ChevalierMalFet

The wiki touches on this subject lightly, however I've not yet given it too much detailed thought at this time. Basically, although the Unbound have a short lifespan and live a strictly regimented life in terms of occupation - an Unbound's purpose in terms of work is essentially determined at birth - their sentience has the side-effect of making them complex creatures. They are designed to be versatile agents of the Hive, which is indicated by their relatively few and non invasive augments, and their advanced intelligence. With all this considered, yes the Unbound have casual conversations, and yes the Unbound enjoy socialisation. In fact, the very nature of the Hivenet makes socialisation unavoidable. Introversion in Vaurca is essentially non-existent. A brood within a Hive (Being all the Vaurca in a local area, whether that be station, city, or hive network) is a tightly knit social unit, with Unbound communicating information of all kinds between each other without concern for distance. As to what Vaurca think about or talk about all day, that all really depends on the situation they are in. Their commentary can often have a utilitarian edge to it, but I have no interest in completely stomping out any possible individualism a player might let creep into their conversation. The sentience of the Unbound compared to their numerically superior Bound servants provides for that. While Vaurca lack the longevity to develop pedigree on previous artists, they don't lack the desire or the ability to express themselves. While Vaurca don't spend much time philosophizing, they do tend to express themselves in their craftsmanship and architecture. And ultimately, in their oral tradition because, in short, Vaurca society can be seen as an advanced iteration of a highly oral culture, with the marked difference being that the oral transmit has a certain permanency to it afforded by the roughly digital nature of the Hivenet. Good. So they still have poetry. I can jam on that.

I'd actually go in the other direction; I'd end the round immediately when the shuttle departs. There's nothing productive or meaningful to do from that point except get in trouble.

I know, I know. The old lore was a turd in a lot of ways, but it was a malleable little turd and I could make little statuettes out of it. So the Akaix don't run their government, they don't advise their government, and they don't pursue philosophy or poetry. I guess my next question, and the next one after it for as long as you'll entertain these inquiries, is: what is the internal life of the Akaix? What do they think about all day, what do they talk about amongst themselves? Do they even talk casually amongst themselves any more, except tersely and for business? Do they have a "culture" such as we would recognize among human beings, or are they simply automatons and more advanced automatons?

Wow. So they only get 20 years before they're liquidated now, the Unbound? No more philosopher-aristocrats?

What can you tell me about these five lesser queens? How do they lead, how do they rule, what are their objectives?

So who are the movers and shakers in the Vaurca community on Mendell? You mentioned Lesser Queen Ta’Akaix’Scay’extiih’aur Zo’ra; is she the generalissima? What role do the Unbound play in managing their community?

BYOND Key: ChevalierMalFet Character Names: I got so many. Chadrakhar Gokhale, Subhash Gokhale, Sarad Amrapurkar, Mizgur Vokimok, George Stolojan, Felipe Estigabarria, and of course, NICEBOT. Species you are applying to play: Tajarans What color do you plan on making your first alien character (Dionaea & IPCs exempt): Black / Dark-grey fur Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: I have. 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: Let's keep it 100 here - 'cuz I gotta catch 'em all. I'll probably follow this up shortly with a Skrell app, then an IPC, and then I've collected the whole set. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Tajarans are bitter, and their general experience for some time has been failure and catastrophe, tinged with a tiny modicum of hope that they can scrabble out a living by being subservient to their new Human masters. That bitterness - of being walked-upon, of being second-class, of being an also-ran civilization - appeals to me greatly. Character Name:Hrzgelam Siirimlaz Please provide a short backstory for this character, approximately 2 paragraphs Hrzgelam Siirimlaz was born on Adhomai in a town I'd like to call "Nowheresville." There were many like it, but his had the misfortune of being caught on the border and thus in the crossfire between the PRA and the ALA. When Siirimlaz was 14, his father was arrested by the PLA authorities for hoarding food, and was executed by the police. This hardened Siirimlaz's heart against the PRA, and when he was 16, he joined the ALA as a guerilla fighter. Siirimlaz fought, and he fought well. After four years of fighting, he became an NCO, leading a team of 7 fighters. When his group got caught away from their lines and was whittled down to 4, he opted to surrender to the PLA and demobilize. Siirimlaz spent a few months in a prison camp before being "rehabilitated," and gave up on his dreams of ever making something of himself or being a person worthy of respect. After proving he could be a good boy, he was allowed to enter society as a broken and unwanted man. He borrowed all the money he could in order to get a NanoTrasen work visa, and now works a variety of menial jobs aboard the station - sending all his wages back home to his mother and to his loan-shark. He is beaten-up and tired, and he despises himself. What do you like about this character? Poor guy! My heart goes out to the little bastard. I also like the fact that even though he's going to roll janitor or cargotech, he's still extremely capable (ICly, anyway) of kicking ass. How would you rate your role-playing ability? I would have given myself a 10 two months ago, but nowadays I seem incapable of keeping Ajit Patil out of trouble, so probably substantially less than that. Notes: This character was inspired by recent events in Colombia, and is based on the assumption that ARA fighters can in fact surrender to the PLA without immediately being put up against a wall.

