VUX

Public Announcement Posted by SirIMight (Saramiite Kenzik) on 6.5.2461 In the sight of Oss, and under the guidance of Sk'akh, we settled in Tau Ceti those four months ago hoping to find a new home where all could have a place, and could live without fear. What we found instead is a land infested with the unrestrained influence of demons, where our hands were bound against striking out against it, and one way to solve the problem. We of Saramiite formally request the support of the clans in aligning fully with our benefactors, the organization Nanotrasen, and joining their armed forces, the emergency response teams. We have chosen a color appropriate to the urgency of this vote -- orange. . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. Top Rated Comments >ISeeYou-001 says, This would be a perversion of our mission here and I cannot in good conscience support this decision VERY DISLIKED 4 THUMBS DOWN. --- >Kataphreekd says, so what, we can work for the benefit of our allies and offer them our expertise in all things but warfare? this is classic ansiba hypocrisy you should be ashamed. --- >ShadowHegemon says, Our ansiba friend is correct, although he does not go far enough, this is a perversion of all of our principles and to go through with this would be no less than a rejection of our entire way of life. --- >KethFresh says, I asked around and this doesn't really affect us at all, Kethresh have agreed to abstain --- >BBQ4Life says, Hahaha wow did you really expect us to support such an action?? we don't need you to fight anymore, why not just settle for real work?? --- >myeminence says, this proposal violates our prediction models cease immediately or the consequences could be dire. --- >MechatekMaster says, .....so..... you need any mechs or tanks?? ---

BYOND key: UglyXeno Character names: Ansiba Zui Doorbell Blue Hsksi Azki Angel Uzoma How long have you been playing on Aurora?: I think I started playing Aurora in late summer/early fall of 2018, so I've been playing for almost a year, now. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist?: I noticed that a lot of head roles go unfilled in a really inconvenient way during the times that I play, and I wanted to fill one of those in, and I think command staff is a fun playstyle. Why did you come to Aurora?: I was looking for a new HRP server to lurk in after being away from space station in general for about a year. Some friends of mine tipped me off to Aurora, and I started playing here. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: Yes, I've read the Chief Engineer and Head of Personnel pages. They're both primarily concerned with the job of organizing people, even if their individual duties are different. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? I think I've been talked to or warned a few times, but unless I'm misremembering I haven't been banned just yet. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is, and should be about: Roleplaying is collaboratively telling an interesting story with the other players. It's not, or shouldn't be, about winning or losing, even with a game layered over top of it. For example, a choice that is mechanically superior but nonsensical in-character (dual-wielding bucklers, buying infinite guns as the quartermaster, the captain raiding the vault for a hazard suit) is the wrong choice to make, even if you would 'win'. Additionally, it's about creating a fun experience even in chaotic or violent situations, and not shutting anyone down too hard. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is, ingame?: The OOC purpose of a head of staff is to spend their round trying to create interesting situations for their subordinates, and to coax those subordinates into behaving more like a department than a collection of individuals. They are also often their department's point of contact with a given round's gimmick, so their job is also to provide as much interaction between their staff and the gimmick as possible without straining believability. Outside of their department, they're responsible for keeping the entire crew appraised of the events of the round so that nobody feels really left out. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of Whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them?: Command-whitelisted players have the responsibility to be a 'trustworthy' player. Basically, because of the application process there can be no baldie heads of staff, so they can ideally be trusted to react to a situation realistically, or at least in a way consistent with the setting. Additionally, command-whitelisted players have the responsibility to go out and interact with the crew and to drive roleplay in general. The head of personnel should do inspections of the departments, stress the importance of budget goals, and organize the collection of bounties, and the chief engineer should organize projects like building something on the construction level, doing some mass modification to the station, holding a cross-training event, training apprentices, and so on. Those are all things I would attempt to do as a head of staff. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau ceti and how it affected your character and their career? I'll write a blurb on only one of my planned characters 'cause otherwise this bit would be enormous. Recent events in Tau Ceti include the arrival of the Aut'akh and the transfer of off-worlder humans onto high-gravity installations, as well as the general downsizing of NT's operations in the region. This affected Leslie Ballard's career because she, as an offworlder, had her previous microgravity installation cut as a victim of the scaling back of operations, and she herself was transferred to work on Aurora, mostly against her will. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? I plan on playing Chief Engineer and Head of Personnel primarily, but I select roles based on what there's a lack of after roundstart, so I may end up doing others too. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking.: Leslie Ballard, Human, 86, CE. Ozso Uske, Unathi, 39, HOP. How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I would say I'm pretty OK. I sure do try to interact with a lot of people. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yes. Have you familiarize yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes, I read the chief engineer and head of personnel pages, and by the time this is posted I'll have read the rest of them. Extra notes:

