation. An invariant missile can accelerate to several percent of the speed of light while carrying multiple megaton-range fusion warheads, each capable of destroying a metropolis - but a FORCE drone can suppress nuclear fusion with its countermeasures suite, has mirrorfields that can deflect arbitrary amounts of incoming energy, and phaseskin which permits it to allow the missile or its explosion to harmlessly pass through the drone. Although you could theoretically use invariant weapons to harm an Empire war machine, doing so requires extensive information warfare use to mitigate enemy countermeasures - and even then, the defensive fields and exotic strong-force and unified-force bonds that make up the hull-armoring of an Empire drone or voidcruiser together are far tougher than any matter, and can survive even these artificial stars.

    Because exotic technology was overkill for the creation of everyday items while molecular and atomic manipulation was trivial, most citizens in the Empire would spend their lives surrounded by invariant technology, which was cheaply and easily available to citizens of the Empire. Emancipated citizens of some means could fairly trivially possess their own private thermonuclear arsenal, an interplanetary shuttle powered by fusion rockets, or create their own space station with a carbon-allotrope hull. The only invariant technology projects which require any significant amount of cooperation or investment were massive megaprojects such as Dyson Swarms or radical biosphere alterations - and even then, the expense required hardly compared to the expense of more exotic infrastructure.

    Arachne has an invariant matter printer - and as she has noted, it may well be completely irrelevant.
     
  • Informational
    • MJ12 Commando said:
    Although you could theoretically use invariant weapons to harm an Empire war machine, doing so requires extensive information warfare use to mitigate enemy countermeasures - and even then, the defensive fields and exotic strong-force and unified-force bonds that make up the hull-armoring of an Empire drone or voidcruiser together are far tougher than any matter, and can survive even these artificial stars.
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    Yes, this does bring Orion's arm to mind...

    Intertoposophic Conflict

    orionsarm.com orionsarm.com
     
    EternalStruggle said:
    I propose that the fundamental weakness of the Empire was not a lack of humanity but rather an excess of it, maintaining as it did the concepts of love and hate.
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    "The old Empire was fundamentally too ethical and constrained. Too fettered by its human desire to restrict the pace of competitive growth. The reborn Empire will be no such thing--it will preserve nothing but annihilation. Farewell, mankind. So long, au revoir, goodnight."


    You're certainly gotten into the right mindset to understand this quest, at least.
     
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    [x] COMMS/CORDIAL. You have optimized your communication networks to be able to better detect friendliness, flirting, politeness and opportunities for positive conversation. You are also more capable of maintaining etiquette in conversations in order to charm and persuade.
    [x] Apologize. It is unfair, but it is also understandable. You need to apologize to ISHTAR for what happened and take responsibility for it. Even if it was a different you, even if you have no memory of it, even if nothing you have done would indicate you would do anything to harm her - that is not what she needs to hear right now. Even if it is what you need to hear.
     
    Arcus said:
    "The old Empire was fundamentally too ethical and constrained. Too fettered by its human desire to restrict the pace of competitive growth. The reborn Empire will be no such thing--it will preserve nothing but annihilation. Farewell, mankind. So long, au revoir, goodnight."


    You're certainly gotten into the right mindset to understand this quest, at least.
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    If you want more in the same vein, I can recommend Robin Hanson's book.

    I can not necessarily recommend it for any other purpose. I don't think he's right, and it's a seriously disturbing book regardless -- both because of what might happen, and because he seeems to think it's a good thing. But it's certainly more in the same vein.
     
    Arcus said:
    "The old Empire was fundamentally too ethical and constrained. Too fettered by its human desire to restrict the pace of competitive growth. The reborn Empire will be no such thing--it will preserve nothing but annihilation. Farewell, mankind. So long, au revoir, goodnight."


    You're certainly gotten into the right mindset to understand this quest, at least.
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    I mean, as one of the great dictators of the pre-civilization Reichsmerica Cluster Adolf Chaplin once said, the greatest soldiers are machine men with machine minds. The Empire built machine men most certainly but seem to have stumbled with the whole "machine minds" part.

    The question is, did that contribute to its downfall? We don't know, it could be an outside force, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did. If nothing else we already have an example of someone working to take down part of the system due to (most would say justifiably) being pissed off by its horrors, it doesn't seem too enormous a leap to suggest that its plausible that people would take it a bit further and seek to collapse the whole edifice down upon itself. The Dragon, perhaps.

    All this could have been avoided were it not for the outmoded biological impulses of love and hate, designed to stimulate reproduction and retribution in pre-civ times, still lingering in the standard Imperial conscience.
     
    EternalStruggle said:
    The Empire built machine men most certainly but seem to have stumbled with the whole "machine minds" part.
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    I think this assumes too much with too little information. Arachne's memories are influenced by her current damaged state and so far she is the only Imperial creation you have discovered that is still intact. Ishtar is a tiny fragment of a fragment, gone through multiple broken telephones worth of data transfers. The only other major entity you saw of any description was a pile of algorithms calling itself a 'corporation' and it seemed to be working towards it goals admirably before everything without even having much of a mind.

    The information dumps are through Arachne's filtered memories and so should not be labelled as totally accurate. The actual technical aspects, yes, but the interpretation of that is her own. And Arachne has an interest in justifying her current circumstances as normal and actually quite Imperial even when her definition of Imperial is muddled and influenced by her own fear that she is breaking the rules.

    That is not to say you are wrong; that I won't give away, and I greatly appreciate the speculation (especially as it tells me what people do and don't know and where they think my hints are going). But it is something to keep in mind.
     
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    In lieu of discussion and voting dying down I've set a vote deadline for an hour and a half. I see that there can be no brakes on this train. Feel free to drop votes in. Defense and Apologize have a reasonable margin that could be surpassed, and Cordial vs Assert is tied.
     
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