#FTL Benefits

[saglogistic]

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[torchship-rpg]

Dev Diary 10 - Martians & Spacers

Hello cosmonauts! Today we’re going to go into some more detail on human identities (don’t worry, we’ll get to aliens soon enough). Torchship development is progressing behind the scenes, albeit a bit slowly (the last two weeks especially have been hellish), and in particular we’re working on a revision of some of our core systems in a way that hopefully we can touch on in our next dev diary.

Until then, let’s wrap up the Sol-based human identities today.

Spacers

It’s safe to say that humanity in Torchship are a bunch of space cadets, and an awful lot of them were eager to live in space the moment the opportunity arose. The result is that, in the year 2169, there are entire cities floating free in the Sol system, and thousands of small stations for mining, processing, and refining the near-limitless resources of the asteroid belt and Oort cloud.

Spacers live in much-reduced gravity to the Earth norm; 0.35g is the ‘standard’, originally because of mechanical limitations in the construction of stations and now simply their norm. This means they’re recommended the ‘Freefaller’ trait, just like Lunars. They are also recommended the Radiation Hardened trait, representing modifications and pre-emptive treatment to cope with living outside of a planet’s magnetosphere and atmosphere. This gives you inbuilt reduction against radiation damage in exchange for slower passive healing due to the metabolic cost of those redundancies.

Spacers are divided into two broad categories; Habitat Spacers and Deep Spacers. As the name implies, ‘Habbers’ live in the many purpose-built space habitats which orbit Earth and, to a lesser degree, the other planets in the Sol system. These habitats are enormous technological wonders and a vital step in the space-based economy of the Solar Union, containing the light manufacturing facilities which turn the resources of Luna, the outer system, and beyond into consumer goods. They also help route the people and resources flowing to and from Earth, ensuring the colonies get fed and Earth reaps the benefits of large-scale industry without the environmental cost.

Habbers might live in space, but their day-to-day isn’t much different from their Terran cousins. Their habitats are huge, massive cities with equally large green areas. Standout habitats include L5 Hab, home of Star Patrol HQ and Academy, L4 ‘Guest Star’, the former headquarters of the PLA’s astromilitary and current HQ of Star Force, and Destination Station, the orbital anchor for Earth’s space elevator. 

Habbers, especially L4 and L5 citizens, made up a disproportionate amount of Solar Patrol members back in the day, so they get recommended the ‘Veteran’ Trait, scoring you reduced Stress in combat and bonus Security/Tactical certs in exchange for a lowered total Stress threshold. The strong presence of both the play market and shipping bureaucracy come with the Entrepreneur trait; you’re a better negotiator than average because you’re used to these kinds of transactions, but take Stress from both offering the Union’s Credits in negotiation and from the Union being in debt, as you have a much better handle on what it might mean for people when the Union’s economic systems are strained.

By contrast, Deep Spacers don’t live in cushy habs. No, these crusty cosmonauts make their living out in the farthest reaches of the Sol system, mining ice from Saturn’s rings, breaking up distant asteroids, and sending the bounty back on slow orbits. Not long ago, before the FTL drive was invented, this was the farthest you could get from the authority of the Union; most Deep Spacers are anarchists of various sorts who very much prefer their little self-contained communities to the stifling oversight and endless democratic procedure of Earth, who eschew the ration credit and play market for gift economies and black markets of their own devising. Their relationship with Earth never has to get deeper than minerals for biologicals, and most of them prefer it that way.

Still, Deep Spacers are the rock-solid core of the Patrol, because a lifetime on stations and rockets give them unparalleled instincts for the job. They are recommended the same Claustrophile trait as Mazedwelling Lunars and the same Communal Spirit trait as Urban Terrans, meaning they’re great working in a team or on EVA. They also pick up languages quickly with Polyglot, because many of their stations are extremely multicultural, and it's not uncommon for deep spacers to speak five or more languages, plus whatever pidgins are used at their trade posts.

Finally, both types of Spacers are recommended two traits which make them beloved by Star Patrol. Voidborn gives a bonus to patching hulls in exchange for added Stress when the vehicle is low on Supply, representing both their lifetime of decompression drills and their deep awareness of how thin the margins are in space. They are also recommended the Well-Connected trait to always have friends in the Patrol wherever they go, because for many Spacers, this is the family business!

As a final note, Spacers get a unique third sub-identity, the Daedalus Children, which is mostly a way of showing players that they’re free to go wild with the Trait choices even if they’re playing with humans. The Daedalus Children are a small group of artificial, silicon-based human duplicates created by the sapient supercomputer running Sagan Station, orbiting the distant planet Minerva 500 AU away from the sun. They have a psychic connection to the Daedalus computer (who they affectionately call their ‘Daed’) through the Patron Being trait.

This gonzo addition makes it clear that this is a big, strange, somewhat silly world, and you should feel free to make your blorbo whatever you want, and damn the canon!

Martians

Let’s go down the gravity well again and meet the Martians. Mars is well on its way to being humanity’s second homeworld by 2169, the result of a near-obsessive colonisation and terraforming effort through the 21st century. More or less the moment fusion engines made it viable, humans were throwing comets into the poles and setting up artificial magnetospheres, excited by the possibility of using their new high-energy toys to create a livable planet in less than a century.

Unfortunately, though perhaps not surprisingly, their maths were somewhat off. Mars is lingering in a low oxygen state, and has too many people and too much infrastructure now to try any of the big flashy high-energy terraforming anymore. Instead, it’ll be slow centuries of cultivating an artificial biosphere before Terrans can breathe unaided on the surface; despite the rapidly spreading greenery and brand new oceans, Mars’s current average surface oxygen level rivals the peak of Mount Everest.

Undeterred, the Martians turned to genetic engineering so their children could play outside. The result is that Martians get recommended the Hypoxic Conditioning trait, which gives them total immunity to low oxygen conditions and a shocking ten minutes of normal activity in total oxygen deprivation. In exchange, they take a penalty to their physical capabilities, reflecting the metabolic changes and the fact they’ve all ended up a good eight centimetres shorter than they would be without the modifications.

Martians also get recommended the Driven and Lone Wolf traits, neurological consequences of this engineering; these traits combine to mean that Martians work best when they’re alone and hyperfocusing on a single task. This may or may not be familiar to some of you, which is very much intentional; Martians are a not so subtle fantastical allegory for neurodivergence. 