Stricken Unathi stealth vessel rescued off the coast of Sol, Eridanian involvement evident, Hegemony authorities on the warpath. Last week it was confirmed that the ghost ship sightings on the frontier belonged to an Unathi cyberneticist religious organization when they contacted both the Frontier Alliance and the Republic of Elyra, and the latter expressed concerns as to how this organization escaped Moghes and slipped past all defenses. Today we may have an answer, as one of their vessels emerged from bluespace in the path of a rogue asteroid and was badly damaged as a result. The solarian captain who oversaw the rescue operation had this to say, By far the most puzzling feature of this affair is the question of just how a post-apocalyptic society would be able to slip past the defenses of some of the most powerful entities in space. An answer came later that afternoon in a press release from solarian authorities, stating that the Aut'akh Unathi purchased a set of blueprints for highly advanced stealth technology from the Eridani Federation.. An Aut'akh representative was asked to comment and provided this statement, Admiral Oyuti of the Hegemony had this to say in response, One Eridanian executive noted that the Hegemony was more than welcome to buy the stealth technology. On this, the Unathi would not comment. This situation has only heightened the tensions on Moghes. Twice as many ships have been assigned to hunt escaping stealth craft, and there are rumblings of an attempted third crusade. The regent of the Hegemony attempted to reassure the galaxy at large, stating that "[the Hegemony] are in control," and to "not concern [ourselves] with such petty squabbles", and in addition, "with no doubt, [the Unathi] will soon be expanding into the great ocean of the galaxy, and our affairs are our own."

GHOST SHIPS REVEALED! Cybernetic emissaries arrive in Elyra and the Frontier Alliance. Over the past month, sightings of "ghost ships" have spread like wildfire along the frontier, in a circle expanding outward from Moghes. Rumors of Vox or Lii'dra involvement have been put to rest last week, as some of the "ghost ships" revealed themselves above Xanu and Perispolis, claiming to be an emissary from an Unathi religious organization. Frontier Alliance representatives were quoted as saying, It is unknown at this point just how the Unathi were able to avoid being detected while approaching some of the most well-guarded trade routes in the galaxy, and they are tight-lipped about why this may be. Elyran authorities had this to say, Despite their mixed reception, the message offered by the cybernetic 'Aut'akh' has been the same, Not enough information has come out to guess at where this will lead, but negotiations are in progress in both Elyra and the Frontier Alliance. Experts note that the Aut'akh have not reached out to the Sol Alliance, instead cozying up to Sol's rivals. Could they have chosen a side? Only time can tell.

I was pinged or something so I feel I ought to clear the air a little bit on the thing about me. I wasn't pressured into becoming a deputy, however I was encouraged to stay on even through a pretty ridiculous and overblown reaction to my presence and the work I'd been doing. If I've had a shitty attitude since then, it's because that experience soured me on Aurora a bit. Fundamentally I'm not unhappy about staying on, so I'd rather not be used as ammo against Jackboot, thanks.

Jawdat is a traitor to his species who kowtows to the biggest and baddest dudes on the block and is completely unapologetic about either of those things. 10/10 counter-revolutionary, I'd love to offer him a seat.

