Malaclypse the Seeker

10:30 am - [Fenspace!] [Story] First Impressions

This is a story all about how my life got turned right upside d-

*whack!*

Okay, I'll stop now. Sorry. Anyway, this is a Fenspace story. It's part of a larger story, but it's self-contained enough that I think you (the poor, gullible non-Fenspace LJ reader) should be able to follow it. It also contains cameos of various unusual persons. You know who you are, and you can complain in comments. --Mal

( In which our heroine enters a new world, we learn the dangers of mediaphilic AI, and a job offer is made. )

01:19 pm - [Fenspace!] Adventures in unholy crossovers

This is a little ditty I put together for Fenspace!, then decided it was way too outre for prime time, as it were. So, outside of a restricted part of FenWiki and here, this one hasn't seen a wider audience. I'm only posting it here because a) it's kind of interesting, in a trainwreck sort of way, and b) I feel a need to start using this LJ more often.

So, with that in mind I give you instructions on How To Build a Battlestar Galactica (new version) / Fenspace Crossover Story Without Ruining The Metafictional Appeal.

INGREDIENTS:

* One as-ordered copy of Fenspace!
* An incomplete understanding of FTL physics
* The Galactican faction (for those not up on Fenspace jargon, these are the collected Battlestar Galactica fan clubs acting as a quasi-national government In Space)
* A nasty sense of irony
( “Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Sometimes though, it's the other way around.” )

02:13 pm - Jihad Universe 4 - revision notes part 2

And here we go again, because I cannot leave well enough alone.

In Part 1 I rambled at length about the bare-bones of the JU4 setting and what that was supposed to mean. In this installment I continue to ramble, and hopefully actually start to get somewhere resembling an interesting setting.

( Round 2! Fight! )

12:03 pm - Revisiting older projects: The Jihad Universe 4

Revisiting older projects: The Jihad Universe 4

Taking a short break from Fenspace, so if this concept bores you go check out Fenspace. It's got lots of neat stuff in it, I promise.

Anyway, this was something I dreamed up around 2005ish as a variant continuation of the Jihad Universe. At the time I was hip deep in the (not abandoned, only dormant) Jihad Universe 3 project, the future of which is outlined roughly in my AEGIS of Stars worldbuilding setting.

JU3 is nice. It's a strong work, even unfinished as it is, and I like it. But I never really imagined it to be the end-all of the Jihad Universe (even though as the group drifts back into somnolescene it may very well happen). Back when enthusiasm was high for the JU in general, my original plan was to have JU3, then a series of alternates where the situation diverged into different settings, in order to increase the appeal of the concept.

(This doesn't include JUR, incidentally. JUR/Pridwen is a reboot of the Jihad concept, taking it back to first principles and building up. The JU# settings I had planned would start from the Jihad Universe timeline as written down in the worldbook and diverge from that point.)

That said, on a whim the other day I went back and took a look at some of my notes for the Jihad Universe 4. This was a High Space Opera setting based on the Jihad Universe. The original notes were a bit sparse, to say the least, and some of the ideas I've cooled on since the time I first put these down. Still, there's potential here, and so I'm going back and seeing what can be salvaged.

( Blasphemous thoughts below the fold. )

06:52 pm - [writing] Sampler

This is the end of a short piece I've been hacking together for the Fenspace project. I'm fairly happy with the beginning and end, but the middle is still giving me trouble (as usual). Anyway, here's the story bit. Enjoy.

04:53 pm - Brainworm: TransFandom Space

Every science fiction fan worth his or her weight in Star Wars action figures knows that the Manifest Destiny of Mankind is to explore space, seek out new life and all that jazz, right? Now, nearly 40 years after the first moon landing, it's kind of apparent that the rest of the species doesn't think that way. This depresses fandom to a great degree, and we wish that something would change.

So how about this: Next Sunday AD, a series of breakthroughs in various fields creates a kit, composed of reasonably-inexpensive nanotech and a few other goodies, that changes global society in ways we can only imagine today. Naturally, this would be the point when we fulfill our Manifest Destiny... but it turns out that mankind is more interested in using the futureboxes to bring everybody up to a decent standard of living. Sure, there's a certain amount of interest in space operations from governments and corporations, but no real interest in colonizing the Final Frontier.