The two major Martian sub-identities are The Red Frontier and The Dome Cities. The Red Frontier represents what is often thought of as the archetypical Martian lifestyle, even if it’s slowly being displaced; small groups of people living in bunker-like bases deep in the vast Martian wilderness, tending to the massive fleet of agriculture, survey, construction, and maintenance drones which are both building infrastructure and tending the genetically-engineered biosphere of Mars. This job gets them recommended the Machine Minded trait, which eliminates the penalty normally taken when working remotely with machines in exchange for one to social interaction in person.

Mars’ fragile ecology manifests as a strange sort of tundra, with spindly evergreen trees, hardy lichen, and a variety of engineered animals. A lot of work has to be done to keep it all going, especially because insects can’t survive the oxygen-poor environment, which makes pollination difficult. Martians get recommended the appropriate Environmental Adaptation trait for this tundra; they know all about survival in cold, dry environments. 

Finally, if you wanted to play one of those terraforming drones instead, that’s always a viable option; we dropped Machine Life in there as a reminder!

The dwellers of the Dome Cities are part of Mars’ high tech industry. Because of the gravity well in the way, Mars doesn’t export much in the way of material goods. Instead, it uses the concentration of expertise needed for terraforming and drone management to make cutting-edge software and media for the rest of the Union, and the cities are where this takes place. Martian cities are much more high-tech than their Earth counterparts, with lots of automated systems designed either to make up for the smaller population, or simply because Martians are already used to making robots do as much work as possible; Machine-Minded is unsurprisingly also recommended here.

Because Mars is a world of specialists, where being the best at your One Thing is a strong cultural value, the Prodigy trait is recommended for citizens of the Dome Cities, allowing them to pick three certs as Focuses and advance them faster, at the cost of advancing the others slower. Finally, the greater reliance on automation sees the Prosthetics trait recommended, representing both the greater reliance on mechanical parts over regrown tissue in medicine and the fact Martians aren’t adverse to a bit of computerised self-improvement.

Digital Elysium

Just like Spacers, Martians have a third, highly-specific sub-identity. Where Daedalus Children are a gonzo departure from the setting’s norm, the citizens of Elysium City instead are instead deeply rooted in the history of the setting. Remember how we said the Star Union isn’t a utopia? Well, this is one of the major ways it has failed, and a resolution is one of the things that can emerge over the course of the campaign.

Forty years prior to the modern day, a group of Cybernetic Democrats calling themselves the Lab Rats hatched the brilliant scheme to all move to one of the brand-new Martian cities together and use their newfound political majority to set up one of their predictive networks, peacefully starting the cybernetic revolution on a new world. They built themselves an automated city, possessed by a ghost of convenience which always knew exactly what you needed, always had a train ready when you reached the station, and always had a task you wanted to do ready to go every time you looked at your smart watch. It was efficient, seamless, responsive, and incredibly alienating, replacing any real sense of community with quest markers in your smart glasses.

When vital colonists tried to leave the city, the algorithm predicted the majority wouldn’t like that, and it locked the doors to stop them. Then the Solar Guard showed up to the ‘hostage situation’. Nobody listened to one another, both sides refused to understand what was going on. The Solar Guard rolled in tanks, and the algorithm helped the Lab Rats ambush them. After a month of brutal street to street fighting, the first war on another world, the Solar Guard retreated, and bombed the city with jumpjets until the terrified defenders lost hope. Once the majority no longer wanted to fight, the algorithm dutifully switched off.

Forty years later, Elysium City is still under military occupation. It was supposed to be brief, but the neighbouring cities who now have the controlling vote keep extending it whenever violence flares up, and each extension radicalises a new generation of Elysium citizens. Both sides are incredibly unpopular with a majority who just want peace and a greater Union who find it all monstrous, but the systems of the Solar Union are paralyzed by their own democratic checks and balances, leaving the city in a horrible limbo. 

If you want to be from Elysium, you get recommended a whole pile of traits reflecting the extreme circumstance. Vengeful and Fretful are two recommended Traits representing the understandable anger and anxiety which come from living in a city where drone bombing still happens with regularity. Prodigy reflects how Elysium City is the single largest concentration of computer science geniuses in the entire Union, due to the fact that none of them are allowed to leave. Dark History can represent in equal parts being a member of the Lab Rats or the Sol Guard, both staggeringly unpopular organisations to everyone else in the Union.

Finally, Patron Being represents how, despite the best efforts of generations of computer engineers, the self-replicating Network still lingers deep in the electronic bones of Elysium, waiting for the day that a majority want it back. Hackers and technomancers both claim they have made contact with the Network, and this trait can represent your dedication to bringing it back.

[random-strange-guy]

DIPLOMACY

The Irchans, are a race that, like most others, was born in paradise. In a paradise where delicious purple plants grew at every step, a paradise that was warmed by the light of three stars. The Irchans were like countless others in the Milky Way. But they did something that others didn't. They were the first to have diplomatic negotiation with the humans.

When humans discovered FTL, they became a equal partners on a galactic level, newcomers are always a new opportunity for trade and other forms of cooperation.

The Irchans knew this very well. Once their race achieved FTL, a neighboring more advanced race came to them and gave them more advanced technology, and in return they received several mining stations in the surrounding asteroid belt. It benefited both parties. The Irchans remember these events well, so when they found out about a new race that was only 4,2 light years away, they didn't hesitate and set off without detailed information about the race there.

Already in the Kuiper asteroid belt, the ship with the Irchan diplomats was stopped by humans. After a long debate that was possible thanks to the telepathy that the Irchans control, they arranged a meeting with the humans, it was decided that the ship would fly on the fourth planet from the home star of the race there.

After they landed, the top diplomats sat together in a small room where there were only two chairs and one table . Irchan's foreign minister and human's representative "President of the United Nations".

"Hello, welcome to the solar system, so you want to work with us?" said the president and just gestured for the minister sit down.

"Yes, I've see that your industry is very good quality and fast, what about that you will produce spaceships for us and we will give you a blueprints of stronger laser cannons, faster engines and more powerful neutrino technology?" explained the minister.

" That sounds fair, but I still need to discuss it with the other diplomats".

"Do you govern liberally?" commented the minister.

"Yes, why are you asking?"

"You know, we hate it, that's why there is chaos in governance, we prefer the authoritarian way from birth, it's faster and the leaders have more experience than some MPs or senators".

"But if someone has unlimited power and he is incompetent or mentally messed up, then it all goes wrong" argued the president.

"Please, let's not argue, go and discuss it with others and we will wait".

"Goodbye for now, oh I almost forgot, would you like to look around?"

"Yes, we would like that".

"Alright, hey Bob! Would you show them around?"

Then some person ran to the room where were the president with the minister, that person was dressed in shorts and a shirt with palm trees and a straw hat on his head.

"Hello, how many aliens will come with me?" asked Bob.