I have only one thing to say, and you can probably guess already what it is: The best and best-regarded things ever written about the Vaurca are the things that I wrote about them. I could work with what we had, but I can't work with what we have now. Together, we could have made something really wonderful for them.

I think if the heisters can crack open the ERT, more power to them. After all, the heisters are the attacking party; they have the advantage of planning and preparation. Besides, the defenders do have a massive advantage, in the form of numbers; the station can put a lot of guns in a lot of hands, or otherwise manage their logistics better.

Which edition were you thinking about? I met Jenna Moran once; marvelous person. Did some work with her publisher, and had some wild nights with them. Not with Jenna herself, she's more of a homebody - but the people she works with are party animals. Had some really good Chinese-style Japanese-style Korean food with them, but the restaurant went out of business.

If I may be so bold, what I think we're really trying to say here, in polite language, is, "If a character accidentally drops their headset on their laptop so that you can hear music coming out of it, they should instantly be shot in the mouth until dead."

I'm not really fixed to any particular date; I assume that they would appear shortly after shuttlecars appeared on the market, and just took a WAG as to when that might have been. I know we have the shuttlecars, so having shuttlebikes is an obvious next step. I'd assume that they can hover the same way as those shuttlecars, meaning probably that they can go all the way into orbit as long as they have some gravity to 'push' against. If current prices are anything to go by, about a quarter to a half as much as a car, with flying armchairs and some particularly overpriced models *coughcoughHarleyscoughcough* costing more.

We're approaching this from a simulationist rather than narrativist perspective. Before we start talking about their background or their systems, we have to ask ourselves what we want the final product to look like. To whit: How do we want Vaurca to be played in the normal context of the game? At what points do we want them to do something different from what a human would do, and what do they do? In a more general sense, what is their dramatic hook? What is their character?

So question: how do Vaurca qualify for jobs? Are Unbound still free to take all non-Head positions?

I think the best solution for Bound antags is option number 2 - they're just Unbounds who are impersonating Bounds because people let their guard down around them. A Bound suicide bomber might be another option.

From a narrativist perspective, the key change for me between the proposed new Vaurca and the old Vaurca is the nature of VR. My interpretation of the original text, and I think a lot of people went with this, was that Unbound weren't bound to any one body, and every time they came back into the Material they could enter a different one, and the body - once vacated - went back to work as a Bound. To put it another way, they lived in VR and occassionally descended to the Material, using whatever body they happened to need and were able to get. In the new version, you describe Bounds meticulously caring for Unbound bodies while the Unbound themselves idle away in the Virtual. This suggests that their mind is constantly linked to their material body. To put it another way, in the new version the Unbound live in the Material and dream in the Virtual. Dream. That's the operative word. They've structured their entire society around ensuring their ability to dream, and moreover to share their dreams with one another. Leaving aside the whole poetry-politics thing from my Dialogues, my central image of the Vaurca has always been of them as sensitive creatives, as artists and composers and philosophers. After all, living as they do on the Internet all day, they have nothing to do except create things, share their creations with others, and communicate with one another. I think that this is an unclaimed dramatic position; no other species has staked itself around art and philosophy the way that the Skrell have staked themselves around logic, the Unathi around honor, or the Tajarans around tradition. But then again, I'm naturally biased; I think I've put more work, to whatever end, on the Vaurca than anybody else. Obviously, my personal preference would be for everything to be done my way, but that's not something I can rightfully impose on others. I recuse myself.