This is a time for pioneers, people with skills and determination and who could be safely considered expendable by their patrons. In short, it's a time for science fiction fans to stand up and be counted! Which they did, in great numbers.

Fast-forward a hundred or so years. Post-futurebox Earth is a mostly-peaceful collection of satisfied Fourth and Fifth Wave nations. Aside from maintaining the large collection of orbiting laboratores, factories and comsats that keep the global Net intact the Earthers by and large have no real interest in space.

The mundanes have inherited Earth, and the Fen have inherited the Galaxy.

Well, eventually anyway. They're working on it.

At the moment, however, they're having enough trouble inheriting the solar system. Luna and the Lagrange points are pretty stable; the Luna City Federation (a collection of a dozen or so Luna Cities) market cheap fusion fuel to the mundanes, while the Republic of Zeon and the loose collection of Culturnik and Sheenisov habitats do business - when they feel like meddling in terrestrial affairs - as independent satellite & station manufacturers.

Mars is in the process of being terraformed, and is being fought over by the United Federation of Planets and the Galactic Republic. Both sides got there at roughly the same time and both want to claim it as their capital world. The dispute has turned into a long-running brushfire war, with occasional breaks for diplomacy at the orbiting Babylon station. In between the two giants, smaller groups like the Church of All Worlds and the inevitable Free Mars movements try to make their voices known.

(And yes, there are Jedi, and Sith, all over the place. The Force isn't quite with them just yet, but with the next round of genetic enchancements maybe...)

The asteroids and the rest of the outer system are the domain of microfandoms; any sf fandom with a sufficiently diverse population set up shop out in the Main Belt and have spent their time building up. The hard-sf fandoms have the skills edge in the Belt, but not the numbers, while castaways from the Federation/Republic dispute like the Romulans or the Imperials are trying to put together their own power bases and nursing grudges.

The Jovian system with all its moons belong, appropriately enough, to the Browncoats. They don't meddle, much.

Saturn is another battleground between the Federation and the Republic, but this time the battle is complicated by the original settlers. More openly transhumanist and posthumanist fandoms made it to Saturn first, and while they haven't gotten to Singularity yet, their kung fu is strong enough to make the Trekkies and Warsies sweat a little.

Nobody's really gone beyond Saturn as yet. Or at least nobody's gone beyond Saturn and come back. A fleet of migrants set out for a distant star some years ago, aiming to become the Lords of Kobol. They haven't been heard from since, but the united fandoms wish them luck.

And that's where things stand. The collective efforts of science fiction fandom have settled the solar system, and fandom has shaped the system in their own image. Eventually things might settle down into something resembling the utopias fandom wants to create, but for now at least it's not dull.

09:52 am - Minor brainworm

Being up to my neck in a traditional alien invasion story, here's something of a twist on the classic version:

An alien race (or collection of races) is out exploring the cosmos, seeking out new life, new civilizations... you know the drill. Their usual procedure is to send out high-STL probes and then (if suitable candidates are located) send another probe with an FTL wormhole shunt to open up trade and the like. It's a bit unwieldly, but it works.

Anyway, so the alien probes are out their doing their then, and one of the new civilizations their remote probes stumble upon happens to be Earth. This happens around, oh, let's say 1943.

The probe orbits for a little bit and gets an earful of Nazi triumphalism. After dutifuly relaying all this information back to Starfleet Command, the probe ambles off to find another civilization worthy of contact.

Meanhwile, back at Starfleet Command, the top brass are worried. These Nazis and their allied empires seem like they're bad news. Not only are they enslaving large parts of their planet, they're on the cusp of developing technologies that could make them a legitimate threat to regional stability. Something Must Be Done, and tsince our alien Federation doesn't believe in the Prime Directive, they're gonna do it. A high-speed wormhole shunt is sent to Earth, and the aliens start drawing up plans; either they'll hook up with the beseiged remnants of the Nazi's enemies, or they'll start breaking Nazi shit until they generate a popular rebellion.

