Geeves' Unathi Deputy App

[geeves]

WAIT, BEFORE YOU READ!

I made a Google Doc of this application, and I simply find the document much easier to read than the forum. The document also has nice colouring, indentation, and a good look and feel. Check it out!

THE DOCUMENT: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_iOCs1da2Qza3Zsx8ist9LYo4YSMO2qvPUsChUYMS3M/edit?usp=sharing

 

START OF APPLICATION

Ckey/BYOND Username: Geeves

 

Why are you interested in Unathi?:

Nothing I can explain with words. Many people can attest to the fact that I vehemently enjoy the species and know its lore. I believe I can expand on my interest in tangible ways in the answers below.

 

What do you think are the core themes about Unathi?:

Honour, Tradition, Warfare. Being the better man. The thing that makes the lore so good is that these core themes are always referenced, but there is almost always a situation that puts a character’s adherence to this theme in jeopardy. The species attempts to stick to ideals that simply cannot be stuck to if you want to be successful in human dominated space.

 

Do you have any specific projects you want to do?:

Various. See the bottom part of the application.

The Wasteland on Moghes feels underused, we get no real indication of how it’s like to live there, really. The Culture is explained, yes, but you have to have some insight and do research before you can really click it. I feel like having a simplified, yet expanded view on their culture, especially for newcomers, would be really good. I want to get into the nitty gritty. We know that the expectation is to act with honour and hate Guwan, but do all individual Unathi follow the expectations? What happens if they don’t? How do Modern Unathi in Tau Ceti feel about their obligations being so far from them they won’t be affected by it? The Colonies are mentioned in the lore, and they even have neat little rules, how they cannot trade directly with the Orion Spur, but only through official guilds and such. These rules aren’t used and I think that’s a big shame. The new planet with Tajara seems interesting, but uninvolved. I would like to coordinate with the Tajara Lore team and Coalf to work out those kinks. Gwim’Zala exists as well, but NEVER gets mentioned, ever. I want that to change. It’s such a cool wild west kind of place!

 

What do you like the least about Unathi and what would you want to change?:

The current way Aut’akh came to be. At first I was resentful of the addition, as it simply didn’t make sense to me, but it clicked when I realized what its actual purpose was. Now, I quite like Aut’akh narratively, actually! The main issue I have with them is how they came to be, and how they got to spread into space. Let me explain.

How they came to be. They fled north into the snowy bunkers and got Eridani stuff somehow. Then they held off an entire crusade backed by the Sk’akh, who are known to be well skilled and ultimately ruthless. I believe this also occured after Unathi were introduced to space flight, so I get the feeling they had impressive plot armour to not just get orbitally bombarded as soon as they stepped foot outside the polar bunkers.

How they spread to space. I don’t think this was ever explained, or if it was, I must have missed it, apologies. So, my assumption was that they got into a spaceship and blew off to Tau Ceti and away. This doesn’t really make sense to me. They would be blown out of the sky and killed nigh instantly, were the Sk’akh really intent on wiping them out as they seem to be lorewise.

What would I change? Difficult to say, really. The person who spearheaded the Aut’akh is still active, and I do not wish to tread on their toes. However, I can still cooperate with them to refine the narrative until it is a finely polished addition to the lore. My first idea would be for the Came to Be to be reworked. Have you ever watched Iron Man 1? The scene where he built his first suit was AMAZING. It was stressful, it was a rush against time. I would prefer the Aut’akh had an extreme sense of urgency to upgrade themselves, beyond drifting so far from their religion and just augmenting themselves because an Eridani ship fell near them. Perhaps they fled to Ouerea, where they were pursued. Hephaestus tech rained down near them, and in desperation, they augmented their own bodies to stand a fighting chance. This then lead down a long road where an AI is involved and they subtly and slowly shift from Sk’akh to Sk’Oss.

 

Would you want to become a full Unathi maintainer if you were asked in the future or remain a deputy?: No, I would remain a deputy. I don’t believe my writing ability is good enough to be a full developer. Nor do I have enough creative juices to spearhead a project for the species with full authority. This may change in the future, but it remains a no for now.

 

Additional Comments: I believe the format given isn’t enough to decide whether someone would be a good lore deputy, so I’m adding my own things below this.

