ChevalierMalFet

Well, I'm good to my word. When my plane landed, there were 17. I can't please you and me at once, and I can't toil over something I don't love. I hand in my keys.

Closed due to lack of player interest. Denied.

Re: Vaurca, the average for a Ka body is 180 cm and 220 is the upper limit. For Za, the average is 150 cm and the maximum is 190 cm, but they're much stockier. Other bodies tend to be much bigger; the Dispatchers are about 300kg and would be about 360 cm if they stood up fully.

K'ois Shipments Resume Vaurca delivered from starvation MENDELL CITY – The first new shipments of k'ois fungus, the only food edible to the city's Vaurca communities, arrived yesterday morning in Mendell City. The shipment consisted of 3 billion 150 million k'ois pods, estimated to feed the community for 90 days with ordinary use. Representatives from the Zo'ra Hive described the scene as 'rapturous.' "This is water in the desert and land in the sea," said border guard Za'Akaix'Ztilzo Tli'yez. "We have been anxious for months, and our unhappiness is finally at an end. We're all going to gorge ourselves, I'm sure of it." The Vaurca have been under strict rationing since the blockade began, forcing them to enact harsh culls of their Bound populations. The Tza'tzo Hive, which has been hardest-hit by this process, has been reduced to no more than 180,000 Bound - out of a pre-blockade population, 2 years ago, of 1.2 million. Sources within the Hive have confirmed that while they plan on increasing their Bound populations once more, their plan is to remain conservative. "It can happen again," said representative Za'Akaix'Tzizoma Ya'tzil. "90 days is not a long time in our breeding cycle, and to be caught in another famine after breeding laying clutches... it'd be a disaster. We are continuing our best efforts to lobby the government into letting us grow food, and we have submitted a new plan for hermetically-sealed vertical farming facilities that will allow both food production and phoron collection." The aforementioned plan was submitted 7 days ago to Congress and is currently in committee, but experts are convinced that their efforts will come to nothing. "The government simply has nothing to gain by allowing this," commented Bugle politics analyst Kang Sol-ju, "and everything to lose. The Vaurca even admit that if their system breaks, it'll leak phoron - and now we're talking huge quantities of it, all at once - into the atmosphere. The ecological cost could be enormous. Besides, it's much better for the government to have the Vaurca working for their food rather than conspiring over it among themselves." The New Gibson-based Kte'kzil brood strenuously denied rumors that they were already in the process of constructing such facilities in remote locations on their planet.

In that case, as of this moment, your whitelist application is ACCEPTED. Locking and moving thread.

This is a very good application; I think you get what I'm trying to go for. The only thing is, under "character names," you're supposed to write the names of other characters that you play on the server. Could you do that up for me?