Ckey/BYOND Username: UglyXeno Position Being Applied For: (coder, mapper, spriter): Synth Loredev Past Experiences/Knowledge: Some experience as unathi deputy. Some work on previous servers. Examples of Past Work: Aut'akh https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLSaUidZyAy22xyV4DtdEJUPaxlEmzg19yv0-wvYkGs/edit The above is a collaboration with ParadoxSpace, who contributed about half of that. As far as what I would do with synths, I would begin a push to advance the technology of IPCs and other synthetics through in-character developments (such as news stories, events involving science and engineering, et cetera) to start opening synths up to some more concepts that were, until now, in fuzzy territory or otherwise neglected. I do not intend to abandon any of my previous projects, nor do I intend to leave Jackboot totally alone in managing Unathi lore, I just saw something of a disintegration going on in the synth team and thought I could add something by applying. A criticism I have (although, perhaps, not one many people would share) is that the lore of posibrains as I understand it is currently a bit restrictive and does not allow for more 'software' based synthetic characters rather than 'hardware' based, where 'hardware' robots would be a complete, indivisible unit, and 'software' ones would have something of a seperation between the personality, skills, and body. My opinion is that a healthy robot lore is something that allows for both the 'hardware' and 'software' concepts to coexist, in this case represented by 'robots' and 'posibrains'. I also believe that it is time for the lore of the MMI to be advanced. I think that the necessity of lobotomizing the brain is an arbitrary rule, and I'd instead leave it as an option. Some of the themes I'd be shooting for as synthlore head would be the pros and cons of posibrains, software intelligence, and cyborgs, as well as the conflict between them, as well as the relations of the average person with the cutting edge of synthetics, particularly with non-human races (with cooperation from the appropriate maintainers). Preferred Mode of Communication (Skype, Steam, etc.): Discord, VUX#6482 Additional Comments: I get the feeling that a lot of my ideas aren't super welcome, so let me be clear that there are two reasons I am posting this. One is that I felt the need to help out now that almost the entire synth team had to leave. The other is that a lot of the other people who mentioned an interest in it have ideas I disagree with regarding certain concepts. My philosophy on lore development is to leave as many concepts open as possible.

i go into this argument with the understanding that the thematic purpose of the spacers has been stated to be a 'more alien human subspecies'. if their thematic purpose is to be an alien sort of human subspecies, right? in giving them a reliance on human aids - rigs, bracing, splints, what have you - you are subtly enforcing the idea that they are normal people with birth defects, which, while that may be accurate, it undercuts the weirdness of them and wastes an opportunity. in this case, they might as well be pale humans that spawn with broken legs. rigs, braces, etc. are fine as an option, but they should be an option or a cultural thing, rather than a mandated one. this opens the door for more 'alien' aesthetics for some spacers, and a more humanlike one for others. i have a very specific vision, myself, of a spacer being a tall and lanky creature with a creepy face, maybe a tapetum lucidum (cyber or otherwise) to give them sharper low-light vision while making them creepy (since they do the laser eye thing). the slow, awkward, wheezing, but otherwise entirely normal spacers as depicted in things like The Expanse are pitiable rather than foreign, and the requirement for large amounts of supportive gear heavily favors the latter interpretation over the former. i do not mind if braces are required if rigs are not required, and if the braces are unobtrusive. i do not agree with braces being necessary, but that is a less important point than removing the necessity of a rig. i am also not saying they ought to be superior to humans stat-wise -- they should have other drawbacks and other benefits. gameplay wise, being without a backpack is crippling for almost every job. do away with that. make them more susceptible to brute and burn damage in exchange for greater environmental tolerance and less bleeding.

They have existed for only a decade at this point, and only now are they coming onto the galactic scene, but they are extremely open to new members from any species, including and especially IPCs. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't develop or assist in developing augments for other species but that is not going to happen in the immediate future.

