Vibrant

[Biohazard]

Some updates to Factions. As can be seen, more material is coming up soon. Still having trouble with a map - sketching the nearest stars in the galaxy can be a pain. I keep discussing things in the chat... but it's complicated. Hopefully I can work out a 3-D map of important regions.

[Biohazard]

Science Gone Questionable: Genetic Engineering[/size]

Biological Immortality

"It is only at the bottom, when one has realized that they let go of and lost everything they held dear, that they can rise again - like the phoenix from the ashes - to become something greater, something superior; something immortal."
-Unknown

It is never simple possession of ideal characteristics that chooses us. It is those that have the ability to truly withstand the eternity of time who are chosen, and then molded to become the elite and ultimate. To be able to resist the madness that presses harder upon your mind the longer you live is a feat few can attain, and even the most hardy and unattached before their transformation are not guaranteed to control their mental health for such extended periods. However, for anyone who desires knowledge with the right thirst... it is the perfect program. And they will find you, you can guarantee that.
-Colonel Mezerous Volkov

The idea of immortality is something that has plagued the minds of all sentient races almost since their beginnings. However, it is not something that has been attainable widespread - at least not until the 23rd century, in the case of humans. The ARCHAEA program was launched in secret in the early 20th century with the intent of extending its test subjects' life expectancies, and it did so in small intervals. Gradually, funding and research increased, leading to the first successful modification of cells into "smart replicators" - cells that reproduced without failing, malfunctioning, or losing strength. Although infection by many diseases can still cause death with significant environmental interference, minor, common viruses and diseases, as well as natural aging, are nonexistent in the subjects. The commercial nature of this development is that it is still very much a secret; through very clandestine channels the executives of the top companies, the militaries, and other notables purchase the treatment, with mixed results.

It is no secret at this point, however, that it does exist - although mainly in the form of a modern government conspiracy theory. Also, psychiatric treatment facilities (or rather, the ones that don't incinerate the insane) do report small numbers of cases of individuals who appear as if they've entirely lost their ability to sleep and demonstrate significant knowledge that spans multiple centuries, as if they had lived for that long. Through many precautions, those who possess the knowledge to perform this "treatment" (some of whom are themselves Eternals) keep any inquiries into the truths of the psychobabble from leading back to them.

[Biohazard]

A Glossary of All Things Glossarific[/size]

Path: When capitalized, refers to wormhole gates; "paths" to specific regions and checkpoints. A Pathfinder is a title given to a crew, and/or a vessel, created with the intent to discover and construct new Paths.

Planetary, stellar, galactic, colonial: Used as the same way "national" or "global" may be used to refer to an effect or event, i.e. "The technological blackout was felt on a stellar level. Note that "planetary" in this case refers to both populations on the ground and in the upper atmosphere/orbit, while "global" refers simply to the ground on a planet.

LAZARUS/New Nazareth: LAZARUS is a failed MOF supersoldier project that resulted in mass infection and death (actually took place in orbit on a military supercarrier). Shortly after victims' apparent "death", they would come back to life with heightened reflexes, strength, and speed, and a murderous streak driven by need for living flesh. Said undead creatures crashed in the supercarrier on Demetra-2 in the Voranox system, resulting in the enactment of OPERATION TOTAL HOLOCAUST. New Nazareth is the Martian city where LAZARUS was originally developed; infected subjects there were eradicated before severe contamination.

Operation TOTAL HOLOCAUST: The development and use of Carrier-Bombers on planets infected with one of various LAZARUS strains, raider strongholds, and enemy outposts.

OIG: The OIG (Over-sized Incineration Gun) is the largest and most powerful (but most costly) weapon in the human arsenal, and is mounted exclusively on Tartarus-class Bombardment Carriers.

Operation RAISE CHICAGO: The major "modernization" event on all Earth, Martian, and Halov planets - the evolution of all major cities into giant tower-metropolises, some of the largest of which tower over mountain ranges and can be seen from great distances. The vertical move of most city districts leaves the lowermost levels and outskirts of cities often in a state of extreme poverty, dissonance, and lawlessness.

Operation BLACK MANHATTAN: The complete out-migrating of all of New York City's metropolitan area (originally just Manhattan) and Long Island's inhabitants and businesses to be replaced by the Jackson Military Base, the largest military base in known space (not including testing ranges). Operation CRATERED SPHERE follows as the construction of the largest military testing range in Earth's colonial space, using up nearly 1/7th of Luna's surface area (and a lot of its underground) as firing ranges and equipment testing sites. Evacuees of NYC are relocated to the New York Orbital Platform.

The Division: The buzzword for Halov Corporation's Biotechnology Research Division, notorious for the biological warfare agents (and madness-causing viruses) that they've developed.