(It should be noted that even powerful aliens aren't immune to thinking in cliches.)

Time passes. The wormhole shunt finally arrives in Earth orbit around, oh, let's say two weeks ago Tuesday. It lands somewhere relatively isolated but workable as a staging base for attacks on the heart of Nazi territory. Let's make that, oh, Armenia. No, Chechnya. That's funnier.

Which leads us to today. An alien probe has deposited a stargate the size of the Superdome (inflatable technology, baby; don't leave home without it) in the middle of Chechnya, and starting at noon an army of bug-eyed blue helmets is going to march out, ready to do battle with the Nazi Menace.

Hilarity, as should be expected, ensues.

08:31 am - [AEGIS of Stars] A small note

I've been kicking around reintroducing the Balkanization of the US (something I'll deal with in a longer post eventually) when this floated through my head:

"The People's Republic of Texas"

And I realized... I must do this thing. %)

(And you thought Texas Libertarians were a pain in the ass...)

10:30 am - [AEGIS of Stars] notes toward a future history 9/21/06

Been working on JU3 the last couple weeks, trying to get folks kicked into a bit more action. The last couple days have been pretty dry when it comes to JU3 work, sadly, so here's a little AoS stuff to help you wait until the next brainstorm.

Everybody sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. People who whine about TL;DR are advised to use their PgDn buttons. Onward.

Talking About Transhumans: I admit it; I love the idea of transhumanism. The technological speciation of the human race is just plain neat. I can't wait for it to happen out there in reality, even if my fate is to become just another parallel processor in some huge Matrix-esque Beowulf cluster.

There are suggestions that this has already happened. But we'll ignore those for the moment. Onward.

Anyway, since transhumans are something of a pet interest it was inevitable that they'd start popping up in my settings. Which brings up the core problem of transhumanity in fiction; it's an overwhelming element. Start dropping transhumans in and before you know it they're taking over the place. The only real way to keep this from happening is to either ignore the concept (possible) or nerf the fuckers to the point where they're not threatening to burst forth and conquer. You can guess which approach I took.

Transhumanity in AoS has a few difficult hurdles to jump. The first is the Third World War; the invasion of magical space elves caused a lot of damage, and between losses taken in the war and the multi-decade cleanup efforts, not everybody is interested in playing Mutate & Take Over The Galaxy.

The second hurdle is the rather dramatic reveal of magic & other paranormal powers in the AoS universe. Transhumanists in general like to consider themselves rock-hard rationalists, so they weren't expecting anything like this. The sudden reveal of magic/psi/superpowers draws a lot of research money away from more traditional H+ research like advanced AI, also.

(It should be noted at this point that while H+ advocates lose funding for digital pursuits, a lot of H+ biology researchers are drawn in to reverse-engineering the magical space elf technology.)

The third hurdle is the Spark. You'd think that the transhumanists - who preach the gospel of Unbridled Technology - would attach themselves to the Sparks, who are Unbridled Technology incarnate. And you're right to an extent, H+ people and Sparks get along like a house afire. This commonality of goals (if not methods) attracts the fourth problem.

#4 on the list is, naturally, AEGIS. The Special Security Force is tasked with keeping the peace, and a bunch of transhumanists and Sparks trying to trigger a singularity and/or take over the world (usually both at once) tends to wear on their patience.

Despite these problems, the transhumanists keep on going.

A Digression on the Singularity: The Singularity as defined by transhumanism is the point at which technological progresses beyond mere human understanding. It is the point at which everything changes, mere humans become gods, striding along the edge of the cosmos yadda yadda.

Is this possible? In our world, I'd put the odds at 60/40 that we won't see anything like a fictional Singularity in our lifetimes, although I expect that increasing technological resources will make our lifetimes a hell of a lot longer than we may be expecting at the moment. The same basic thought applies to AoS; the huge, universe-spanning Singularity that the transhumanists are chasing won't pop up at any point during the period I inted to focus on (2000-2500), although there might be some localized events if I need something ominous and weird to happen. Chalk it off to genre convention and don't sweat the small stuff.

Now back to our show.