The aut'akh are religiously opposed to terraforming attempts, as the current state of Moghes is their punishment and they can only overcome it by changing themselves. The k'lax, last I read, are currently attempting to terraform the planet. Oss cannot make magical technology. It can only facilitate the creation of technology. The Aut'akh do not have more advanced technology than anyone else, they have only pushed the boundaries in certain areas which are already well-explored.

I don't know enough about synth lore, but presumably it has better things to do than churn out implant designs.

1. Possibly, nobody knows. That basically comes down to how aut'akh are received. I do intend for there to be aut'akh traitor items (and it's tungsten carbide, by the way, not diamond!! diamond makes a lousy penetrator) 2. Pretty much everything in the game is produced out of black box machines. Therefore the only two things necessary for production of advanced technology are blueprints and materials. Materials are gathered from mines deep below the bunkers and blueprints are produced by Oss, which can work through millions of iterations very quickly to produce a workable design much faster than would normally be possible. The soul anchor does not record their being, it's a communication device. When they die, their brains are scanned and their brainprint is stored in Oss' cold storage for reactivation later (like how some people freeze their heads in a hope for a cure for death). They do not have access to cloning. They would embrace cloning as a second chance if they had access to it, although it's a very finnicky process and you'll need to have all of your mechanical components reinstalled (basically, it will probably not happen on station). 2. Their technological level is more advanced in some areas and less in others. They have many scientific blind spots. They are highly focused on producing the most efficient survivor, which means that much of their research is devoted to cybernetics, AI, and genetics. 3. I don't like the word fanatical because it doesn't quite describe the situation. Imagine if your deity was standing behind you, quietly guiding you your whole life. If someone tried to tell you it was fake, you would probably just smile and pat them on the shoulder. You have literal, actual, physical, provable evidence of your god with you all the time. 4. No, they're actually halfway between cyberpunks and fremen.

1. Other unathi will react to them as they feel appropriate. The hegemony hates the Aut'akh completely and I assume Dominian unathi are the same. 2. The cult is completely decentralized. They have no leadership. 3. They are exterminated on sight on Moghes and presumably Ouerea. 4. That's a good question. I think effectively they eliminate a lot of the old social ideas but the general religious ones are still in place. 5. Ideally yes though I didn't really think of that and I dunno how easy that is to code. I don't like the idea of them popping off easily but you should be able to pry one off given a neckgrab and 30 seconds. When their arms are broken, it takes a circular saw to get them off.

I have had good experiences with Allakai! They seem to do very well with keeping a consistent character, even in extremely chaotic rounds, and I'd love to see more skrell in security besides. +1

Honestly, in that case, it probably makes more sense if it were just sold to NT and used as a model organism in science for a self-dividing AI. Then all the different instances just pursue work, because they'll have inherited departmental knowledge from the original.

It was basically a bunch of active posibrains sitting on the floor of a workshop until finding work with the company. They are different characters with the same personality and most of the same memories. They each have different chassis. It bought its freedom because that was a convenient way to put it into working for the company that also allowed it to have the freedom to carve itself up into multiple units. It could just have easily been sold directly to NT. It doesn't really matter to me that much.