Silver Space: The void at the edge of the galaxy, which seems to have a dull silver glow to it (when actually observed; most vehicles in these regions have to have extensive shielding and analog monitoring systems). Only a few Silver Spaces have ever been documented, and these are found between the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds.

Grunhulk: The "class" of Reptilian hybrid ships, which are made out of a dead greenish skin-carapace. The strange slurp, squish, and especially the hiss that the ship interiors are renowned for making have led them to be popularly called Dragons.

Logger: A known M.O.T.H. euphemism for enlisted and commissioned recruits who are "all talk"; who lack the conviction and stomach to take part in the organization's more unsavory tasks and functions, i.e. assassination, starport raids, and torture/experimentation. Originated from the now-abandoned Cronus installation orbiting Terrier E, a refueling station that also served as a warehouse for prisoners. Weak-willed recruits there were labeled "loggers" for the paperwork jobs they were quickly transferred to.

TDS (Time Dilation Sickness): The term for a space pilot who frequently flies vessels near, at, or exceeding the speed of light. Also called Starlash and Pulse Lag, said pilots frequently present withdrawal symptoms characteristic of drug addictions following slow-down, and are very noticeably hampered in motor skills for up to forty-eight hours following "the Wall". Common remedy is simply to sedate said individuals, and even the most powerful steroids prior to flight cannot prevent the sickness. Pilots can become addicted to moving and acting at such high speeds.

The Kroner Gap: The "short" (in geological and galactic terms) period of time in a life-supporting planet's lifespan where intelligent civilizations have the capability to communicate with and travel great distances of the universe.

Psionics

[spoiler=Power]

Wizard: Term for an individual who presents psychic power in the form of precognition. The mind of specific individuals has reached a point where perception allows the calculation of any outcomes as things change and are done. An example is knowing what another creature will say or do based on what has been said or done to it - if speaking, perhaps knowing the content of an entire sentence by the first two or three words. Wizards tend to possess minor precognition (three to ten seconds into the future; although they may get "jolts" of events hours, days, weeks, months, or even years later, however accurate they are), and heightened reflexes.

Sorcerer: Individual who possesses telepathy and "emotion energy"; the ability to influence and alter the intensity of a creature's emotional output.

Warlock/Witch: Individual who manifests psychic power in the form of any psychokinesis, most commonly telekinesis, cryokinesis, pyrokinesis, and hydrokinesis.

Weird: The term for any psychic individual who possesses more than one of the kinds of psychic abilities (i.e. being both a "wizard" and having cryokinesis and aerokinesis).
[/spoiler]

Undead: Term for a creature that, following infection by an exotic virus that alters its biochemistry, adopts radical and unusual characteristics compared to its species' typical behavior. May also refer to an unnatural creation given life by guarded and unconventional means.

Black Factory: An invention of the Greys, a Black Factory is essentially a larger version of the SETI program's microscopic observation probe factories. A black factory is a completely autonomous probe that impacts on a lifeless planet or moon that contains sufficient resources. Said probe, which possesses advanced AI and construction tools, will build duplicates of itself multiple times over, then proceeding to construct a self-sufficient "factory" that pumps out Moglins, the Greys' primary robotic servants, messengers, and first-strike warriors, which were commonly mistaken as the Greys themselves for hundreds of years. Said moglins operate with a kind of strange automated program, replicating themselves rapidly and creating vessels to traverse the stars, while the original Black Probes proceed to move on to other areas to seed other lifeless bodies.

Night Harbor: The name for any major space ports that can dock and supply Darkspeed ships. A Night Harbor requires special Darkweb engineering to function, as a Shadowjump-equipped vessel cannot move without the appropriate light screening.

[LordVreeg]

So how do factions inter-relate?  Superhumanism seems to be more of a religion or belief, so it obviously is not mutually exclusive to some of the other groups.

[Biohazard]

So how do factions inter-relate?  Superhumanism seems to be more of a religion or belief, so it obviously is not mutually exclusive to some of the other groups.

I'll probably have to end up clarifying them more a little later on, yeah. Superhumanism is intended as a religion/belief, but something I'm also trying to do (with not much in the way of results yet) is to blur the lines between political and religious/philosophical factions, despite the increasing separation of church and state in The Oddity.

The most important relations between factions will be found in the militant ones , but there will definitely be a fair amount of coverage on the civilian groups.

[Biohazard]

Slowly updating the Glossary - I may make that the primary method by which the setting gets fleshed out. It is seeming that, the more I research designing the map for the Earth region, the harder it becomes to actually do it...

[Biohazard]

New Strain

Meissner took a good, long look at Colonel Volkov. The man had always scared him with the way he looked at the corpses. None of them were ever people to him; they were just mysteries; problems to be solved however simple they may be. The scientist always wanted to know the answer, and that was what creeped him out. Volkov never needed a scalpel - his eyes made all of the incisions and detached all of the organs.