Timeline: Roughly, the whole H+/Spark synthesis starts popping up in the late 2020s, along the tail end of the reconstruction. Lots of them get snapped up by ODC (who puts 'em to work building the Elevator) or AEGIS (who puts them to work delving Secrets Man Was Not Meant To Know). The ones who stay out of Consortium/AEGIS orbit, and avoid getting pulled in by any of the other world powers, mostly continue to act independently, writing books, political agitation, research, etc.

Sometime around the 2040s, just about when the Elevator opens up space to large-scale exploitation, there's a perfect storm of transhumanist-flavored lunacy that expedites the movement's mass exodus to Mars. The first incident is a moment when a group of reactionary Sparks try to overthrow the Japanese government and bring back the good ol' days. The next is when the Children of Elbereth (my signature trope, Tolkien cultists) announce their previously-secret "Great Race" bioengineering program to the world. A transhuman-friendly governor in the United States tries to mandate genetic upgrades for all citizens, a mandate later found to be directly connected to payoffs from major biotech corporations desperate to sell their new lines of genemods. The final incident happens when a cell of transhumanist activists try to trigger a Singularity by spontaneously booting the Zurich stock exchange to sentience. (The bootup works, incidentally. Unfortunately for the H+ers, the AI generated was non-expansionistic and chose instead to join the Modern Literature department at the University of Ingolstadt. It's doctorate thesis was a study of erotic fan-fiction involving famous figures of the Third World War. But I digress...)

These things happening in close sucession - plus dozens of minor incidents elsewhere in the world - turn the general memescape against transhumanism in general and Spark-backed transhumanism in particular. As a result, the H+ers decide that discretion is the better part of valor and begin moving up the Elevator to the edge of civilization at the time, which happened to be Mars.

The Sparks and transhumanists colonized Mars, began terraforming it, and settled in for the long haul. AEGIS followed behind after a series of incidents where particularly charismatic Sparks threatened the terraforming operations and major population centers. The deal by which AEGIS polices the planetary-scale threats but otherwise leaves the major cities alone is called the Chryse Treaty.

In the 2070s, a full generation has gone by since the first transhumanists and Sparks arrived, the terraforming is starting to produce viable results, and the natives are restless. Having only each other to deal with (instead of being amongst billions of mundanes) has produced some interesting social and cultural changes.

The biggest of the changes is the Great Game. The Game was part computer sim, part role-playing game, part wargame and mostly Battlebots. Originally, it was a way of allowing the more aggressive Sparks to act out without endangering the city domes, but slowly evolved into a major subset of Martian society in its own right. The Great Game allowed Sparks to build the mighty engines of destruction that haunted their dreams, and it allowed them to use these engines in a way that didn't violate Chryse. Winners of the Game - or subordinates of winners - had social power, which changed into political power as the population increased.

The Game's effect on the H+ population was mixed. Many supported it, since the Game did encourage scientific and technological innovations, the export of which was one of the pillars of the Martian economy. Others thought the Game was a method that the "baselines" used to keep the H+ movement from achieving Singularity.

The split in philosophy followed lines similar to those found in prewar transhumanism. The most radical of the H+ers were ideological descendents of the Extropians and anarcho/libertarian-transhumans. They were particularly dismissive of large authoritarian structures, preferring a heavily-romanticized ideal of Heinleinian self-sufficiency, strongly based in the American tradition. Their direct opponents, the individuals who supported the Game, were based in the social democratic tradition of prewar insitutions like the World Transhumanist Association and Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. While they accepted the probable inevitability of Singularity, they preferred a slower, more methodical approach to the problems of integrating humanity with transhumanity.

The split between the radicals and the conservatives finally came to a head in 2073, when a radical Spark developed a new fusion rocket that made interstellar travel possible, if not quite practical. The radicals arranged a trade with AEGIS: the blueprints and a model of the drive in exchange for passage out of the solar system.

(They also sold the drive to a few other interested parties... but that's another story.)