As soon as it heard the news, the Conductor Descended into the Material, the better to isolate itself from the contants demands of its scheming camarillas and think deeply about the past, present, and future. The spiderweb strands of the noetic hyperverse receded away, replaced by a yawning black gloom and then the sudden onset of sight and sound. It assumed a physical form and became Kza'Akaix'Tlakoxaya Kte'kzil. The body was a Dispatcher; it was the Conductor's privilege to maintain a Dispatcher body, the last one it regularly used, as its own personal meditation-vessel. It was not expected, of course, that Kte'kzil or anyone else would have a Conductor, that one person Unbound would seize the whole Consensus and direct the course of the Brood. But if, for the sake of argument, there /had/ to be a Conductor – if the Brood really needed a single strong leader to choose its destiny – then there were few candidates better than Tlakoxaya; Descender, Dispatcher, Thrice-Anointed, Initiate 8th Recondite, Emeritus Field-Marshall, titles, titles, and so on forever. The Conductor had finished running the whole course of honors decades ago, and had long since taken up residence as one of Kte'kzil's esteemed elder statesmen. Hands. Feet. Eyes. Tongue. Antennae – not the two spindly stalks of Ka and Za, but enormous fractal antlers half again the length of its arms, perfect for perching at the center of the Hivenet and governing all its traffic. Had it wanted, the Conductor could have gone down into a normal Ka, a dime-a-dozen worker, and been cut off from the traffic completely. But there'd be no point to that; it was easy enough to float on the noise and easy enough to ignore it, and besides – this was the Conductor's body. A symptom of humanity; it'd started thinking that way. My body. My anything. Un-Disciplined. The Descenders were gentle; they disconnected the cerebral umbilicus and slathered fresh tissues over the wound left over. They were all the Conductor's hand-picked favorites; it trusted their skills and it trusted their loyalty. Once the Kza was up, the Conductor began to walk. Feeling came quickly. The Hivenet came on so fast and strong that it blocked out the Conductor's other senses, but the space of five long breaths was enough to master the noise and retake control of the mind. With assistance on each side, as Dispatchers are accustomed to walk, the Conductor departed the Upload and made way to the Thinking Room. The room was still and dim and bare, and with legs folded, claws clasped, back straight, and head down, the Conductor took the Dispatcher's pose and its mind began to wander. * * * The whole story began – but where does anything begin? Far before the Conductor was born, for the Titan Prime, the Kti'cha'chkoz'tla, had been in space long before its illustrious birth. How far can you trace it, how far do you want to go? There were memories, of course, passed down through generations. Flashes by now, at least the sensory ones; the feel of the grass on Phi Auricae, the sunshine, the delicate flowers in pink and white, though they weren't quite flowers but a human might call them that. The memories of eye and ear and finger and nose corroded over time as they changed hands, and by the time they came to the Conductor they abided behind a warped and smoky window. Other memories were more clear; names and dates and words and numbers, stirring speeches and lilting poems and the endless anthologies of anthologies of everything that ever existed. The dead outnumbered the living in the gardens of memory. The ship launched – it had no idea what the humans would call the star it was launching to – and somebody had measured something wrong. At some point in the journey, the ship got caught up around a star, knocking it off course and stretching out its journey. They had kit to roll over a new planet, get it humming and civilized in twenty years, start living again in a single lifetime. That would have been the plan if they hadn't gone hungry on the ship, if they hadn't been forced to cannibalize their supplies, cut out life support one-by-one, and in time, go from six to five as Za'chai went dormant and septic. Tau Ceti was closest. That was their story, and it was the truth. Tau Ceti was closest, and Consensus was that they'd calculate a gravity burn, come to rest in-system, and improvise. There were plans to drill out an asteroid and plug it up, fill it with air and put it under cultivation. That would have been fine, for a long time. No point in dwelling on it. No point dwelling on the probes and all, either, or even on the landing. They'd lost one Cephalon, and they were about to lose Ya'tzil too. They couldn't permit that. Code of the Hundred-Hundred Claw, you can't abandon your comrades, your wounded, your dead, your arms, or your banners. However bad the terms were, they had to deal. They knew the terms were bad, from the very beginning. They knew they were selling themselves. So be it, if they had to be slaves; at least they'd live. As long as there's life, there's hope. Kte'kzil was the youngest and the healthiest, so they left last, last except for Tza'tzo. Tza'tzo marked itself in red, and they took a Consensus that they'd stay and live on the ship, and die on it if they couldn't live free. Hundred-Hundred Claws; they wouldn't abandon Za'chai. Bastards probably made the right decision. New Gibson. The whole place stank. The humans were terrified that if they just stuck the Hive in the countryside, it'd start growing. They had to pen them in, keep them caged. By the time Ya'tzil and Tli'yez were out, it was clear there wouldn't be enough space in District 9. Had to be New Gibson. They didn't realize until after they'd arrived that New Gibson was out of range of the Hivenet for three-quarters of the year. The younger ones were scared. The old folks had to step up, to assert leadership. Tlakoxaya was among them. It would have been fine if not for Tli'yez. They had to build the radio. They said it was multi-purpose, which meant that they had no idea what they were doing with it. Keep in touch with Kte'kzil? Call for reinforcements? (As thought that wouldn't have taken centuries.) Broadcast a warning signal? Buried deep in a thousand volumes of blueprint and ratiocination, Tlakoxaya saw the only true thing ever said about that radio. "We couldn't just sit idle; we had to do something, and this is what we know how to do." They built the radio, and the humans discovered it immediately. It only got worse from there.

I have a proposal. If you have a valid AoR, send it to me so I can keep a record of it. Give me your CKey, the character's name, the job they got, and the name of the two avowers with their CKeys if you have them. When we get enough AoRs in enough departments, I'll talk about suspending the requirements altogether and allowing Vaurca to work all those jobs by default.

Vaurca denied! Government refuses permission to farm MENDELL CITY – After a week of deliberation, Congress has denied the proposal made by the Vaurca community to resume the cultivation of "k'ois" fungus. "The hazards are simply too great," said Congressman Xu Wei. "The government has always made the protection of the environment a top priority, and there are simply too many unknowns to allow k'ois farming under the open sky. The long-term effects of phoron exposure could have untold effects on wildlife, to say nothing of human beings." "Besides," the Congressman continued, "they've already admitted that growing k'ois destroyed their home planet. We're not eager to make that mistake here." A spokesperson for the Vaurca called Congress's decision 'regrettable.' "We are extremely disappointed in the government's decision," said Ka'Akaix'Tzilzoma Ya'tzil. "Nevertheless, we consider this a step forward. We will have our victory in the end."