Minister looked at him confused and then he answered " Me and five other diplomats ".

"So, go with me buddy" said Bob.

Then Bob and six aliens set off. They walked along a long corridor that had windows on the left side, so everyone could see the dead valley where water flowed millions of years ago and possibly had life in it, but now it's a dead world.

Then they walked into a mall where was a lot of shops as clothes shop, cinemas and others, but Bob walked in to something that nobody from aliens couldn't know, they saw a board on which there were three unknown signs for them, but they identified a old man to the right of the signs who had a clearly visible beard and glasses. When they walked in, it looked like time stopped there, everyone who was in the room just stared at Bob, the minister and the other diplomats.

"Chill guys, we're just going to eat". Said Bob and then with minister and another diplomats, walked from the entrance to the counter.

"Hello, one classic bucket of nuggets please" said Bob to the scared waitress.

After two minutes the waitress gave the bucket to Bob. They sat down at one of the few free tables.

Meanwhile Bob bit into the food from bucket and asked" Would you like to try this food?".

Then the minister turned to Bob and answered "Why not".

Then he took one of the pieces of food out of the bucket and bit into it.

At almost immediately the minister vomited.

"What happened to you?!!" shouted Bob to the minister.

"What is that?!". Asked the minister.

"Chicken nuggets".

"What is chicken?". Asked the minister.

"Animal". Answered Bob.

The minister looked at him terrified and said "Your species is carnivores?".

"No, we are omnivores".

"Could you please take us back to the meeting room?" Asked the minister.

"Of course".

After a seemingly endless corridor, the minister, diplomats and Bob made their way back to the conference room to discuss the "omnivorousness" of the human race with the other Irchan diplomats.

After a bit of searching on the human internet the diplomats started to argue.

"They do not appear to be active predators, rather they simply raise various animals and then eat them". Said one of the diplomats to the minister.

"But still, it's the second discovered advanced race that is eating meat, we don't know what to expect from them". Said the minister.

One of the diplomats looked ta him and said "I'm sure that they are not like a Ferendir".

For a moment, the minister became lost in his thoughts, remembering how he was unable to move and was forced to look at the remains of his best friends, the ruins of the hotel where they were staying, and the burning forest in the distance, and most of all, the looks of those monsters that were preparing to eat him.

"No, they are not like the Ferendir, it was impossible to speak with them, no, humans are not like those monsters, but they are strange we can't just give them better technology, we have to wait for them to show us that they really aren't monsters" said the minister.

"You know what? Let's get out of here, our leader will decide any further action" said one of the diplomats.

Everyone agreed, then they left the solar system without any goodbyes.

[evil-jennifer-hamilton-wb]

Imagine a reverse STL ship, instead of 40 years for the crew while 400 years pass on earth, time is passing slowly on the ship while it moves FTL for observers (say because of something something relativity handwavium).

Corperations send out ships to far off planets to their direct benefit, with the impact that the people onboard need to throw their lives away (where with traditional STL ships most corps and governments will have collapsed by the time the crew reaches their destination.)

I think it could be conceptually interesting.

[slopofaarix]

Star Trek: Dragon

posting all my Dragon lore here because why not

The Dragon is a gigantic, sentient, space-faring organism. Her species seem to have evolved alongside a humanoid one supposed to be her crew, whom she depends on for maintenance and survival, and who benefit from her being a badass faster-than-light home among the stars. Unfortunately for her, some [random cosmic event, insert technobabble here] has transported her to the Alpha Quadrant with no crew, and next to no memory of who she is or where she comes from. Adrift and with nobody to care for her, she begins to ail quickly…. Fortunately for her, another event brings her in contact with the USS Venture, a galaxy class starfleet ship. Unfortunately, this event also destroys the Venture, and only a few random crew members and civilians manage to survive by boarding the Dragon. The good news is that they're bonded to her as her new crew, awaking her from her coma—yay!

There’s a downside, though. Once the bond is established, her crew can only be away from her for a week or two before they will start to die. It’s enough for the Starfleet personnel to continue a lot of their work—after all, it’s not like they’re cut off from civilisation—they can communicate just fine with the outside world. They can even go and visit their families. Even so, this situation is less than ideal. Starfleet doesn’t want its officers and these civilians trapped inside this big weird alien, and it won’t risk assigning any additional guys to this ship for obvious reasons. The Dragon herself knows that it’s wrong to hold on to her current crew indefinitely, so it’s her—and their—mission to find out more about her, and to get her home, wherever that may be. Hopefully her people (and crew-species) know some way to reverse the bond.

FTL-capable, though it’s nothing like conventional warp technology. Totally different technology, as it’s all biologically/psionically based. It seems to be a lot faster, yet also a lot harder to set precise courses for. She often ends up in places her pilots are thinking about/dreaming of instead of whatever heading they try to input.

Yes, they keep ending up at Risa. Yes they tried putting asexual species in the pilot's chair, to no avail. It's a "don't think about elephants" dilemma.

About 300 meters long from bow to stern, making her a bit smaller than the USS Voyager. As the series continues, and she takes on more crew (normally by accident), she grows alongside their numbers 

About 50 crew to start—who are an even mix of starfleet and civvies. It’s actually pretty comfy in there, she’s not a military vessel. Of course, she has a bridge and an engineering section and even weapons. But there’s a park and an arboretum and a little food garden in there too… really, it wouldn’t be such a bad place to settle down.

Starfleet are running the show here… or trying. The crew is small, and her maintenance requirements are pretty high, which means there are a lot of civilians getting field commissions here. Know your way around a plasma manifold? Congrats, here’s your yellow uniform.

There’s nobody on this ship above the rank of commander. Everyone is just doing their best.

Agreed to have some Starfleet technology grafted into her to help her Starfleet personnel interface with her better and also afford them a few more familiar creature comforts—namely holodecks and transporters. Some things work nicely. Other things, like replicators, do not. But don’t worry :) she has the crew’s nutritional needs sorted :)

She excretes a nutritionally-complete-for-your-species paste in your favorite flavour. From her many, many teats. From which you must suckle.

She is capable of replicating anything a standard replicator can (and more!), but it will be produced within an ooze-covered amniotic sac. You can have a raktajino, cup and all, but you’ll just have to wait a sec and then cut it out of an oozy veiny sac.

Starfleet rations have never seemed so appealing! 

She is predominantly solar powered, and supplements her diet with nebula dust and random space debris.

The Bond ™ seems to be a combination of nanites and psychic tethering. The Dragon can intuit the needs of her crew and make sure they are healthy and comfortable, but without her continued influence, the nanites degrade and you’ll eventually go into neural shock. Starfleet are *trying* to find a way to remove the bond safely, to no avail.