In any case, with AEGIS backing 90,000 radical transhumans - now calling themselves Odysseans - boarded nine large starships and headed for three nearby red dwarf stars, Wolf 359, Ross 128 and Lalande 21185. The dwarfs were chosen because they were stable, had a couple planets each and (most importantly) were too small and dim to be on the obvious "must colonize" list. These stars would later become the Transhuman Alliance, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Left to their own devices, the Martian conservatives returned to the Game, refining it into a baroque system of government that combined the feudal with the democratic and yet didn't descend into bloody revolution.

The Transhuman Alliance: This shit is getting too long as it is, but I feel I should say a few things about the TA. First of all, the TA is more a flag of convienence for the H+ers, something that allows them to deal with the baselines from a position of strength. Unofficially, the three branches of the TA are all competing to trigger Singularity first, since whoever gets there first will determine the shape of things to come... or so they believe.

Wolf 359 is the stronghold of the Tiplerites. It's a warm Mars world, and the largest of the major TA planets, so they're working towards making it a bit more habitable using aggressive nanotechnology. In the meantime, their main Singularity pursuit is the creation and perfection of computronium.

Lalande 21185's system contains Kusanagi, the most worrying planet in the TA. The inhabitants are fairly secretive and refuse to discuss their plans, but long-range observation has indicated that they're slowly but surely covering the entire surface of Kusanagi with artifical structures.

The third TA homeworld, Vinge, is a cryogenic terrestrial world around Ross 128. It also happens to be the only world in the Alliance that has both a native oxygen atmosphere and native life. The Vingeans are attacking Singularity from two directions; advanced physics and biotechnology. The physics are an attempt at creating or simulating the Zones of Thought from Vinge's novels, as a way of bootstrapping superhuman or godlike intelligence. The biotechnology combines the native life with terrestrial and Lyran biology as a method of creating a purely biological Singularity. The Vingeans are also the only TA members who dabble with metamagic or psi abilities as part of their research.

01:10 pm - [Worldbuilding] [Cheap!FTL] Notes from the Lucky Bastard

Hello again, and welcome to Mal's Brainworm Theater.

This time around we're back on the Cheap!FTL setting, working on filling in some of the gaps around the base. Partly, the following is also an experiment with the voice I intend to use when I get around to writing out the setting in full. I naturally use a lot of conversational English in most of my writing, but this borders between my normal conversational tone and something a little more folksy. I kinda like it, but I could use a second opinion if you've got one.

And now, on with the show...

( TL;DR content, NASA and the Klan, all below the fold. )

02:40 pm - [Worldbuilding] More notes from the abyss

So I'm puttering around with JUR/Pridwen, and I have the general outline of how the book itself will probably be put together, once I get enough of a handle on the content to actually start writing it...

First up is the Introduction, which is just a one-page blurby thing explaining the concept behind the setting, and giving some info on the authors. Nothing especially original.

The first actual section is Welcome to the Pridwen Institute, and this is where we get most if not all of our information on the Institute itself, how it works, what it does, who it reports to, etc. Things that would go here include: the Institute's relationship to the UN, organization charts (where applicable), recruitment, classification of agents, mission types and so on.

The next section is Characters. Now this would be mostly straight game mechanics, character templates and the like. At the moment, we're planning on using GURPS for mechanics, since that's the system we know best. Still, if somebody manages to score the rights to BESM 3e and releases it under OGL, I may very well switch over.

The following section is Technology, which I intend to be a great deal more inclusive than the Tech section in JU24e. There we were just cataloguing some of the gizmonic wonders of the Jihad. For Pridwen, things will be different. Obviously we'll have to handle at least one or two Institute gadgets, but the majority of the section will involve more publicly available things. I'm aiming for stuff that's either plausible as of right now but not quite ready for prime time, or practical as of right now but withheld for assorted nefarious reasons. Things that would go here include (but are not limited to): electric cars, solar power satellites, wearable computers, gene therapy, stem cell therapy, practical fusion power "within 12 to 18 months" and ubiquitous broadband internet.

Coming off of that we enter the History section. This is where we outline the alternate history as eluded to in the first three chapters but not fully explained. The majority of the history deals with World War 2 and its aftermath, the establishment of Pridwen, the slow decline of same, the election of Carter, Mondale, Dornan, Clinton & Wellstone, the emergence of Typhon, the ressurection of Pridwen and so forth. Basically getting us from Point A to Point B.