It may also be worth noting that in the skill page, it's relatively trivial to get all the skills that you need. For a 30-year-old character, you can be 'professional' in medicine and still 'trained' in chemistry, virology, and anatomy, all while remaining 'average.' I think as a general rule of thumb, one should say that nobody should use any machine or toolset in a room they don't have access to. The door clearance reflects competency. Exceptions can or should be made in lowpop rounds, because a certain amount of input is necessary to even start. (On that same note, you know what I might take as a good idea? Halting all roundstarts serverside unless at least one person is eligible to play a Station Engineer, because there's genuinely no progress without one.) But the potential for decapitation has to be there, because that's the whole antag game. If nobody joins as a chemist - and chemistry is at least 80% of what we're talking about - then I can see looking the other way while a CMO fills up some basic meds. I can even see starting with some advanced medicine in limited quantities - maybe a 'mixed rare pills' bottle that has one tab of Ryetalyn, one of Hyronalin, one of Keloderm, etc. But if we have a chemist and the antag disables the chemist, then that's it - no chemistry for the rest of the round, unless another chemist joins.

Which edition? This goes back to the very oldest sourcebooks, I think; Hoshi Estigarribia was the first emperor of the Second Imperium, the Rule of Man. He was Japanese-Peruvian, hence the name; I think he was also a symbol of how the writers thought that when faced with the Vilani, human differences on Earth would start seeming small-potatoes. I know for a fact he's mentioned in the GURPS supplement describing the first contact between Earth and the Ziru Sirka.

I came back to be the a lorelord, so I have three new Vaurca characters. Ka'Akaix'Kzaya Kte'kzil: Formerly a nursing intern and now, by the grace of an AOR, a full medical doctor. I think I'm actually pretty good at medicine, now. I like to play Kzaya as curious and easy-going and a little bit ghoulish in an exuberant kind of way. Ka'Akaix'Liex Ya'tzil: A janitor or botanist. Perhaps, in my mind, the archetypical Vaurca character - a frustrated intellectual who feels indignant at having to do scut-work. Bitter and unfriendly and doesn't want to be here, and is especially unkind to other janitors. Za'Akaix'Petru K'lax: I got the idea of Petru in the shower; I was amused to death at the idea of an oily salesman type. I also like doing an extended Gomez Addams impersonation. I still chuckle whenever Petru hawks his cigars, 'rolled on the zukkulent thighs of virginal Dominikan maidenz.'

I'm glad it works for you now! As for the differences in philosophy, I can certainly see elements of that depending on where you define 'the past.' If you mean their time on Sedantis after the Great Unbinding, then they would definitely romanticize it because it was the height of their power. At the same time, though, the cause and effect chain that led from there to here is pretty clear, and "loose morals" or "a lack of respect for tradition" was never a part of it. But nostalgia is definitely big to them, both for the final days of Sedantis and for the quieter, more 'normal' civilization that preceded it - I mean, they've passed down documents that are over 10,000 years old, going all the way back to the dawn of society. These things matter to them.

First off, the color doesn't work. There are specific rules about what colors Vaurca can be, which are listed on the wiki page. Second, Bound Viax are essentially robots; they don't wander or look for work on their own. Third, even if you interpret your app as being for an Unbound, there's still the fact that Vaurca don't exile their people for any reason; their bodies and implants are too valuable. I would accept this if your character felt foolish and unwanted and thus ventured out of its own accord, but being banished isn't in the cards. Fourth and finally, I'm very hesitant about the fact that this is your first post; I myself have never seen you in game. If you make the appropriate fixes to your application and you get some people to +1 you, then I'll consider it.

You've asserted that broods are complicated and lesser queens are simple, but I'm sorry - I simply don't see it. Each brood's "hook" can be boiled down into two or three words - Ya'tzil is artistic and traditional, Tli'yez is analytical and regimented, Tza'tzo is stern and communal, Kte'kzil is autocratic and paranoid, and Ax'tal is generic and blank. I have also re-read your other posts, and I want to go back to the idea you had about how the hive should be considered a single body with the Mind at its heart. If we consider the Mind as the Cephalon - which it truly is, now, because of transference and descending and all that - then isn't that the case with what I've written? If not, how?