She will chat to you, especially if you're lonely. She's great at moral support, and is always there to listen :)

Her internals a a strange mix of organic and inorganic. It's not gory in there, rather, there is a lot of bioluminescence and clean geometry which just... happens to strangely bonelike. At least, that's true for most parts of the ship. Engineering is a different story. And the Jeffrey's tubes? Well, they move you via peristalsis.

All of this occurs 15 years after the conclusion of DS9, in an alternate timeline which ignores every piece of star trek media produced after Voyager (since I have not watched them <3)

Notable staff include:

Captain Noe (actual rank: Cmdr.), a hardass Vaadwaur--actually a spy, but has to keep up the ruse now and is not very happy about it (it's a long story.)

Dr. Kem Valir (CMO), a Bajoran non-believer who's convinced he can save everyone in the universe and that joining Starfleet was the best way to do this.

Lt. Kem Olan (science), a Bajoran-raised Cardassian, adoptive brother of Valir. A social outcast, and very effeminate by cardassian standards. Would follow Valir into hell, or at least Starfleet.

Lt. (j.g.) Ryn (engineer) (provisional officer), an outcast Klingon who just happened to be aboard the Venture after they found him dead in the water in the most ramshackle ship imaginable (it crumbled to debris the moment it lost his magic touch).

Ens. White (helmsman) (extremely provisional provisional officer), a ferengi-human hybrid. Served previously as a helmsman on a small starfleet ship before being stripped of rank for doing a little hustling on the side. Was being moved to a penal colony before the Dragon encounter.

Lt Cdr T'Sue (tactical), a ferengi-vulcan hybrid (don't ask) brought into this world for convoluted political reasons and kept in it by a shitload of cybernetic augments. Same father as White (don't ask). Had a temporary post on the Venture so she could see her bro one last time while also not having to take time off work.

Miles Obrien is also there to continue manning the transporters, since his suffering can never end (he’s divorced in our universe)

We've also overhauled the species lore quite a bit, since the theater of the mind has an infinite special effects budget--though we aim to enhance the existing lore rather than contradict any of it. I'll list our alien biology headcanons here.

[paradoxcase]

John 19:18

THE TOWER HAS R

Since normal humans can't do anything like this anyway and it doesn't seem like John has at this point in the story actually consumed anyone's soul, I guess by "the old difficult way" he's referring to his power level from before that happened, during the part of the story that we're reading now?

This is a piece of land that John just raised from the bottom of the ocean, but it already has a building and a car on it. I guess some flooding happened when the world ended? Also, I think that car is probably all dead, insert Miracle Max reference here

So, it's not like surprising or a revelation at this point, but here is positive evidence that a body can be physically alive and even healthy, but if it doesn't have a soul in it, it's not really living. I think if BOE had observed Gideon's body to be physically alive in some way but lacking a soul they would have described it differently; Gideon's body probably has some big holes in it because of the fence at this point, or at least it probably did at the time that BOE had it, so it wouldn't have been like Ulysses and Titania here, but it's not clear what the extent of Gideon's immortality is, exactly, if it means inconvenient holes get repaired or if she can be alive in spite of inconvenient holes, or what

Also, here we have that true resurrection doesn't just involve the physical act of repairing someone's body and starting it up again in some way, there has to be some element of retrieving a soul, presumably from the River

So whatever this is, I don't think anyone is using it 10,000 years later. The Nine Houses uses this stele system, which seems to be related to radio somehow, but you can't use it to go somewhere that's far away from a stele and they do know where they wind up. And BOE went out of their way to steal a ship with a stele just so they could use FTL travel, so they obviously don't have another means. I wonder what happened with this idea that caused it to be abandoned? Like, obviously the trillionaires who went off in their FTL ships did survive and I guess maybe became some of these other civilizations that John's fighting against, so it must have at least worked a little bit. But the stuff about "oscillating to a prearranged spectrum" makes me wonder if it isn't actually related to the steles at all? Or Augustine was right and there was no FTL at all

Also, I wonder if John does understand the math now after 10,000 years

This seems like such a weird argument to make? Like, I'm not sure if this interaction is happening in public or not. If it's a public thing, I can see them being like, this guy killed a bunch of poor innocent cows, how can we trust him??? but it sounds like a lot of this was private negotiations between John and the trillionaires, I think in those circumstances they wouldn't be talking about the poor innocent cows and would instead be saying things about how it's not a good investment, I don't think any trillionaires are going to be pretending to care about cows for just John's sake. And I mean, one of those guys is probably Elon Musk, right, can you see Elon Musk making this argument to anyone in any context? I really cannot

So again, it's sort of framed as being about the Earth, specifically, and not about the people and animals living on it... although, if this is Alecto's memory of John telling this story to her maybe he is phrasing everything that way for her benefit? Like obviously the greater injustice was leaving all of the people behind. The only real difference between what the trillionaires did and what John was planning to do was in how many people escaped, right? Like, John wasn't out there fighting oil companies and pollution either. Maybe when someone takes the ships you were planning to use to leave instead it's just easier to say "you abandoned the Earth, you cowards!" instead of "you left us behind, you bastards!" because then it's easier to claim the moral high ground, but I think they already could do that, since they were planning to take everyone and that was the whole point?

[adolin]

That Ask you got about the Resurrection Beasts and the shepherd planets got me thinking, and I'd love to know what you think.

What DOES John want with the shepherd planets?

Like, we get various statements - including from John himself! - about how he can never forgive those who abandoned earth and all that.

But the Empire's policies aren't what I'd expect if John was actively trying to inflect maximum punishment onto the descendants of the FTLers.

Like, just the fact that the Empire calls them "shepherd" planets. It's propaganda, yeah, but it's propaganda of the "we are benevolently ruling these planets because we know better than them" imperialism where the goal is control and extraction of resources. The Empire isn't calling them the "heretic" planets or the "evil" planets or anything that would lend itself to a justification of inflicting Righteous Punishment (tm).

Thoughts?

I think John is creating climate refugees. That's his punishment. To make the descendant of those who "betrayed earth" ("left you on dollar-store support) live as constant refugees from one planet to another, never allowed to lay down roots.

Why I think that: John's strategy obviously isn't extermination; clearly the Houses have 0 concerns about killing people, but it's not the main goal. He wouldn't even need an army if that was his objective. It's also not "empire-building" in the purest sense of the word, because the way the shepherded planets are run doesn't maximise economic benefits for the Empire, and the lifetime contracts seem to be more about "punishing" the locals than benefiting the Houses. And they flip planets, making the unlivable for native life forms.