Point B is covered in detail in The World section. The idea is to give the reader a fairly good idea of what the Pridwen world looks like given a starting point of January 1, 2006. This section covers the global political landscape, what life's like in President Wellstone's America, how the Institute affects and is affected by the rest of the world, the current star list of bad guys (Typhon, the Brotherhood of Lyra, the Space Nazis & one or two more free agents to be chosen later), recent Institute operations, etc. Among other subjects that I'd like to get at least a sidebox or two on, the puiblic reaction to the flashier Institute ops is something that fascinates me, especially in this interneted age.

Once that's covered, we can go into Other Settings. Now, this one's something of a maybe on my part; I don't really have any solid ideas on what this would cover. I assume this would involve WW2 or Fifties-era campaigns, future stuff or crossovers or what have you.

Along with that, there's a Campaigns section. Again, I'm a bit sketchy on this one, since when you get down to it the Pridwen book's not really intended to be a complete stand-alone book. That, and frankly anything I wrote for it would essentially be cannibalizing chapter 7 of JU24e. It may happen, or it may not.

The last section in the book consists of Iconic Characters. These are the major mover-and-shaker NPCs that a player group might come into enough contact with to justify statting them up properly, or just people whom I think would provide a good idea of what the Pridwen setting is like.

So that's the plan. Whaddya think, sirs?

04:27 pm - [Worldbuilding] [Brainworm] Random doodles

Okay, so the Cheap!FTL setting didn't ring as many bells as JUR or AoS. That's okay, like I said I'm not going to make a huge thing out of it. But the bug sorta hit me today at work, so here's a couple of quick one-shots based on the premise.

( Click here for a GURPS 4e character profile of Yours Truly as a real-person-PC. )

( Port Jefferson, a quick home base for PCs on the go. )

( And to wrap things up, an adventure seed... )

11:23 am - [Worldbuilding] Yet another damned brainworm.

Bored. Bored bored bored BORED bored bored....

Since the muses for JU3, JUR & AoS seem to have gone on vacation, here's soemthing a little different. I don't intend for this to go beyond a handful of LJ posts and maybe some random discussion on IRC, so there aren't any netbooks or incredible infinite campaigns on the horizon. Just so you know.

Anyway. Over yonder on the glorious RPGnet, one of the regulars posted this idea for a near future space opera setting which caught my eye. For the short on time, here's the intro synopsis:

In the near future (most cars are electric, the US has been getting gradually more authoritarian along currently plausible lines, but things are more or less how they are now… laptops are better, but it isn’t a ‘sci-fi’ setting yet), this guy (in his friend’s garage) builds a hyperdrive with about two-hundred bucks in parts, then knocks together a spaceship, and heads out to do some exploring… returns with some friendly aliens, tosses society into chaos, and releases the plans for the hyperdrive onto the internet- welcome to the new era.

04:14 pm - [Worldbuilding] Notes from a strange place, continued

One week in, and we've finally got a name! After much careless deliberation, a fair bit of banging heads against walls, and due research by many a name has finally emerged that I like, if nothing else. So ladies & gentlemen, allow me to present the front line in the JUR:

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04:04 pm - [Worldbuilding] Notes from a strange place 5

Day 5, and the Idea That Ate Mal's Brain is finally starting to lose a little steam. Of course that just means it's jumped to everybody else who's reading this, especially the people who've commented so far.

The beatdown may commence when ready.

Anyway, since I don't have anything hugely constructive to add to the narrative at the moment, I figured I'd just go into some miscellaneous shit that's popped into my head over the last couple of days but didn't fit in anywhere. Onward, ho!

( You know the drill by now. )

09:49 am - [Worldbuilding] Notes from a strange place 4

Once again, welcome to our continuing coverage of The Thing That Ate Mal's Brain. We're in day 4 now, lots of words have been written, thoughts have been kicked around on IRC, and I think we're just about ready to start putting things together instead of just doing a random stream of consciousness.

Which is good, because the sooner I get this shit out of my system the sooner I can get back to doing the things I'm supposed to be doing, like JU3 and figuring out the JU2 book deal and pretending to be productive so my corporate masters will give me a paycheck and... you get the idea.