I need to think about this at great length. We'll talk at some point when I'm not playing Banner Saga 2.

Well, a stack of phoron sheets isn't that valuable to begin with. A few sheets are an equivalent of a barrel of oil. But sure, you can do that. However, stealing on a high security space station is harder than you think. There is a reason no one bothers to search you on the escape shuttle. It's because they'll do so throughly on Odin. Anything you intended to steal is automatically confiscated if you bring it on the shuttle with you. Unless, you used some methods of hiding it. Other than that, I imagine there is a smuggler's line in cargo. You just have to get access to it. Idk, try dealing with the QM and RPing something. My point is, stealing shouldn't be as easy as just stuffing your bag full of it and bringing it to escape shuttle. Do we really have to submit to full searches when we leave the station? I thought we could just get off and go home. I've seen search cordons set up at the entrance to the shuttle, and I've seen "enhanced searches" performed once we arrive at the Odin, but I figured that if we sometimes had to do searches, that meant that other times we didn't do searches - that we could just carry our bags home with us.

But miners/cargo techs/quartermasters can totally steal phoron crystals and fence them later, right?

Type: Physical object Founding/Settlement Date: The first grike was built in 2343. Region of Space: Almost entirely humanspace, though some have made their way to Unathi and Tajaran territories. Controlled by (if not a faction): Hephaestus Industries manufactures virtually all grikes. Other Snapshot information: A grike is an open-seating vehicle that vaguely resembles a 20th-century motorcycle, or perhaps a speeder bike from Star Wars. They operate on the same technology as shuttle cars, but are motorcycle-style. Long Description: The fusion-powered shuttle-car was a major innovation - it had a better take-off and landing profile than a helicopter did, could move much faster, was safer, and was easier to operate. As soon as they became cheap enough for middle-class people to buy, a handful of psychopaths started looking at them and wondered - how can we make this more awesome and more dangerous? Thus, the grike was born. The first company to manufacture them was Vikram Motors, in 2343; once they started getting big, they were bought out by Hephaestus, which still owns and operates the Vikram brand. Hephaestus went on to buy out two other grike companies, and while there's the illusion of choice in purchasing, and while the modern grike market has at least a dozen sub-varieties based on size, speed, price, and need, all modern grikes are ultimately made by the same people. The modern grike is a very sophisticated piece of technology. The essential element of the grike are its two main repulsors, one mounted in the back that controls forward motion and one mounted in the front that controls the elevation of the nose. A third repulsor is mounted on the bottom of the fuselage, and is used for initial elevation (hovering up) and for braking. Since the 2430s, all grikes have featured "z-control" repulsors that control spin, and are often heavily-computerized so they can go on autopilot in cities or stop without killing you. Grikes are longer than modern motorcycles, running about 3.5 meters from tip to tip. The only real upper limit on a grike's speed is the tolerance of the person riding it; they can accelerate fast enough that g-force becomes a real problem. There's also the possibility of falling off, which is why most riders harness themselves to their rides. Even with these precautions, death is a constant possibility - people on grikes are 44 times more likely to be injured or die on them than people in shuttlecars. All civilized planets require a special license to operate them. As is the case with their two-wheeled ancestors, grikes are universally recognized for their coolness, sweetness, and awesomeness. The "lone griker" is as much an iconic figure of fiction as the "griker gang," and the grike itself serves as a universal symbol of independence and toughness. Unfortunately, more and more older, conservative people have begun buying grikes in order to capture their faded youth, and Hephaestus has jumped to serve them by offering more expensive grikes with more comfort and features. "Rat-grikes, "cutters," and "pioneers" must now share the air with "flying armchairs" ridden by middle-aged dentists and accountants. Also, even though 95% of all grikes are manufactured by Hephaestus, consumers can choose between five different major brand names, and are generally very loyal to them - often going so far as to start internet flame wars over which grikes are the best.