 

THE PLAN:

• The Wasteland: Rip off Command and Conquer 3, like, holy shit. Duh.
• The Culture: Write about Modern Unathi, individual Unathi, add and expand upon sports. I’ve been meaning to write a program that would automatically generate results from a sport, so characters can be avid sport followers and comment on it in character. Think that Hunger Games game online, where you can add your own people. [https://brantsteele.net/hungergames/disclaimer.php]
• My initial plan is to add to sports, as it’s the easiest with the biggest pay-off. I want to expand on Bladedancing, the thing women do. It’s pretty dope.
• I then want to add an Unathi version of Kendo. It fits the warrior culture perfectly, and is a brilliant way to subtly teach children how to beat the crap out of other people. [https://www.hisgo.com/us/destination-japan/blog/traditional_japanese_sports.html]
• I then want to expand on the Zaraziite games. It’s there, yes, but the rules aren’t really outlined. We don’t know how many people go. Do poor people go there too? Is it SUPER popular or is it just for the ultra rich?
• The Colonies: Coordinate with the Tajara team to clean up Gakal'zaal, expand upon Gwim’zala, add more about Queendom of Szek’Hakh, an excellent subversion of the lore, into articles or some such.

[Alberyk]

1 hour ago, geeves said:

What would I change? Difficult to say, really. The person who spearheaded the Aut’akh is still active, and I do not wish to tread on their toes. However, I can still cooperate with them to refine the narrative until it is a finely polished addition to the lore. My first idea would be for the Came to Be to be reworked. Have you ever watched Iron Man 1? The scene where he built his first suit was AMAZING. It was stressful, it was a rush against time. I would prefer the Aut’akh had an extreme sense of urgency to upgrade themselves, beyond drifting so far from their religion and just augmenting themselves because an Eridani ship fell near them. Perhaps they fled to Ouerea, where they were pursued. Hephaestus tech rained down near them, and in desperation, they augmented their own bodies to stand a fighting chance. This then lead down a long road where an AI is involved and they subtly and slowly shift from Sk’akh to Sk’Oss.

This would be a really big retconn/change that would mess with their themes, and would be far harder to justify their numbers and situation. I don't really think that this would make the narrative better, because it would severely weaken their religious connotations, alongside not giving any real reason on why they were chased to other planet and by who.

 

[geeves]

3 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

This would be a really big retconn/change that would mess with their themes, and would be far harder to justify their numbers and situation. I don't really think that this would make the narrative better, because it would severely weaken their religious connotations, alongside not giving any real reason on why they were chased to other planet and by who.

Most likely, yeah! The idea I threw out because currently the seeming plot armour they have is my only real gripe with the lore, that I can think of right now. The idea can be bounced around and refined. My question is, what are their themes at the moment, if it were to mess with them? They're a cargo cult of some sort, having been built after an Eridani ship crashed near the polar bunkers, as far as I understand it. How did an Eridani ship get there? Why'd they jank with it if they're already comfy in the polar bunkers?

I feel the lore should serve to be a platform that players can bounce off to play in-game, like the Maraziites of Sk'akh, who went around burning temples. What platform does a cargo cult on Moghes really establish, if they moved to New Gibson anyway, and got accepted with open hands?

The Aut'akh isn't my baby, however, and I would prefer the person in charge of them cooperate with me on something cool, instead of me coming in and switching their stuff up.

[Zundy]

What about Dominian unathi and the Tribunal :^)

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I will respond to this within 48 hours.

[VUX]

4 hours ago, geeves said:

Most likely, yeah! The idea I threw out because currently the seeming plot armour they have is my only real gripe with the lore, that I can think of right now. The idea can be bounced around and refined. My question is, what are their themes at the moment, if it were to mess with them? They're a cargo cult of some sort, having been built after an Eridani ship crashed near the polar bunkers, as far as I understand it. How did an Eridani ship get there? Why'd they jank with it if they're already comfy in the polar bunkers?

I feel the lore should serve to be a platform that players can bounce off to play in-game, like the Maraziites of Sk'akh, who went around burning temples. What platform does a cargo cult on Moghes really establish, if they moved to New Gibson anyway, and got accepted with open hands?

The Aut'akh isn't my baby, however, and I would prefer the person in charge of them cooperate with me on something cool, instead of me coming in and switching their stuff up.

At the risk of sounding rude, all of these questions could be answered by, like, reading the wiki page.