Anyway. You know the rules by now, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

( Entering the home stretch now... )

04:04 pm

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends.

I honestly have no idea why I'm fixated on JUR stuff this week. I've got far too many irons in the fire as it is. Still, if I knew everything about my brain, then I wouldn't be so pleasantly surprised by some of the stuff that pops out.

Anyway.

Welcome to Day 3 of our continuing series of notes and diseased ramblings regarding the Jihad Universe Revised, your humble narrator's thought experiment about rebuilding the Jihad to Destroy Barney the Purple Dinosaur from the ground up. We hope that the old Jihaddi reading this have been pleasantly amused so far, and that the folks who arrived here through other means are at least clicking through to the tl;dr content and skimming it. Also, a big hello to all my lj-stalkers. Shine on, you crazy diamonds!

And now, the actual content.

( Beginning after the jump. )

05:28 pm - [Worldbuilding] Notes from a strange place...

The Jihad Universe, Revised

For some reason, I can't let the Jihad Universe go. The concept is totally ludicrous, and yet it has some sort of unholy grip on my imagination. One of these days I may end up giving up on the JU, but after a decade of working on and with it I'm not going to hold my breath.

Anyway.

Putting together JU2 gave me a good look at its roots, and when you look at them it's pretty obvious that the whole thing spurng up without any real direction or structure. It's like most kitchen-sink settings in that regard, throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. JU2 was an attempt on my part to strip out the crazier stuff and put things on a more even keel. I think it succeeded, but you can still see the original ad-hoc construction through the spackle.

About a year ago I started putting together ideas on how I would rebuild the JU completely from scratch, mostly as a thought experiment. My notes from that time are pretty heavily influenced by the Warren Ellis comic Global Frequency, and while there's some good stuff there, on reflection the setting I developed feels more like a Global Frequency ripoff than something that could stand on its own. That vexes me, since I like to think I'm capable of more.

So, here we begin again, taking the base of the old JU and some tricks from last year's notes and trying to revise the Jihad Universe.

( More after the jump. )

05:23 pm - [AEGIS of Stars] Augh, picture in head.

Following up on the Mars notes below, I just had to doodle this in Bryce:


A formation of AEGIS war dirigibles cruise over Lake Columbia (Gusev Crater lake) on their way to a liberty stop in Technopolis.

02:20 pm - [AEGIS of Stars] Notes toward a future history 11

Been a while, what with all the job-related bullshit the last few weeks. Also, I've been trying to put together a plan for the next episode of JU3, so that's been eating up conceptual braincycles. Still, sometimes something just pops out and I need to expound on it just to get it out of the way.

Look grateful.

So anyway, on with the show. You know the routine by now. Two things on the agenda this time:

First, have a picture. This graph is the result of me being bored at work & having access to Microsoft Office. It's pretty straightforward, just average travel times from Earth to the major settlements in AoS. So there's that.

That said, on to the main topic.

Mars on my Mind: So, I've been thinking about Mars and its relationship in AoS lately. I've spent a lot of time and energy working on the political scene on Earth and the interstellar side of things, but I haven't really paid as much attention to the solar system in general. This needs to be rectified. And where better to start than Mars, the subject of many great works of science fiction?

(The moon? Well, I suppose. But this is about Mars, so no more of that talk, or I'll put the leeches on you. Onward.)

Way back in the mists of time when I was putting together IAS, my Mars was a pretty standard hard-to-middling science fiction place; colonized early on, terraformed, becomes a pretty garden world with all that implies, etc. Nothing that you haven't seen before in countless books and vague mission statements from the Mars Society. As far as that sort of thing goes, it worked pretty well and I could've probably imported it straight from IAS to AoS without major changes.

But then I got to thinking.

As I get older and... well, not "wiser." I doubt that age brings that much wisdom. "More cynical" would probably work. Anyway. The more I look at Mars, and the more things we learn about it, I begin to question the validity of the great Heinleinian Martian Manifest Destiny plan that seems to drive most conceptions of terraforming the planet.