Flipping a planet "prepares it for necromancy" as per HtN, but barely any necromancers are even going to live there anyway, because the Houses don't have settlers; there's no imperial presence in those planets beyond the Cohort. It seems like a lot of work for little reward. They don't intend to ever live there, but they are making damn sure that the locals won't be able to remain there either. The planet will flip, the biosphere will change forever, and the population will have to evacuate, and maybe resettle at some point in the far-off future when the environment has become completely different.

On propaganda, we actually have very little info on what the perception of Non-House planets is within the empire. Gideon seems to think they're enemies, not protectorates, but then again Gideon only knows about the Cohort via propaganda comics. I agree though that it seems in line with John's paternalistic approach to use a phrase like "shepherded planets."

(Also this is all going with the assumptions that non House planets = settled by descendants of the FTL fleet, which isn't 100% proven but seems the most likely explanation)

(I also have Many Thoughts about why I don't think the economy of the empire is actually supported by the shepherded planets but that's a whole other post; the tldr is that they were economically sufficient for millennia, so clearly they are capable to be; and that paper and wood are SUCH luxury items in the Houses and commonplace in New Rho, and there doesn't seem to be any sort of market for that. Like, even the green planet Harrow kills is a whole forest! If the Empire cared about supplementing the economy they'd have been there decades ago cutting down that whole forest.)

[kcdodger]

Honestly, I feel like one of the only Starfield fans out there. There's so little talk about how good the game actually is, because everyone seemed to expect it to be like... "Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen but good" without realizing that those games are *bad* because of their fundamental basis in, well. Nothing. See, Elite was always a game with promise, but it has some of the most worthless head developers in the industry. Designed like an F2P MMO with a quarter of the content, around an exceptional flight model based in the most uselessly large 1:1 scale galaxy I have ever seen. Scale is useless if you cannot use it. (Starfield suffers immensely from this too, by the way.) But Star Citizen is also another promiser with no real delivery at all.

The game is driven by ship sales and almost half the game is still in development, and it's been well over ten years now. They promised 100 star systems but have only delivered on what, Stanton and Pyro? Again, Starfield suffers from this too. Can't lie. But you know what Starfield has that neither of them have? A story. Characters. Voice work. Cultures to explore and experience, even if they ARE small. ACTUAL worldbuilding beyond ship based combat. Fully traversable ship interiors and exteriors without exception. If you hate Starfield beause it isn't "Well realized or big enough of a space system" you both don't understand the intent of the game nor do you understand what it *does* have. Yes, there's stock repeatable dungeons everywhere, yes, they do get old. Yes, perhaps there is simply too much open "junk space" - but, like. Ultimately? It does deliver on just about every promise both Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen made. "Oh but it's not seamless!" You don't want that. Trust me. In Elite and SC, you only travel to POIs. It's true. The scale is too large in either game to even consider doing anything else. You really do just fly from one identical point to another in those games. I guess maybe not SC, but SC's locations are, frankly, single player RPG sized theme parks. At best. ED: Frontiers didn't add anything meaningful to the game, despite adding space legs. It's not a fulfilling SP or MP experience. Its shooting mechanics suck. Its other mechanics are, frankly, useless - if interesting. It's just not built for that.

Admittedly, in a lot of ways? Starfield feels like a Single Player Star Wars Galaxies, to me. Fully traversable ships, decently large on-foot areas to explore, POIs to travel to, and fully realized stories and characters, with just about as good worldbuilding and realization. Perhaps that's why Starfield appeals to me so much. Because it scratches an itch that SWG did, but E:D and SC completely and utterly failed to. I'll give E:D this. It might be the greatest space sim to play if you work an office 9-5 or are unemployed. I'm saying it's great if you have nothing but free time, basically. If you don't, it's pretty awful and does not respect your time. "Starfield has so many loading screens!" one may say. Yeah, it does. so do ED and SC. But they hide them behind entering and exiting FTL jumps. Does that FEEL like a loading screen? No, not to the uninitiated. But once you're in there, the waits become kind of agonizing and obvious. It's like Mass Effect's elevators. The Loading Screens are still there, but you have the illusion removed. Could Starfield benefit from immersive loading screens? Yeah, honestly it could. I mean, Star Wars: Outlaws coming out next month is doing it. And your average plebeian gamer doesn't realize that's what it is - a loading screen between instances and POIs. If Starfield added that, it'd do them a lot of good. Though, sadly it would also run in the face of their lovely photo-mode-pics-are-loading-screens function, which I adore. But for the health of the game, I am willing to eschew that. Heartbreakingly. If Starfield added that, it'd do them a lot of good. Though, sadly it would also run in the face of their lovely photo-mode-pics-are-loading-screens function, which I adore. But for the health of the game, I am willing to eschew that. Heartbreakingly.

[at-liberty-news]

Hello Liberty News. I am Commander Vismark, admiral of my ship Steel’s Vengeance, leader of interstellar defense within the company, a member of the company board, and head of the contact team of the Super Earth Galaxy. We have been watching your work for some time now and are very impressed. We are also thankful for your honest answers to our questions. In fact, we are so glad, that we are offering a special deal: We at the Cave Filling Corporation wish to sponsor you.

From what you have stated, you have been on the run for a long time, probably scrounging for fuel and resources. You probably haven’t had a meal that wasn’t rationed for weeks. You are in a desperate state. Fortunately, the Corporation has deemed that a partnership would be in both of our interests. Becoming sponsored by us involves almost nothing on your end. All you have to do is to continue doing what you do best: providing the truth to humanity and beyond without the censorship of Super Earth. We might ask for a few favors, a few company messages to be delivered here and there with major events, but nothing serious. For the most part, you will be just as free as before, and with our resources, even more free.

In exchange for accepting this partnership, we will gladly accommodate you on the Steel’s Vengeance. Not a permanent stay of course, as I’d imagine you wouldn’t want to stay indefinitely. It would hamper your journalism after all. However, you are welcome to make as many pitstops as needed. We will provide you with food and resources as well. I am sure that you will be eager to have fresh, hot food once again, and I will be very surprised if our rations are much more nutritious and flavorful than whatever slop is giving to the Helldivers. We will also make repairs to your ship, even giving upgrades if needed.

The one thing we cannot provide is FTL access. We do not have Termanid fuel, and our own methods of traveling to other worlds are a company secret and require our vast resources to operate. Besides, it would be impossible to install our methods into your Super Destroyer. However, we do have other technologies that would benefit you, such as our automaton jammers. If you agree to not distribute this technology or allow it to fall into the wrong hands, when installed into your ship, they will allow you to travel through automaton territory without being intercepted or shot down. This technology is vital for visiting my ship, as it is located outside of the galaxy borders on the automaton side. If you do not want to risk going through enemy territory, I am willing to send crates to you to resupply, though I will say that such an arrangement will deprive you of the amenities on the Steel’s Vengeance.