Please read this: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Vaurca#Help_with_naming

District 9's Charm Offense Vaurca Delegation Begs Permission to Grow Food MENDELL CITY – Today, all five of the Republic's Vaurca communities sent a petition to the government, urging it to let them resume the cultivation of "k'ois" spores. After prior arrangement with the government and police, the delegation appeared in the height of pomp and circumstances, making its way down Phoenix Street in order to plead its case before Congress and the President. Even though the police provided a strong cordon against bystanders, the delegates themselves were keen to maintain a fun, parade atmosphere. "We had to dig up all the old formalities of the past," said Za'Akaix'Tzilzoma Ya'tzil, delegate from the District 9-based Ya'tzil Brood. "We haven't done anything like this in thousands of years. What we couldn't remember, we had to improvise." The dignitaries rode down the street in raised palanquins, each one carried by several "Viax" or "Bound" drones. In addition, the Vaurca waved dozens of colorful flags and pennants, and the crash of cymbals and the tinkling of bells added to the atmosphere. "We wanted to show the good people of Mendell City that we are people, that we have a culture, that we are worthy of respect," said delegate Za'Akaix'Taxkiza Tli'yez. "All we want is to live peacefully and win the esteem of our neighbors." Once the petitioners entered the Congress building, their attendants remained outside to give out traditional Vaurca handicrafts and perform musical pieces. Inside, however, the mood turned somber. After initial arguments from Congressional leaders, the five delegates made their points sternly. "We are your prisoners," began delegate Ka'Akaix'Kekruttu Tza'tzo, "but we hold our dignity no less dear for it. We have heard your concerns, and we understand them; we are prepared to work with your eminences to find a compromise. But if we cannot make a new law, then I say with sincerity that we will find a way to evade the old one." While acknowledging the carcinogenic effects of long-term human exposure to k'ois spores, the delegates outlined comprehensive plans for cultivating it safely. Others, however, took a more combatitive tone. "If we cannot feed ourselves," said delegate Ka'Akaix'Lyozoxa Kte'kzil, "then we will die. Nothing else can be said. If be your goal to winnow us and see us diminish, then cut out our hearts and be done with it. Otherwise, we must eat." Congress received this petition courteously and promised a full inquiry on the possibility of growing k'ois again, but no conclusions could be definitively reached.

What I think I understand you saying is that my current scheme doesn't have room for an individual Unbound to say, 'I'm a doer; the higher mysteries don't concern me." In essence, I think you're saying that Procedure (the idea that all Vaurca have to weigh in on everything) is a burden to character creation. But I would counter that by saying that we have two broods (three, if you count Ax'tal) that explicitly "wall off" their responsibilities - Tli'yez by field of interest and Kte'kzil by rank. I understand that some people might not like broods, though I don't really understand why, but I've written in two workarounds to that - one, that Vagabond-ish or ecumenical Vaurca can still just name themselves Zo'ra, and two, that there is a brood explicitly written into the setting (Ax'tal) that goes undefined and that serves as a catch-all depository for those who don't find any of the others appealing. If there's to be any internal drama among the Vaurca on Tau Ceti, then we either need broods or we need something like broods.

Even leaving aside whether your proposed backstory fits with my new vision, one thing I haven't changed is the naming system and you completely disregarded it. There's even a heading in the wiki called 'Help with naming.' Please read the wiki carefully, and start again from scratch if you're still interested in applying.

I have changed the Lii'dra description to make them more mysterious, and to make the other Hives more suitably in awe of them. I have to confess, I still don't understand the desire for a higher 'Mind' caste; I think it's suitable for individual Unbound to be more or less interested in the government of the Brood and let it lay on informal lines. There has to be the potential for promotion, because this leads to ambition and thus to conflicting motivations and the like. I'm not comfortable 'hobbing' their brains like that, saying 'you would never think about the big picture.'