Since we moved over to a new server and all our characters were wiped, I re-made the ones I liked and tossed out the ones I didn't. Calonice, Kyaw Maung, Stolojan, and Wesco are all gone, but I've put up a few new ones in their place. Mizgur Vokimok: An Unathi medical doctor. My first Unathi character and my first qualified doctor, I've barely done anything with her because I don't actually find the medical department to be very interesting. She's a self-hating Unathi who despises her heritage, and a Martian citizen. Karolina Skoda: A Research Director. I actually initially created this character to be the questioner in the Vaurca Dialogues and didn't think anything more of her, but then I decided to create her properly and try out being a Research Director. (I like being the RD; you don't have to actually cover any bases yourself - if something in research doesn't get done, then that's generally fine - so I just delegate and give people goals.) She's the first Head I played who's not part of the Panchi family. Ka'Akaix'Ztetliz Zo'Ra: I like this guy. As a Quartermaster, he's the closest a Vaurca can get to a position of genuine authority on the station, and he runs the Cargo department with a firm hand. (Uniforms - with hat - are mandatory.) However, even if he's not an antag, I make it my personal goal to steal as much as possible from the station every round I play him. I think I'm up to like 70 phoron crystals at this point; I wonder what their market value is. In one round I made out with two energy guns. Ka'Viax'Goko Zo'Ra: Sometimes I want to chill and do an easy job that doesn't require talking to people - mining, janitor, botany, and the like. Of course, Goko has all relevant antagonisms turned on, so sometimes he's a Li'idra Unbound disguised as a Bound - or a Bound Li'idra sleeper agent disguised as a Zo'Ra. Felipe Estigabarria: A Head of Personnel, and yet another non-Panchi Head. Initially I just made him to be an antagonist, but now he's kind of growing on me as a businessman and ISPM wonk. Still, I haven't exactly nailed down his personality. Also a few updates: Chen Yiwei has now been promoted to CMO, though I haven't actually played him as one yet because I'm too scared I'll cock it up. (I suppose he's another non-Panchi head, but I never play as him so I don't think he counts.) The AI SAMSARA has recieved an important firmware update, changing it to SAMADHI - who is now infinitely more chill and supportive. Captain Ajit Patil is constantly getting into trouble, leading me to believe that maybe I should exchange him for someone else.