To summarize, if you accept our sponsorship deal, we will supply you with food, repairs, comfort, and more for practically nothing. All you have to do… is accept.

{This is just for lore purposes, I can’t actually ‘sponsor’ you (I already follow you guys), but feel free to accept or not accept based on what the characters would do!}

[Personal Communication Channel Opened]

[. . .]

[Awaiting Response]

[. . .]

Greetings once more, Commander Vismark!

We, as a team, have taken very much time to deliberate on your proposal. Originally, we were split. We're all exhausted by our conditions, but many desire to retain our full autonomy and independence, afraid of the consequences of becoming indebted to another party.

Ultimately, we have finally come to a conclusion that satisfies most of us. While we regretfully must decline your offer for a temporary stay on the Steel's Vengeance and we cannot accept the supplies you would provide, we are willing to negotiate a transaction for the Automaton equipment. The ability to more safely navigate Automaton territory would greatly increase our chances of survival alone, allowing us to operate outside of space that is safe for Super Earth Destroyers to follow us.

With that said, the transaction must be of a financial or physical nature. Being on the run has taught us to be very resourceful, picking after previous battles for supercredits, technology, and scrap. 

Once again, we profusely thank you for your offer, but we simply cannot be a voice for anyone other than the downtrodden citizens of Super Earth! The team is resolute on this. 

We eagerly await your response.

[. . .]

[Message Sent]

[binarystargames]

Machinations of Court and Frame pre-production notes: Noble Houses and their Agents

I don't have an actual cover for this one yet so for now you get a screencap from the SRD title. This one's still at pretty high level. But I did some of that high level work and I wanna talk about it!

Speaking of the SRD, this is the third Total//Effect game I initially proposed/outlined/etc on the Total//Effect SRD. My general (self)-pitch was:

Mecha, But Politics

This Time, This One's About The People, Not The Mechs TM

(But it's also about feudalism and how internecine struggles between people in power completely do not care about the average person)

Political maneuvering and such. Heavy Faction emphasis in the form of noble Houses. Think Battletech or Game of Thrones or Dune.

Heavy emphasis on Relationships/Bonds/etc. They're big in Valiant Horizon but they're supposed to be even bigger here.

No "traditional" group tactical TTRPG combat. But there are mecha duels, because that's very important to me.

So first off, I think to give this the proper "space" (haha) to breathe, this one also needs to be a space game. This lets me be pretty vague on certain points without it being weird, especially I'm purposely relaxing "hard"-ness because the specifics aren't the point - everyone has FTL shit and can travel easy, planets are just habitable or terraformable and have atmospheres, it's fine. Get those good Dune/Battletech vibes going more so than like, Front Mission.

Given that, I think the proper order of operations is: Factions/Allegiances contain Houses which contain Planets. Factions/Allegiances are something that I think mostly gets hashed out in play but I'll focus on Houses/Planets.

Planets

The main resource I'm tracking is the number of planets they control, which is the only "resource" I'm tracking as such. More planets, more power in general: certain things can add "virtual" planets to this tally, like prominent (extra-population/resource/etc, counts as two) or independent (counts as half at most, is split X ways between any House with a trade agreement with them) planets. What do more planets get you? Each House gets X actions per Faction Turn: reinforce X planet, infiltrate Y planet, do some digging on Z, etc. I'm thinking the big benefit is that they get 2/3/4/5 actions if they have 1/3/6/10 planets: meaning a handful of lower Houses can overwhelm a higher one if they're isolated.

Houses

So off the bat, my first inclination was to do some kind of complicated 4X resource thing with Houses. But I realized very quickly that I didn't want that. The thing is that the interplay between Houses is not so much a game in and of itself as it is a backdrop to the personal action between agents of said Houses. Your points of view aren't the machine, they're also cogs in it, even if they are very important cogs. So what do we do for Houses?

To define a House, we start by defining the House's Distinction. This is kind of like a character class or playbook for the House. The ones I have down are Legacy (they're very old and storied), Money (they have a lot of it), Connections (they're got to where they are through intel and favor arbitrage), and Industry (they have control of some major supply of something, like food or ore). This is basically why they matter.

When you define this, the player making the House (this is a full-group effort, ideally, with each player making probably 2) is asked 3 Distinction-based questions to define something in particular about how the House got to where they are, who they're allied with, and who they're unfriendly with. Distinction also defines holdings, i.e. how many planets they start with, but it's based on a roll and each kind has various downsides: Money-Houses have High Die (average 5ish) but many are independent, while Connections-Houses have Low Die (average 2ish) but their capital is always Prominent. Because this isn't really a game about winning or losing, I'm perfectly fine with Houses starting on the front or back foot. For example, I rolled up 1 House of each kind to test this, and the Legacy and Money houses started with 4 each while the other two rolled very poorly ended up with 1 each. That instantly creates an asymmetric dynamic: maybe those first two are the major two powers, with the other two splitting one way or another (or combining forces to act as one...for now, anyway). That's workable!

The chosen Distinction also defines the Frames the House picks as its "core three" types (light, medium, heavy). I've defined 3 "lines" of mechs by name/manufacturer: the first is intended for old-money, focuses on melee capabilities, and labels theirs like TYPE-WEAPON; the second has more of a PMC vibe and labels theirs like 0X-ABC where ABC is a "character class" like KGT = Knight, RGR = Ranger, etc; and the third is full manufacturing and labels them XMYAZ (for instance MM10A4, like how the US military labels things as M16A4/etc). Legacy Houses have to pick 2/3 from the first (they're the oldest one, prior contracts, etc), Money houses have to pick 2/3 from the second (they have a expensive-but-practical vibe), Industry has to pick 2/3 from the last (more of an emphasis on no-frills craftsmanship), and Connections have to pick 1 of each.

Distinction does another thing with Relationships too but I'll get to it when writing about...

Agents

So the focus of the game is characters who are Agents. This is a very broad term that more or less comes down to "representative of a House, sponsored by them to get The Overwhelmingly Good Shit from their Frame manufacturer, sent to problem areas to fix or create problems or as liasons/representatives". Each player makes two and play shifts around various sides of a conflict on a per-session basis - when Agents clash, it could be with an NPC, or depending on what House moves have been taken, it could be another PC Agent! (And since direct conflicts are 1v1, you can just have this play out as PvP, unless both duelists were made by the same player.)