"Boot the monitor," he said to Meissner. The observers in the room, all aspiring M.O.T.H. officers, looked rather pale. It might have been Volkov's presence, or maybe they were just commissioned loggers heading straight for a distant outpost's office because they were too damn cowardly to do the dirty work. Either way, they were getting basic autopsy training with the best. Meissner tapped the glistening liquid screen as Volkov pinged the end of the needle.

"Fuck, I hate this part," said one of the would-be students, who despite having a to-the-skin-thin haircut looked like he belonged in a fashion advertisement, not the graduating class of the largest and most feared terrorist organization in the Milky Way. Meissner glared at him, and then saw Volkov's smirk. He really didn't blame the recruit; he could hear the nanocreeps in the injections hiss and giggle faintly every time a needle was used.

Meissner adjusted the screen so everyone could see it. Volkov removed the needle and tossed it in the hazard bin, then ran his finger across the screen. Meissner knew he was probably putting on a show for the new recruits; the now-dead Halov special agent was all kinds of mangled and what was left of him looked infected with the T-7 strain of LAZARUS - but it was textbook. A haze on the screen was the focus of the Colonel's index finger.

Volkov looked back to the body, this time with a hideously large and sharp sickle-like blade. "Masks. Now," he said, plunging the device into the stomach of the body as the ensigns scrambled for their hazard gear. The incision began from what was left of the agent's left hip and extended about three inches above the navel, tearing apart the strangely-fused flesh at the waist, and immediately caused the stomach, which had bloated severely, to empty its gas contents, which were a pale yellow. The dead patient's insides were black with the occasional bruised-looking purple blotch on the organs. The only students that didn't gag were the Grays. Those two were going straight to psy ops.

There was nothing to see. The flesh, like everything else, was dead. The chipped and charred skeleton might make a good lab ornament. Meissner turned to turn on the auto-sterilizer, glancing at the complete, all-inclusive internal view that the injection had done, and nobody had bothered to pay attention to, while wishing they'd get a few more wilder specimens to spook the new guys with. Then he felt Volkov's grasp on his shoulder. He turned around.

The fucking organs were pulsing. Not only that, but with his other hand, Volkov had hold of the corpse's right wrist, which was attempting - not with much effort yet, but trying - to reach out towards Volkov's throat. What made this peculiar was that the body had simply been arranged that way - the right arm was severed from four inches above the wrist up to just below the shoulder. "Psionic agents infected with LAZARUS?" Meissner said, surprised.

"Seems Halov was in over their heads this time," Colonel Volkov said, looking at his 2IC, "And Intel was off on their report. New strain." He looked at one of the Grays, whose dark eyes showed worlds of enthusiasm. Volkov brought it close and handed it the scalpels, showing where to cut and signaled a human recruit to take notes. It had been known to M.O.T.H. for some time that some strains could affect psychic individuals - and with terrifying results - but Intel had given no indication that it had reached the Civil Regions.

Meissner knew this was going to be good. "Cadet, get down to Delta and escort some Intelligence Ops up here ASAP," he said. The recruit replied with a half-sick "Yes, Colonel" to which Meissner paid little attention, immediately turning on the third back-up for the video footage. "We're going to need them covering everything Halov does on the Fringe for the next galactic cycle."

Volkov looked at his colleague. "It would seem that we've got some field work to do."

[Biohazard]

A change to the setting name. Constantly working on the setting, bit by bit, and there are some big things in store here once I get the time to post them all. If you're wondering why the name change, look at  this. Don't know what it is? Take a good look, because this is the future. At least, in The Oddity. And if you do, well, expect to see some particularly grand city plans posted, probably before the galaxy map... damn star plots...

[Biohazard]

Darkspeed[/size]

Imagine for a moment that the universe turns black and white.

The spaces in between the stars, and the bodies of galactic debris they illuminate are all dark. The light is in its sources, distant or near, and around them is nothing. There is a gray gloom that surrounds the brightest stars and the most brilliant of planetary systems, but for the most part, in black and white the universe is simple and lonely. Here where the light is scarce is where those with the power can harness darkspeed.

The Technology

Darkspeed is the ultimate method of single-universe travel, a force and technology that (under the right circumstances) provides near-instantaneous movement from one point to the next, regardless of actual distance. It consists of the utilization of "clouds" of darkness that form a sort of galactic web.

Light Isn't Everywhere

The technology of traveling at darkspeed involves the suppression of light's presence, through a special kind of gravitational lensing and through the irritation of dark energy. All vessels that can travel at darkspeed have a LUSUV (LUminence SUppression Value; this value must be at least 1 in order to travel at darkspeed).

