Postcyberpunk Utopian Transhumanist Dandyism... and Monomolecular Swordcanes

[sparkletwist]

It seems to me like they'd be atheists bordering on egotheists-- that is, they've achieved so much, and they're basically immortal and whatnot, they might start to think of themselves as the gods, especially if there are primitives around who would end up worshipping them and back up that idea.

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Exactly: they would worship themselves much more than any exterior/supernatural forces.  I'm a big fan of The Picture of Dorian Gray; basically I'm imagining the decadent philosophy of people like Henry Wooton as the predominant one in Society - "The aim of life is self-development," etc - though intertwined with a cult of honour as well.[/ooc]

[Steerpike]

[ooc]New faction posted with the others - not so much one that Society interacts with much, but an instance of another avenue civilization could go down in this setting...[/ooc]

[Mason]

The withdrawn are very interesting. Funny I was watching Kubriks 2001 earlier. They remind me of HAL9000 a little bit. I'm not sure I understand their need for a physical presence, what with their virtual world and all. I understand their contempt for a physical body, but doesn't that contradict their fundamental respect for the universe?
Maybe I am just reading it wrong.
A thought: maybe the defeated of these ritual duels somehow tie in to the continuation of the Withdrawn? Maybe they were an alien species escaping some sort of plague? (cliched I know, but just throwing out ideas.)
Just some thoughts. Your short stories provide a vivid description of this setting. Looking forward to more.

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Basically, the idea with the Withdrawn is that the believe the soul is tied to the body; fully uploading wouldn't transfer the soul, only a simulacra of it.

I might write up a large, cosmopolitan civilization along the lines of a sort of hyper-libertarian panarchy where Society rejects (and other galactic bric-a-brac) often find themselves.[/ooc]

[Steerpike]

The Great Families

House Epicene

House Icon: The Moon

House Leader: Genevieve XII

House Ships:

The Hecate
The Peruke
The Willow Cabin
The Red and White
The Damask Cheek
The Something Wicked
The She-Romper
The Gentle Swell
The Nyx
The Olive Chancellor

The sexual politics of Society are, in generally, relaxed in the extreme: heteronormativity has long fallen by the wayside, pansexuality is the rule rather than the exception, and complete sexual reassignment procedures have long been perfected (though they remain relatively rare, regarded as rather capricious).  House Epicene, however, is radical even by Society's standards.  Using cloning and technologically facilitated parthogenesis the members of House Epicene have abolished the male sex entirely and are uniformly, unexceptionally female.

Headed by a matriarch, Genevieve XII, House Epicene holds that the masculine sex is simply outdated.  Its members are not raging misandrists; they bear men no particular ill will, Society having long ago achieved near complete egalitarianism, its women completed emancipated.  The women of House Epicene simply contend that maleness is obsolete.  Specifically they cite what they see as excessive testosterone production and resultant male aggression as socially detrimental.  Civilization has long progressed from its dark, primordial roots, when the hunting of large beasts was necessary for survival, they argue; warfare has been eradicated, and besides, machines are far more capable combatants than human soldiers, in any event.  Without these outlets, House Epicene members insist, male aggression becomes bottled up.  Men in modern Society are like de-clawed cats: at best, they will be frustrated; at worst, they might become dangerous, emasculated brutes, from no fault of their own.  Their problem is chemical, not social.  With the ability to sustain the population without the presence of men, of what use is the Y chromosome?  So the argument goes.

Though seen as eccentric by the other Houses for their complete disavowal of manhood, House Epicene is a notably stable family with fewer incidences of in-House violence.  Marriage outside of the House is rarer as well.  Genetic manipulation has long safeguarded against the risks of inbreeding, so close cousins and (much less commonly) siblings frequently produce children via parthogenesis; cloning, however, is nearly as common as standard childbearing.

House Epicene members are often called upon to arbitrate disputes between other Houses due to their perceived neutrality and aloofness from politics.

[LordVreeg]

I know I'm way past due on this, but the inexorables?  Frickin terryfying.

I spent enough earlier time reading scifi to realize the potential of this crew.  I had undead take over a continent once, and when one group of PC's ended up there, it scared the lving crap to see what happens when the bad guys win.
Your 'Inexorables' could scare the crap out of players....especially when people might not even know if they were infected.
Nice.

[Steerpike]

[ooc]Thank you!  I was worried they were a little too Borg-esque but hopefully they're distinct enough to remain somewhat original.

I'm imagining that the worlds they infect/destroy basically resemble gray goo.[/ooc]

[sparkletwist]

I was worried they were a little too Borg-esque but hopefully they're distinct enough to remain somewhat original.

They reminded me more of Replicators from SG-1...

They definitely have that "undeadish" quality to them, where you can't really stop them, and they just keep going, and they're eventually going to infest and infect everything. In fact, the picture you've painted seems pretty hopeless. Is there something that can be done? Or maybe it's an adventure seed to find some way to deal with these guys... but did you have anything in mind?

[Steerpike]

[ooc]I've never actually watched Stargate, but looking them up on wikipedia they're pretty similar; self-replicating machines with a desire to consume are not exactly an original concept (how do they stop the replicators in Stargate???).

Possibilities for dealing with the Inexorables:

1) Flee the galaxy.  Society lives entirely in ships; the families could come together, build an ark-like supership, pack themselves inside, slip into stasis, and sleep for a few thousand years (or whatever) en route to a new galaxy.

2) Develop a competing, predatory nanorganism to prey on the Inexorables in an effort either to check or eradicate them.

3) Somehow make Society Intellects unhackable, possibly using guardian or "vaccine" nanomachines, which could also be used to protect humans.  This would at least protect Society from the Inexorables and contain the threat.

4) Deploy the usually unused hyperweapons of Society, annihilating infected worlds.  This would have to be combined with an effort to track down and destroy all infected ships to prevent another outbreak.

This could be a whole campaign in and of itself, I think.  Maybe Society doesn`t have the tech to develop a competing or vaccine nanomachine, but an ancient, now extinct civilization did, and a quest to find this bygone tech ensues.  Of course the tech would be on some far-flung and desolate world with its own dangers.[/ooc]

[LD]

Considering that the inexorables seem to be nanobots, couldn't you just

5) Use shattering sonar to crack their crystalline (or whatever) shells? Unless they're made of titanium, I would assume that sound vibrations or radiation could maybe kill them?

 Maybe I was not reading close enough?

[Steerpike]

[ooc]That might work very well as a defense against them.  Using it en masse against entire infected worlds, or in ships without artificial atmosphere, might be impossible or at least problematic, since while sound can travel in space (despite popular conception) it does so far less efficiently than it does in an atmosphere; I'm not sure what the effects of that would be.  Society Intellects might get around it, but it could be physically impossible.  If the problem advances and large swathes of the galaxy are consumed by the exponentially self-replicating Inexorables, "sound-cannons," or something similar might not be enough to stop them on any but a very local level.[/ooc]

[Ghostman]

Something similar (perhaps more morbid) was the base for the plot of Homeworld: Cataclysm. An intelligent nanobot infection would take over spaceships and merge their electronics and crews into cyborg machinery.