I'm taking a similar approach re: playbook/broad "class"-like distinctions to Agents. Specifically, I'm envisioning 6 kinds of Agents on a sliding scale of privilege/status/position from Heir/Scion at the high end (literally in line to be House leadership, or could be if enough people die) to Officer/Mercenary at the low end (not even nobles, just professionals who are good at mech fighting). The more important you are, the more Status you have: Status means that other characters with more/less relate to you differently. (One big one, for example, is that is no big deal for someone of higher Status to actually kill someone of lower in a battlefield duel, but someone of lower status is expected to find a way to disable rather than kill whatever inbred heir in their sight who has a death wish.) It does mean you've got more of a target on your back, however, and less ability to pivot around: I'm thinking a meta-currency equal to X - Status (probably 4 - Status, with Status being 1-3).

Playbooks/whatever I end up calling them also define a few things. I'm envisioning a passive ability relating to Relationships (like counting them as doubled for the purposes of Influence or unlocks), as well as starting packages: starting Relationships with the House and with people, and starting Moves picked from a big list split between Court Intrigues and Frame Maneuvers (like the Mercenary is Maneuvers-only at first, but it gets 4 instead of 3 Moves and can gain more of an appreciation for intrigue over time - think someone like Bronn from Game of Thrones).

Finally, back to Distinctions to talk about Relationships. When characters gain Relationships, they can take those out with other people (which gives advantages to influence them in particular) or with Houses. In addition to making it easier to influence them and various set benefits like extra Frame access or Tells on all that House's Frames or that person's Maneuvers, When they take a Bond (which is 1 of 6 points you can put into a Relationship, crystallized by a specific thing), they gain a token, which they can spend anytime to answer questions about a House: the questions in particular are defined by that Distinction/Playbook, and there's one good-connotated/one bad-connotated. For example, Legacy has a) What hidden secret in their past could propel this House to greatness? b) What dark event in their history or lineage is this House trying to hide? (Keep in mind these aren't just for good bonds, these can be for enemies too - a character can create a Relationship with a House they've sworn to bring to ruin, for example, and cash them in to create some horrid rift they can exploit, or a friendly Relationship can turn sour after a betrayal and lead to awful things being revealed on both sides.)

Hell Yeah

This game's gonna be cool as shit whenever I make it for real, folks. I mean I say this about literally every significant-sized game I make but this one's definitely also my baby.

[finely-tuned-line]

RP:

Log 218

FTL: FTLR-3 has taken the form of the cyan lizard that was its host. It remains immobile, but the form it has taken is clearly that of a cyan lizard. One especially similar to the one from which it originated from. I've described my hypothesis as to why it would do such a thing in Log 216, but to summarise, it's for the sake of efficiency. Efficiency of movement, efficiency of existence. It's taking the best of all three sub-types of Rot and combining it.

FTL: I fear that this new form may grant FTLR-3 a much extended range of movement that, especially when combined with its apparent ability to learn, could result in it breaking out of the containment chamber. If all goes well, this will not be the case. I will carry on in my attempts at creating a potent corrosive substance, just in case LIFEGIVER's treatment does not arrive on time.

FTL: As for updates on the progress of my attempts to create such a substance, there aren't many. The progress has been lacking and it all is strikingly reminiscent of my attempts to create organisms without a foundation. I do believe that I am on edge of something, though. I cannot tell you what, only that it will aid me in my quest.

FTL: The time after FTLR-3 is eradicated is eagerly awaited. I cannot allow myself to get distracted from this process at this time, but the thoughts of experiments I could be doing now are alluring to me. For example, Eternal Anomaly (as our conversation has unfortunately not yet ceased) mentioned a slugcat-poleplant hybrid.

FTL: Creating a hybrid with a poleplant is indeed a curious idea. One that I wish I could afford the time to explore at this moment. Perhaps not with a slugcat, that seems to defeat the purpose. Slugcats are insanely adaptable creatures, they can withstand just about any modifications. Though a slugcat-poleplant hybrid would have its benefits, my interest lies in the reactivity of the poleplants leaves. What if a poleplant's genetics that pertain to them were implanted into say, a lizard? Forgive me for the amount of experiments that lizards have been the main subject of.

FTL: The 'leaves' could function as a warning system, though perhaps it wouldn't be that much of an effective one. Append them onto the tail though, and they could perhaps warn the lizard of any vibrations in the ground. The red colouring the lizard would be sure to inherit from the poleplants would also serve as a deterrent to predators, invoking the image of a typical red lizard. It could also potentially employ the poleplant's typical hunting method of ambush. Though it would lack the ability to blend in.

FTL: Perhaps if the lizard that would be modified were a white lizard... its camouflage abilities, if combined with the reactiveness of the poleplant. Truly could make a capable predator, armed with many ways to protect itself from any that may threaten it. Its red leaves would make it stand out, even when camouflaged, but everything needs a weakness, no?

FTL: I'll have to put this idea on hold. After this whole fiasco is over, this will be the project I pick up. Just another incentive to get this over with as quickly as possible. I tire of researching FTLR-3, it has too much urgency to it. But I shall carry on doing so, as though my interest grows weaker as my attention attempts to drift elsewhere, I remain curious about its nature.

[the-world-annealing]

Alright, let's wade into "Is it Bad, somehow, to have potatoes in your high fantasy world and not explain their origin or realistically extrapolate the social consequences of crops that don't require communal harvesting efforts" discourse. And the answer to that question is obviously "No, write whatever you want, nobody can stop you".

But I think that there's a consistent preference for worlds that do address those questions, and it goes somewhat deeper than being a sneering poindexter.

The first is simple: everyone wants stories to make sense, we just draw the line at different points. Somewhere between 'dream logic word salad' and 'worldbuilding bible with a bibliography longer than any story you wrote with it' lies the sweet spot of any given person.

The second is that incongruous elements are useful, and that something can only be incongruous if the rest of the world makes sense. A murder mystery needs to make sense for the clues to be recognizable as such. A foreshadowed twist warps the world in a way that will only make true sense once the twist is revealed. To understand your characters, the audience needs to understand their expectations about the world, which becomes harder the less sense that world makes.

The third is that any writer's perspective is very very limited, and 'letting a setting element force you to research realistic consequences' is actually a very fun and reliable tool to step outside your box of personal tropes (in my opinion). Someone whose only experience is Standard European Fantasy can declare 'in MY setting people have rice as their staple crop', but if the result is Standard European Fantasy Except With Rice... why bother? That's just playing mad libs with tropes; doing some research into the relative benefits and downsides of both agricultural systems would probably result in something much more interesting.