Part 4: Rationing, featuring Tlexa After our last meeting, I was worried that I had grievously offended them. Zishik did not immediately contact me to schedule another interview, and when I took the leap of contacting him, he said he would look into his schedule and get back to me. It was three nerve-wracking days before he finally got back in touch, but even then, he pleaded that he was too busy to speak to me now and that he could only get me an interview with Tlexa. I accepted his offer with tremendous gratitude. Tlexa visited me in my home, the first time either of them had done such a thing. Before the interview began, he asked me if it would be okay for him to smoke. The habit had no place in their society, but Zishik had recently taken it up after some stressful situations and had successfully evangelized it to Tlexa. To hear him tell it, they were now both chain-smokers; Zishik apparently was on four packs a day. I proferred him an improvised ashtry and we began. "How," I asked, "do the different Boards and Noyaus allocate Bound bodies?" "One of the 19 Boards of Sedantis is called the Allocation Board; it controls both the modification of Bound bodies and the apportionment of those bodies to different noyaus. As its "master question," the Allocation Board determines what bodies everyone needs and how they should be rationed." "Why do Vaurca become Unbound? Why do they fill up bodies when they could stay inside the Virtual forever?" "As a matter of security, there are no external connections to the Virtual save those for the uploading or downloading of minds, and these are kept under heavy guard. A computer virus in our network would be unthinkably catastrophic; it would allow a dedicated cyber-warfare effort to decapitate our entire civilization in one swoop. For that reason, there are very few entry points into our system. The Mother Brain, the highest body on Sedantis, has only twelve, and they're under constant and heavy surveillance." "Because of this, there is no way to transmit a message between the Virtual and the Material except for a Vaurca to memorize that message, enter the Material through a body, and recite it. Eight of these twelve terminals are reserved for 'Rapid Transfer' - a Vaurca enters a body, taps out his message on a computer terminal, and then immediately departs the body, or else they read the incoming message and carry it back with them into the Virtual as a memory. This may seem fast, but the mental transfer between Virtual and Material takes about ten minutes either way - not counting the amount of time it takes for the message to travel to this terminal, or the amount of time it takes to think about the reply, or in some cases simply how long it takes for the message to be typed up. The other four are for longer-term assignments, but even four is a small number for how many bodies they process." "The fact remains that in order to direct our Bound, there must be Unbound to observe local conditions and issue on-the-spot orders. The message queues are always massive, and without local initiative we'd never get anything done - to say nothing of trying to do anything on other planets, where simply transferring the message itself through bluespace might take hours, days, or weeks." "Before we go on to that, could you tell me how Rapid Transfer works?" "The rarest of all B-type Vaurca are rooted in their cells in perpetuity; they have no ability to move or feed themselves. Their arms and hands are designed to manipulate a special console - you've seen Zishik, his hands are a degenerate form of the same - and to receive and send messages as quickly as possible. Working in Rapid Transfer is an unpleasant and tedious job, but it's considered an essential part of climbing the ladder of respectability. Zishik and myself have both worked it in the past, and in fact in the same body. Having a 'hard break' in connections - the Rapid Transfer drone must use their eyes to read the message and their hands to compose it - prevents any contamination from entering the Virtual." "Are eight enough?" "Eight are most definitely not enough; we would need some three hundred in order to have constant spare capacity. Moreover, the more we had, the more we'd use - ready access to Rapid Transfer would increase our reliance on it, as we'd make fewer and fewer decisions on our own onus. Still, increasing our Rapid Transfer slots is an unthinkably massive operation; it would involve actual surgery on the body of the Mother Brain, for the duration of which all transfers, Rapid and otherwise, would have to be suspended." "And so, command responsibility." "The lifeblood of Vaurca civilization are the Unbound, those willing and able to take responsibility for a given group of assets - space, equipment, personnel - and accomplish a given specific or open-ended task with them. Those Vaurca who become Unbound and do well at it are the officer class of our society, standing above both the Bound drones in the Material and the home-bound gamesters and theoreticians of the Virtual." "Why did you specify that they have to do well at it?" "As part of our upbringing and our circumstances, we live an essentially risk-free, consequence-free life - the only dangers threatening the average Vaurca are social ones. As such, excess bravado is a common Vaurca vice; it's hard for most of us, especially the young people looking for their first assignments, to viscerally grasp any real consequences to their actions except inasmuch as they lose the esteem of their peers." "So with all that, how does the Allocation Board decide who gets more bodies?" "It's simpler than you'd expect. The Allocation Board has one master-level noyau for each other board, to which noyaus affiliated with that respective board apply for their needs. This master-level noyau has subsidiary noyaus that ponder specific requests in more detail, and negotiate with them on the number and type of bodies and the duration of their use. "For example, when I received this body, I applied to the Allocation Noyau for Cleanliness. I explained to them that I wanted a body for the purpose of voyaging to human space, and I described what sort of body I wanted and for how long I wanted it. The Allocation Noyau for Cleanliness kicked my request down to another noyau, which was involved in allocating for Cleanliness members who were making this sort of voyage. I haggled with them for a little while - I started my bid asking for more than I really wanted, as you do, and we met somewhere in the middle - and then we finalized my bid. My bid went up to Allocation for Cleanliness again, and it was shortly granted. Cleanliness, as you can imagine, uses a lot of bodies, second only to Achivement and to economic production. I was put in the queue, and after 171 days, my entry was finally processed and I entered my current body." "171 days! Is that unusually long?" "It's longer than average, but not dramatically. There are 90 million unbound in Zo'Ra, 25 million of which live on Sedantis and have to use the four terminals reserved for long-term transfer. The hardest part is simply waiting for the queue to process." "Your body is somewhat customized, I hear." "The benefits of leadership, I suppose. Because my slot was so far in the future, I was able to commission this body from scratch - it was build more-or-less to my exact specifications." "Did you have to pay for that somehow?" "I did, through a complicated network of monetized favor-trading. But that, I'm afraid, is a subject for another day."