Should we go to Mars? Absolutely. Should we stay there on a permanent basis? Of course. Should we change the planet to suit us? I don't know. Leaving aside the philosophical and moral questions of terraforming, there's a question of whether or not we can actually do it, and make it stick. This nags at me, and I can't quite shake the idea that terraforming isn't the right thing for Mars. At the least, terraforming Mars into a mini-Earth certainly doesn't sound right - Mars is Mars, and trying to cut/paste Earth on top of it just won't work, no matter how impressive the technology is.

Where does this vague maundering leave us in AoS? Well, it means that the classic terraformed Mars with green hills and seas and the like is right out - even if that sort of thing is possible, it's probably not sustainable in the long term. I would like to get the place a bit warmer and have a breathable atmosphere if at all possible, and maybe have water in the form of artesian springs and the occasional largish lake. In this, Mars would be a sort of cross between the Arizona deserts and the steppes of central Asia - miles & miles of nothing but miles & miles, punctuated by a cluster of plants and animals huddled around a streambed or an oasis. The image appeals, no?

So if this is my "terraformed" Mars, who inhabits it? Back in notes 2, I made a throwaway mention of Mars becoming a "dumping ground for Singularity freaks, fringe mages and utopians." This was before I had put any huge thought into the Spark issue, but in retrospect it seems like a good idea: Mankind will inherit the Earth, but the Sparks will inherit Mars!

Okay, it's not like the entire population of Mars will consist of sparks, but the spark:mundane ratio will be a damn sight higher than on Earth or elsewhere. I'm thinking that with all the Sparks, Mars may end up looking quite a bit like Europe in Girl Genius, with sparky and transhumanist warlords dividing the planet up into quasi-feudal territories.

(Now that brings up a long-buried "neat image" of huge, gilded dirigibles exchanging cannon fire 5,000 feet above Chryse Planitia. Somewhere between Transhuman Space and Space: 1889. I like it!)

This sort of thing needs policing, of course, which is where AEGIS steps in. They keep watch on the goings-on, and make sure that none of it gets too out of hand. By "out of hand" I mean that the local mad scientists are endangering the population and/or threatening to leave the atmosphere - blowing each other up is fine and dandy, but leaving the planet or going after the settlements or the terraforming works is verboten. Every now and then a particularly ambitious or ignorant spark makes a play to destroy something he shouldn't, but then AEGIS steps into the fray, at which point said spark ceases to be much of a problem.

(This is the Klaus von Wulfenbach theory of spark managment, for those of you playing at home. I may have to cameo him as head of the AEGIS Martian office, just for giggles.)

With AEGIS keeping the sparky wars confined to the deserts, life on Mars proceeds more or less peacefully, with the inhabitants following the battles much like Terrans follow the World Cup. In the early phases, the towns and villages are either built underground or have roofs. As the terraforming progresses and the atmosphere gets thicker and more breathable, the roofs are taken down. Much like the terrestrial deserts, the only place where you see any substantial greenery on Mars is in the cities - most towns with more than a few hundred residents have substantial greenspaces, along with rings of conventional & hydroponic agriculture surrounding them. The settlements try to be as self-sustaining as they can, and with sparky technology behind them they succeed more often than not.

Out away from the settlements, the Martian desert remains much like it always was. When the atmosphere is terraformed, the desert gets a bit more rain, a bit more water erosion and the occasional desert plants and animals, but otherwise it doesn't look terribly different from what we see in the rover photographs these days.

Whither Mars from here? This is of course subject to massive change on my whim, but once the terraforming reaches a stable point I don't think Mars will change all that much. The crazier sparks and transhumanists will eventually migrate to Altair as part of their grand scheme to mutate and take over the galaxy, but the Martian status quo will probably resemble the constructed biosphere: a steady-state form of quirky. In the FTL period and beyond, Mars is more a place for PCs and NPCs to be from, a setting where kids grow up with odd technology and a tendancy towards swashbuckling heroics, and a good place for PCs and NPCs to retire to (traditional doomed NPC wish: buy a ranch on Mars), but it won't be a great place to adventure in.

Most of the time, anyway. There's always exceptions.