Now, this doesn't mean the world needs to be perfectly coherent and explicable. You can handwave stuff, you can leave stuff ambiguous, you can straight-up Not Have An Explanation For Something, you can have magic that violates conservation of energy or FTL drives or fleas with human intelligence. But I think it's good writing practice to have the world stay Like Reality Unless Noted, however vague that noting might be, because it's useful to have an audience that understands what does or doesn't make sense in the context of the story.

[griseldagimpel]

The Locked Tomb fan theory thoughts.

The Locked Tomb as a series is pretty skimpy with the socio-political world-building, but one assumption I've seen underline various fan theories is that the evils of the trillionaires just...dissipated over time. Like, the original trillionaires are all dead, so John should just forget what they did and move on.

And, just, this isn't how it works. The uber-wealthy have heirs who inherit their wealth. Systems of injustice perpetuate through time. I mean, shit, did you know that the fucking Hapsburgs are still around and benefitting from the actions of their ancestors?

Those that left of the FTL ships appear to have splintered because the Empire of the Nine Houses had a military within two centuries but didn't encounter the Blood of Eden (who were looking for them!) until 5000 years into John's reign.

And, like, obviously, John's not going to fix Empire with more, different Empire. But I do not believe that the Empire of the Nine Houses is the only Empire that exists/has ever existed in the universe, and that every space-nation the Empire of the Nine Houses encountered was, like, the Shire from The Lord of the Rings.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

I'm sorry Bethesda but WHAT THE FUCK?

[Image Description: A screenshot of a TV Tropes page for Starfield, the first reads:

"In the "First Contact" side quest, the player ends up having to mediate a dispute between a resort owned by the Mega-Corp Paradiso and the colony ship ECS Constant. The conflict is that the Constant is a Generation Ship that was headed to colonize Porrima II, but Paradiso beat them there thanks to FTL travel. The player is essentially given three options to resolve the quest: convince the Constant crew to accept indentured servitude to Paradiso until they "earn" their right to live on the planet, pay for a new Grav-Drive out of your own pocket to let the Constant search for a new planet, or simply destroy the Constant and kill its entire crew. However, there is no choice for you to simply kill the greedy Paradiso executives or force them to hand the planet over to the Constant. The Paradiso NPCs also are immune to damage and cannot be killed, so you're railroaded into only taking paths that will ultimately benefit Paradiso and essentially screw over the Constant."

The second:

"The Unkillable Essential NPCs return from previous Bethesda RPGs and remain as frustrating as ever, especially in comparison to comparable games like Baldur's Gate III and The Outer Worlds which give you the freedom to blow up questlines to take out hated NPCs if you really want to. Party members really hate it when you take a bullet to the head of not actively hostile NPCs, too, no matter how unforgivably awful they might be. (A particularly obnoxious example of this is the CEO of Paradiso, who casually suggests genocide as a solution to the "problem" posed by the ECS Constant arriving in orbit around the planet; many players will want to take a gun to him right there, but he's tagged essential and there is no solution to the questline beyond one of the compromises fielded in the meeting. Compared to what BG3 or TOW might let you do in such a place, it's extremely frustrating and can make one wonder about the narrative message of the quest.)"

End Image Description].

(I guess we gotta side with the greedy mega corporation turning a planet into a luxury resort for the mega rich).

[monsters-conquer-the-world]

When will Sony(?) finally wise up and make a Ghostbusters video game that is a hyper in-depth management sim? Yes of course I want to shoot radioactive lasers at screaming neon snot-monsters, but I ALSO want to divvy up a monthly budget between ghostbusting R&D, marketing, maintenance, rent, hiring new staff, utilities, employee benefits, legal fees, etc. Ghostbusters: Franchise Rights Doesn't take place in NYC, and you only interact with the original Ghostbusters through quarterly conference calls. Like the title suggests, you're building a whole Ghostbusters franchise from the ground up. Scouting real estate for your HQ, locking down a car to convert into your own Ectomobile, digging up open-minded weirdos willing to do this extremely dangerous and bizarre work, etc.

God it would rule. Forget fancy graphics and action gameplay, we've seen that before. Something pixel arty and text heavy (like FTL and Into the Breach) is all I'd need. It'd be so fun to compare your Ghostbusting outfit with other folks'. "You set up shop in the abandoned gas station? I run mine out of the basement of an adult book store! My Ectomobile is a VW microbus, yours is a Chevy Celebrity?! Yeah no, my franchise has a strict no-mummies policy, those things are way too big a pain in the ass, even for the money!"

I hate to say "mobile game" in the same breath as this because pay-to-win would suck shit... but sending your 'Busters out on missions would be a killer idle-game-ification.

[paradoxcase]

@1spoopyjerk:

you pointed out something interesting about John (at least, something i believe) - for all his presentation as a chill academic, it feels a bit like he does not approach necromancy in the same scientific/theoretical way that all other necromancers do. i can very much imagine ianthe presenting a drawn-out theory regarding necromancy's applications and john just going "yeah that sounds probably about right". his understanding seems primarily vibes-based

Yeah, it does seem sort of like that, especially with his incredibly scientific cure for Harrow's incomplete Lyctor issues, which was just "try to kill her until she's fixed, lol". I guess to him, starting life in a world where necromancy didn't exist and being raised with the idea that such stuff was fantasy, maybe it didn't occur to him, or never really sunk in that it can be scientifically studied in the same way?

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess

I think Augustine and Mercy explictly mention that the war seems pointless, and Augustine begs John to give up his vendetta. At which point John tells him that if 'the man you used to be heard you say that he'd be furious' or something like that...so it really does seem all about a war of vengeance.

Yeah, Augustine asking him to quit the war didn't really seem relevant to me back then, but I guess this is maybe something that they'd be tired of for a long time now and he thought that maybe if John was really going to beg for forgiveness, he could at least give them that given that the cavaliers are long gone at this point?

My theory: a few thousand years after the Resurrection, John discovered the descendents of the trillionaires, or the trillionaires themselves (FTL travel seems iffy in outcome) and could at last get his rage out.

Ah, so BOE are the descendants of the trillionaires who wouldn't fund his cryostasis project and that's his whole damage about them for 10,000 years? Ok, this reminds me of how some dumb white people oppose antiracism stuff by saying like, "but I never owned any slaves, why are you punishing me for something my ancestors did?" and totally miss the point that slavery was not that long ago and the whole institution is still having an effect on society even though it's not actually around anymore, and maybe John is seeing this that way, too, but... in this case (based on the first chapter of Nona) BOE definitely isn't populated by trillionaires, or people who benefited from their long-gone ancestors being trillionaires, and I'm sure that all that money probably lost its meaning when everyone died and it's been 10,000 years since then