Functioning in True Darkness

The outcome of trying to illuminate any part of a vessel while enveloping it in a Night Blanket would appear similar to the effects of a black hole on a still-struggling object, only less orderly. Rather, different species have developed different methods - humans use use sonic readers combined with neural implants that rearrange the data to function; while alien species such as the arachnoid Wzzev are not naturally dependent on visual senses regardless.

Approaching a System

The more powerful and better designed the ship, the better its LUSUV will be, and therefore the more easily it can enter systems where stars and planets are more radiant. More expensive and powerful ships have the ability to move at sub-dark speeds when appropriate, but most function through Night Harbors that are typically located in distant orbit near the outer reaches of any particular system. The more intense the LUSUV, the better a ship can do at suppressing any light to travel further, but even the ships with the highest LUSUVs cannot wholly blind a star, dimming it but leaving their range significantly distant from the system center.

[LordVreeg]

what type of trade/barter/money defines a more expensive dhip?  What kind of money are we talking here?

[Nomadic]

Functioning in True Darkness

The outcome of trying to illuminate any part of a vessel while enveloping it in a Night Blanket would appear similar to the effects of a black hole on a still-struggling object, only less orderly. Rather, different species have developed different methods - humans use use sonic readers combined with neural implants that rearrange the data to function; while alien species such as the arachnoid Wzzev are not naturally dependent on visual senses regardless.

Could you explain this part?

[Biohazard]

Functioning in True Darkness

The outcome of trying to illuminate any part of a vessel while enveloping it in a Night Blanket would appear similar to the effects of a black hole on a still-struggling object, only less orderly. Rather, different species have developed different methods - humans use use sonic readers combined with neural implants that rearrange the data to function; while alien species such as the arachnoid Wzzev are not naturally dependent on visual senses regardless.

Part of the mechanism I'm working on is that the entire vessel, inside and out, has to be devoid of light in order to function properly - this means that crews of said vessels have to equip themselves with special gear when using them if they don't have the ability to function well without visual senses. Think of it like that part in The Core where they let that part of the ship go and it crumples up and just fades away because of all of the pressure and it not having its life support systems (or whatever it was)... that's what happens if you're trying to travel at darkspeed and part of the ship is illuminated. Of course, they have all kinds of monitors to determine which areas may or may not be safe if their LUSUV can't handle the brightness, etc.

[Biohazard]

what type of trade/barter/money defines a more expensive dhip?  What kind of money are we talking here?

It's more or less like the way you would see the US Navy's carriers compared to most other equipment's cost... in Dystopian Universe, however, something with that price ratio is usually traded for with satellite systems, moons, or even entire planets. Currencies are generally meant for smaller-scale goods and to possess such a powerful vessel is very resource intensive, not only for the upkeep, but for the purchase. You can imagine that only large forces such as the UDF, Halov, and the most wealthy research companies would have the means to possess them, as they'd be the only ones that would control enough resource-rich planets and moons to trade them off.

[LordVreeg]

what type of trade/barter/money defines a more expensive dhip?  What kind of money are we talking here?

It's more or less like the way you would see the US Navy's carriers compared to most other equipment's cost... in Dystopian Universe, however, something with that price ratio is usually traded for with satellite systems, moons, or even entire planets. Currencies are generally meant for smaller-scale goods and to possess such a powerful vessel is very resource intensive, not only for the upkeep, but for the purchase. You can imagine that only large forces such as the UDF, Halov, and the most wealthy research companies would have the means to possess them, as they'd be the only ones that would control enough resource-rich planets and moons to trade them off.

Ok, that helps me with the monetary scale we are talking off.  SO they level we are speaking of is the high end of the high end.
Have you thought about the currencies you want to use?

[Biohazard]

what type of trade/barter/money defines a more expensive dhip?  What kind of money are we talking here?

It's more or less like the way you would see the US Navy's carriers compared to most other equipment's cost... in Dystopian Universe, however, something with that price ratio is usually traded for with satellite systems, moons, or even entire planets. Currencies are generally meant for smaller-scale goods and to possess such a powerful vessel is very resource intensive, not only for the upkeep, but for the purchase. You can imagine that only large forces such as the UDF, Halov, and the most wealthy research companies would have the means to possess them, as they'd be the only ones that would control enough resource-rich planets and moons to trade them off.

Ok, that helps me with the monetary scale we are talking off.  SO they level we are speaking of is the high end of the high end.
Have you thought about the currencies you want to use?

So far the only other economic elements I've been thinking about are the unification of ID and debit/credit cards, which is something that will probably happen someday anyway. Although I don't know if I want to do it in the form of a card or similar medium, I want to make it so a person is directly tied to their assets. There will, of course, be a way around this (aliases and false IDs with various possessions are a must have even this far into the future), but that is part of the growing theme of the power of the law - in this case by "cataloging" - that I want to weave into Dystopian Universe.