Singularity - musings

[Terry Mixon]

Existential dread, why Naalir is cosmic horror.

So I have read it all, several times now.

No way in hell will Imperial megacorporations and the nobility allow Naalir's communitst machine intelligence utopia come to pass.

Naalir and his squad of other uplifted machines may be above Imperial TL for now, but then the Ziru Sirka was TL11 while the Terrans were barely TL9.

Hiver robot and computer intelligence has bee built to TL16 for centuries, according to the Mongoose paradigm the Hive federation should have experimental TL18 machine intelligence...

Ancient era tech was way beyond Naalir's TL...

but I digress.

The PCs are no longer human. They are extensions of Naalir, the electronic copies that are recorded and then sent by Naalir to do all those missions are independent consciousness, when they return they can be reunited with the original to give the memories of the missions they conducted. But surely that means Naalir is processing and storing all those memories and adding them to itself?

When a PC dies on a mission it is no big deal... is it a big deal to Naalir if the original PC dies, their memories and personality are on file and can be downloaded into a new body... Naalir can run simulations to see what the PC personalities do in certain scenarios, it may decide to withhold those simulated memories from the PCs... what do the PCs do when they find out they died when the liner exploded and that they are just sub-personalty routines being run by Naalir... or other death circumstance...

You're not wrong. Conflict is coming.

 

[Jet_Black]

Playing through Act One's The Virasin Complaint, a few comments / observations:

- My players pointed out it was weird the clone pilgrims didn't recognize each other despite travelling together through two sectors. This made them nearly dismiss the idea that the first murder victim (Ziwal, in our case) could have been chosen by mistake!

- A few pointers on how to roleplay the biobot caretakers would have been nice. Since they have an INT of 11, I've played them like slightly boring and similar humans with an overriding desire to protect and to serve the pilgrims. The poor biobots don't even have names in the adventure!

- I am proud to report that my players correctly guessed who wants to kill the Adulan clone and why. While the microbot virus was a nice touch, it is also a rare and very expensive way to destroy a spaceship. Maybe Dulinor should just have used a regular bomb...

- Again, my players quickly realized that the biobots must have been manipulated with that blind spot. Although I told them the media scramblers are the only technical devices worn by the clones, the players are still looking for some kind of remote control - they just did not make the connection, so far.

- I have added a short scene where Naalir was assuming control of one of the crew androids (Thi Dosmil, the steward) to view the scene of the murder "with his own eyes", so to speak. One of the players wanted to watch out for reactions in the crowd, and did notice the slightly weird behaviour of the steward...

- Adulan is listed as Adulan Astrin Alethian in the table on p. 54, but introduces himself as Adulan Oldothon Ilethian before the Moot. Which one is correct?

 

[MongooseChris]

- Adulan is listed as Adulan Astrin Alethian in the table on p. 54, but introduces himself as Adulan Oldothon Ilethian before the Moot. Which one is correct?

Adulan Astrin Alethian

 

[Sigtrygg]

If Naalir achieves its plan does charted space become the Culture?

How do the other polities react to the new paradigm? A TL18 society with machine and meat living in harmony...

Hive computers and robots are already TL16, which means thanks to Mongoose rules they have TL18 research available, how would they, the Hive CIs, view the new polity.

 

[Jet_Black]

We'll have a timeframe soon, but the order is very much in the hands of Cassie right now. However, they will be coming thick and fast. As soon as we have news, we will do a post!

It's nearly a month since this post. What about an update?