I think, partially because it better reinforces the tone of the setting and partially because I generally play heads of staff, that there should be some extra or added requirement - or extra or added burden of evidence - to arrest or hinder a Head of Staff. I would go so far as to suggest that in order to arrest or search a Head of Staff, a Security Officer must present a signed warrant with the Captain's or Head of Security's stamp on it - and if there's no captain or head of security, they have to either lump with it, or hope that they're covered after the fact due to imminent circumstances. Maybe that's not the best way going forward, actually, but we need to think about the day-to-day relationship, not counting things like nukeops and wizards, between Security and other departments. Security Officers are generally lower-tier than medical, engineering, or science personnel, but it seems like in a straight he-said-she-said dispute, Security generally wins out. What are the consequences to a security officer who barks up the wrong tree, or who otherwise fails to make their case stick?

Is the Ideolist/Idealist switch throughout relevant?

I'm actually writing another Dialogue about this, but to spoil it for you, here's how I do it. 1) A BA is any body that's been deviated from the norm while still maintaining a basic checklist of features. All warriors are BA - the basic A-type body isn't very good at combat - but not all BA are warriors. Za'Akaix'Zishik Zo'Ra is a BA, but his body is even less warlike than the average - it's tall and skinny and has very dextrous fingers for operating human keyboards. Relatively elite Vaurca will have bodies 'hot-rodded' for their use, introducing various modifications that they'd find useful while still staying within the checklist. (I assume the checklist consists of things like height and weight, caloric requirements, a list of viable senses, and whatnot - or it might consist of a pool of components that can't be exceeded.) 2) Bound Vaurca, in their hives, are public property; there are rules about how you can treat them, just like there are rules about not littering in public parks. Bound Vaurca on the station are bodies that have been sold to NT by their hives, which I presume has established rules about their treatment and use - but to NT as a whole, they are property rather than people. (After all, the people whose bodies they are live safely in the Virtual.) If I were to guess about a rule of thumb, the Bound are 'trained' to think of themselves as property, with only a few very basic rules about what to do with themselves that only kick in when they are left to their own devices. I would think the rules work something like this. 1. Identify your supervisor. 1a. Identify any subinfeudated supervisors 2. Do whatever your supervisor tells you. 3. In the absence of instruction, feed yourself, conserve energy, and stay out of the way. If, for instance, a Bound is a miner, then their supervisor is the Quartermaster - but only because he's been subinfeudated; their actual supervisor is the Captain. (The Captain's orders outweigh the Quartermaster's orders, but in the absence of an order from the Captain, the miner has to follow the orders of the QM.) Bound Vaurca may or may not (or ought to, in my opinion) have a rule against ever harming another person, unless they're in a security field, but I think they would be incapable of determining harm from higher-order decisions - you probably couldn't tell a Bound to rip somebody's throat out, but you probably could tell them to flood the station with plasma because to them it's just turning a knob. Then again, I would suggest somebody write a "standard contract" that all Bound Vaurca have to follow, since obviously they can't use their own judgment or initiative. Maybe if the order comes from the Captain, they can in fact kill people. As for the armor, three inches or five inches is obviously ridiculous. I think that's a typo and it's supposed to be centimeters, or maybe even just be outright incorrect. I think that in the game, if we were ever to represent BB or even proper BA warrior Vaurca, they would have a special set of equipment - a hardsuit or even an exosuit - that they couldn't take off.