Quote

Finally, Sk’akh laid out for them a vision of a single Tear falling from His cheek onto Moghes that would hold the key to the salvation of their people.

The group woke up and quickly chattered in astonishment about the shared prophecy they had just received. With a religious zeal they packed up their makeshift camp and made the dangerous expedition from the Wasteland to the forests of the north.

Prior to this, during the Contact War, an Eridanian recon and research vessel had been brought down from the skies by a strong nuclear blast, sending it careening into ruined farmland. This ship was the Mandjet, destined long ago to quietly observe Unathi and to entice rural villagers to board with vague promises and a contract the Unathi could not read. The Eridani’s exploitative contracts allowed them to experiment with augments on Unathi in an, ultimately wrong-headed, attempt to be the first to get their foot in the door in selling prosthetics and augments to the Hegemony. When the computer and vaults were cracked open by the proto-Aut’akh scientist and engineers and the databases and personnel files opened, they found wonders. Prosthetic spines, eyes, and blueprints for a new evolution of Sinta’Unathi - all of them with the corporate logo of the Corporate Federation.

To answer your later questions re: why are they on Moghes, since I think in the roughly 7 billion rewrites people have done a lot of the answers to these questions became a bit lost,
After recovering the augments, the intent was that they went north specifically so that they could avoid reprisal attacks. Baseline unathi have a lot of trouble surviving in cold conditions because cold-blooded creatures do not generate their own heat, so wearing heavy coats would not save them from freezing to death. They'd need fires and/or heaters the whole way up.

Additionally, their society is highly advanced but very small in comparison - they never lost any of the technology that Unathi lost in the nuclear war, and gained some from outside besides - and they're bound not by honor and tradition but by pragmatism and necessity, so they're able to defeat the Unathi because the Unathi are specifically hamstringing themselves.

Also they're not being orbitally bombarded because that's a little bit of a sore spot, considering all unathi had at least some of their family die in a gigantic horrifying nuclear war that turned over half of their planet to radioactive desert. The first one to launch a nuke or put a new crater on Moghes is going to be drawn and quartered.

All of these things were once written on the wikipage but I think they got drowned in rewrites; they're all still considered canonical but I can't blame you for not knowing them.

 

Edited August 14, 2019 by VUX

[Butterrobber202]

holy shit I really like that Aut'akh angle. I also felt really strange about Aut'akh when they came out. I was literally on the github page for them 24/7 and was excited to play them until the lore events around them. Their entrance to the stage felt like, "hey this new faction? Plot armor, 4 feet thick." I'm 100% all for that plan, and I think Geeves is probably the best man to handle such a retconn. 

I'm also really excited for C&C3: Wasteland. 

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I'm addressing what each applicant listed as what they like the least first, and i'll follow up with more questions later.

Please review the Aut'akh's page, which has been revised heavily since their release, and tell me if you see anything new that is still unanswered or unsatisfactory.

[geeves]

22 hours ago, Zundy said:

What about Dominian unathi and the Tribunal :^)

I've not heard much about Dominian Unathi since, like, June - July - ish. People seem to like them where they are. I'd love to work on them with Pegman though! I think my expansion of the sporting culture will touch on them, as they're already somewhat mentioned in the Zaraziite games. We'll see how it goes! You can't improve on perfection.

 

20 hours ago, VUX said:

At the risk of sounding rude, all of these questions could be answered by, like, reading the wiki page.

No worries, the onus is on me to know the current wiki stuff, if I want to partake in the species' lore. This is a slip-up on my part.

20 hours ago, VUX said:

[snib]

That actually really makes sense, now that it's explained this way! Sweet.

20 hours ago, VUX said:

Also they're not being orbitally bombarded because that's a little bit of a sore spot, considering all unathi had at least some of their family die in a gigantic horrifying nuclear war that turned over half of their planet to radioactive desert. The first one to launch a nuke or put a new crater on Moghes is going to be drawn and quartered.

I've never really thought about it that way, that's a pretty good point that I completely missed! Fugg.

 

17 hours ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

I'm addressing what each applicant listed as what they like the least first, and i'll follow up with more questions later.

Please review the Aut'akh's page, which has been revised heavily since their release, and tell me if you see anything new that is still unanswered or unsatisfactory.

Re-read it, the revisions make it purdy guut. Nothin' unsatisfactory from where I can see.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I am making a decision on this within 48 hours.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

This application is being accepted!