BYOND Key: UglyXeno Character Names: Amy Wright, Asmar Raikov, Essh Kesan, Valka Amjad Species you are applying to play: IPC What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): Black Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes. Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question Why do you wish to play this specific race: Well, I do like playing robots, but I generally feel AI and Cyborg to be too limiting to be fun as a regular character. Mostly, I want to play a robot with hands to take advantage of the wide variety of character concepts available to them. Personally I tend to like to play around with the possibilities of a fully sentient piece of software, but I'm aware that's mostly not how it is, so I'll be happy to settle for a sentient piece of machinery. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: IPCs in specific and AI in general are extremely different from humans in their psychological makeup. While humans are chaotic, synthetics are binary and very logical. For example, a human might immediately draw a parallel between two events whose relation is not obvious, a synthetic might have to take a while to find the pattern, or otherwise have the situation explained to them. Additionally, it should be possible to spot what makes a synthetic tick. IPCs ought to be fairly predictable, going about things in a specific, logical way. An IPC might, for instance, return to an idle state when not otherwise working and return to a public place to await another assignment, and have trouble being proactive, even (and perhaps especially) in stressful situations. Character Name: Doorbell Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs What do you like about this character? Doorbell exists to bridge the gap between the human-like IPC and the machine-like one. I notice a lot of IPCs (particularly baselines) with humanlike personalities and shells which mostly seem to have very mechanical personalities. Doorbell is a baseline frame with a mechanical thought process leading to a stilted and awkward speech pattern, but a psychological makeup more or less equivalent to a human's, resulting in an emotional, but rigid and logical IPC. Also, Doorbell is a composite entity, a community with one set of personality traits spread over a number of units with different but specialized capabilities. Like a group of siblings who remember major events in each others' lives from both of their perspectives. Like "Wow, it was crazy that you dumped wine on grandma's dress, but luckily I know exactly what you were feeling at the time". How would you rate your role-playing ability? 7/10 Notes:

1: I'm not certain how the sprites would be different or even if they would be. The IPC body would definitely have to be a mechanical equivalent of an unathi, though. I see them as a subspecies, yes, including the minimally-augmented ones. Although a standard unathi race character could be one as well with a couple cyberlimbs/mechanical organs, I suppose. 2. They would take pain and possibly blindness from EMP. They would be able to sprint for much longer at a lower speed. They would require periodic charging as well as food (for biological ones) or just charging (in the case of the IPC). They would probably take less damage from most if not all physical sources at the cost of EMP-related paincrit. Prosthetic limbs are optional but encouraged for biologicals; the brain and eye implants are the important ones. 3. I see their IPC bodies as a sort of armored mechanical t-rex. I see their regular bodies as being unathi bodies with a couple mechanical bits and bobs grafted on, perhaps glowing eyes.

At first the autakh would probably not even think about them at all, being mostly preoccupied with survival. They'd be something to be peeked at from a distance. As more information came out, they'd be overjoyed. Someone else had the same idea they did, that being to build an artificial heaven in cyberspace. Then as K'lax began working on terraforming Moghes, they'd basically be seen as misguided fools at best and demons at worst. To the autakh, Moghes is as they deserve it, and surviving there must necessarily mean changing oneself, symbolically taking control over one's spiritual destiny, rather than changing the environment. As far as the hegemony and k'lax, I imagine k'lax is cautious of the hegemony but willing to help (while preparing for the inevitable backstab), while I imagine the hegemony thinks of k'lax as useful idiots to be discarded once they're done with them.

1. I apologize for my work because if I didn't, my immediate impulse would be to scream "fuck you" at the top of my lungs instead. 2. I never said that you couldn't have an unathi with a spear and a laser for an arm! It's just that that's not the immediate goal of the thing, and I have a personal distaste for laser weapons. For special mechanics, ideally I would give them an IPC body: an unathi-style utility frame, designed as a combat robot. Assuming at that point people aren't yet tired of my shit, I'd also give them a subspecies of augmented Unathi who are able to sprint for longer, but somewhat slower, with even higher brute resist, but they'd be floored into paincrit by EMP, take more stun, and possibly need to take in power from APCs now and then. I would also give both of those bodies the option to have a sort of hivenet-style communication with each other, given the option. 3. I'm sort of lost on this. This is part of what I mean by the fact that I'm not very good at religion. Basically, Oss is their semisentient AI thing while also being a representation of Sk'akh in the logic of their computer systems. It'd be an aspect or a face of Sk'akh. I referenced Si'akh because they are also apocalyptic and believe that they'll be trapped in a reincarnation cycle, but can be saved through their computer network. 4. Honestly, there doesn't seem to be a cohesive naming style other than Stuff That Sounds Cool And Mean so I'm not sure what I'd call them at that point. 5. Basically, they believe that before the nuclear war the world was effectively a sort of eden. Afterward, since they could basically no longer survive on most of the planet as they were, they embraced augmentation and decided that the correct way to go forward was to change themselves to be ideal for their environment, or, even better, all environments. Pre-war Unathi were not unnatural because they are different, more perfect beings than post-war Unathi.