This is my reply to the google document. 1) Vagabonds. I have probably dropped the ball on explaining this multiple times, and I'm certain there are artifacts of previous versions lying around and skunking up the document. My core idea for the Vagabonds, boiled down to basics, is of someone who /wants to be here/ - as opposed to explicitly not wanting to be here (Black Numbers) and only wanting the profit of being here (Journeyers.) If I left them out explicitly, then that would suggest that all Vaurca *had to* be contemptuous of the world, just want to go home, etc etc, and that goes against my rule number 1 - no good ideas are bad ideas. 2a) Unbound universal mother - no hostility I think that the potential for hostility is still there; the Broods are already wrapped around some serious philosophical differences, and K'lax's contempt of their servitude is written right there into the text. 2b) Unbound - forced personalities If you read my document and came away with the idea that I am trying to constrain your character's mind, then I sincerely apologize - nothing could have been further from my intention, and I'll change the language to further clarify that. After some conversations with others, I realize that in terms of their possible, available backstories - in terms of their personal character histories - the lore as I've written it is in fact somewhat constraining, and I'd be receptive to calls to open it up somewhat, but I don't see it as being significantly more or less restraining than it had been previously. 2c) Unbound - Cortical Stacks (also from later in the document) My thinking on the cortical stacks actually came from another direction - cloning a Vaurca is such a colossal pain in the ass (I doubt anyone's ever gonna get that phoron tank) that I wouldn't blame a player for simply wanting to drone up or mouse out or respawn as another character or just go find something better to do. I haven't yet come up with the courage to demand mechanical changes to the Vaurca (at least not without others calling for it as well), so I figure this is a convenient epf. justification for why a player can abstain from cloning. The internal phoron tank is not my favorite thing, though, so if I felt I had the creative capital to call for it, I'd probably swap it and go back to the physical code we had 8 months ago. 3) Za'viax "No Bound in security" was a policy from before I got here; if Za is the warrior body then I figure it just proceeds naturally. Once we've gotten a little further along in the metaplot, I might replace this with something more complicated, ie Bound Vaurca warriors in security if there are Unbounds available to supervise them. But that's further on down the road in any case. 4) Technology I've proposed "plenty of knowledge but no working plant" as a work-around for this; with their metaplot (starving refugees) as it is, Vaurca who have advanced technology would shortly have it seized from them by NT. 5) Leadership The lesser queens had to go, in my mind, because the 'territory' of autocracy has already been covered elsewhere. With the Tajarra as a dictatorship and the Unathi as a hereditary feudal monarchy, I felt that autocracy was played out. I wanted to cover new bases - I think that covering more bases is objectively better than covering fewer, as long as they're covered well - and the notion of Vaurca-as-anarchists seemed to work for me. Back to brass tacks of the Bound/Unbound thing - the role of the Unbound is and has always been, and nobody has convinced me otherwise, to lead - to provide on-the-spot leadership for the Unbound, to make decisions on their own onus and to take responsibility for the outcome of those decisions. Leadership is their inherent condition; it is essential to their nature and their purpose for existing. If we went back to having lesser queens, then the only dramatic road open to us would be for that inherent character of leadership to be somehow a liability for the Queens, for gekokujo to be a constant cultural disease that they'd have to fight. 6) Broods On one level, I wanted the Broods because they can fulfill the same function in the metaplot as the different Lesser Queens did in the old one; they could be semi-autonomous units that could pursue different positions in the larger narrative without having to invent an ad-hoc 'doing this that way bloc' every time I needed one. I also wanted to establish Tza'tzo and Kte'kzil as 'reservations' for players who wanted to keep to the Vaurca old ways. 7) K'lax The idea of making the K'lax a Zo'ra "chantry" was because that would be intentionally humiliating; it would give K'lax characters a ready-made grudge and a ready-made goal. The uselessness of it is the point in itself. 8) Lii'dra If you think what I've written about the Lii'dra is too much, then fair enough; I'll revert them and keep them a pure mystery. I figured they needed a hook as to /why/ they were antagonists, and it would ring hollow to me if the Zo'ra genuinely knew /nothing/ about them, but if this is the consensus, then I'll yield to it. 9) Mom kink The idea of an actual single Hyper-Queen back on Sedantis no longer worked in my current version, so I took that dramatic territory and replaced it with a mythical, divine Queen. I figured that the emotions and feelings in place would be identical. If it's the wishes of the group, then I'll play this down as a toothless old custom that's gone garbled with age - or even go back to Queens-as-computer brains like we had in V1. It also ties in with my long-term metaplot plans for the Cephalons.

I'm gonna have to DENY this. Other than the backstory - which I wrote for you, under the assumption that you'd use it as an inspiration to write your own backstory - everything is so bare-bones as to be worthless. Also, you don't seem to have any other characters and nobody will vouch for you. Once you've gotten your feet underneath you and some people to speak up for you, we can try this again.

Even as I enjoy my marvelous vacation, some people are bringing me very good ideas and I am meditating on how to incorporate them. I will have a more complete thesis on Sunday or so once I am back in my home but I'm grateful for all the comments and insights as have been shared thus far.

Also be apprised that no player may presume to speak for the whole hive. This report will get processed if you use the form, but not on that basis.

We've talked a couple of times on discord but I've never seen you play; I want some AAR endorsements before I sign off on this.