Personally I've found Lord Fowl needlessly confrontational and honestly pretty rude. I've put a screenshot in of my only real interaction with him, but how rude he is (and the way he chooses to be rude) to everyone else is honestly pretty disheartening.

I'm not specifically married to them being from Moghes. I just assumed it was a smaller ask to have a small opposition faction on the planet that recruits from people the hegemony was getting rid of anyway, rather than to have them be from space. They could easily have stolen some barren moonlet or flotilla of cargo ships or something. Having them running around as infiltrators would also be a not-bad way for traitors and other antags to happen as well as regular station characters. Although, having at least some presence on Moghes wouldn't be so bad, given that they're a distraction for whatever dumbass lord of the day happens to want to start a fight, and they live in the freezing armpit of nowhere anyway. I feel that them having asteroid bases and space fleets is a bit bombastic for what is meant to be a group of cyberpunks hiding out in a frozen tundra, but I'll take it. Yeah, if you put me in charge today I would totally reformat the entire setting. Most things would go away and the things that remain would be changed around. But it's not my setting, it's our setting, so I gotta work with what other people like, although I'll never shut up if I run into something I feel is too lazily written. When I want my own setting I'll write a book. EDIT: Yeah, they are meant to be anti-Unathi Unathi. They're meant to be an Unathi/IPC crossover type thing similar to Dominia with its Unathi/Human deal. The point of them is to integrate the Unathi honor code into a bunch of semireligious cyber-cultists and thus create another possible backstory for scientific and technical Unathi characters, to try and break the Security/Civilian stereotype.

1. Yes, it was basically just jitters related to past experience. The previous server I worked on had some very rigid and miserable rules related to what a lore person (or at least I) could and could not do, that made the task they gave me pretty much impossible. As long as I'm allowed to write new lore now and then and people don't mind my occasionally-spotty availability I should be fine. 2. Honestly, I have a distaste for something out of basically every bit of lore on the server, I am a hard sci-fi fan to the bone. That doesn't mean I hate space opera, but it's not in my comfort zone as a writer. I could continue the themes of unathi fine, and I exaggerate how much apostrophes bother me. I have no problem with fictional feudalism or monarchies, only real ones. I cannot promise that, if you were to die tomorrow and I got total dictatorial control, that some things wouldn't change, though. I can't see myself throwing the current writing in the garbage for a number of reasons, not the least of which that I just don't have the time to rewrite everything in any sort of reasonable time frame. Besides, religious space feudalism is my shit. Dune is one of my favorite books.

I'm not really married to this concept, myself. There's plenty to enjoy about unathi that isn't this one thing I made, and honestly, I wrote this because I was urged to by Jackboot. I'll admit that I'm really, really not good at writing religion. Not because I'm an angry atheist, but just because I don't have the background that I feel I'd need to do the subject justice. My wheelhouse is in technical sci-fi, military fiction and such. I'm deep into hard sci-fi (which means basically everything in space station ticks me off a little bit) and transhuman fiction which is PROBABLY NOT A SURPRISE. But I also enjoy things like Dune and the RPG settings Fading Suns and Degenesis, which have a sort of postapocalyptic feel while still having complete societies that aren't all pink mohawks and crazy cars. Honestly, adapting to writing about standard Unathi stuff rather than my One Thing is a matter of thinking of it more as a fantasy setting than a sci-fi one.

Basically, I blew up at someone for shitposting (posting 'remove all aliens') outside the shitposting channel. In my defense, I was in a bad state at the time independent of space station. I am hopefully wiser now.