What Do You Think of the New Vaurca?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Since Silvertalisman left and I performed a snap poll to get feedback on their status, the community became divided roughly by half over removing them. After talking with Skull we decided to give them the month of April and May to continue existing in a new, improved(?) form. If these changes still have the race being a negative aspect of the server we'll remove them in June and potentially work on a replacement.

So I completed a complete top-down reconstruction of their lore and wiki page. In my own words, it was assblasted and built back up.

Major Changes

• The number of playable hives has been reduced to 2, with the 3rd being exclusive to antagonists. (Will we see more in the future? Are more Hives on the way?)
  
  https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#Major_Hives
• The entire caste structure (bound and unbound, AB, BA, BC) have been simplified and condensed. The focus and detail is on what makes the different types of Vaurca unique. The basic aspect is you have the slave Bound, who support the Unbound; the otaku's obsessed with videogames.
  
  https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#Biology
  
• Vaurca in known space no longer have any contact with Sedantis or other home colonies of the species; no more bluespace tech. (There may be a very good reason...)
  
  https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#Contact_with_Humanity
  
• The consequences of Virtual Reality have been modified. The entire purpose of the Bound was/is to support the Unbound living in VR.
  
  https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#The_Era_of_Augments
  
• The religion has become a cult of personality around the High Queens of their respective hives, who no one has actually seen in a few thousand years. https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#Religion

Kinda Big Changes

• Their Homeworld is probably dead!!! Or maybe it isn't. We won't know for awhile, and we may discover it was better not knowing after all....
  
  https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#The_Great_Migration
• Their history has been overhauled to justify why they went into space, and the consequences of VR tech. Trans-humanism is scary.
  
  https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#The_Unbound_.28Type_D.29
  
• A lot of redundant information has been removed.
  
• Their status in known space has been adjusted.
  
  https://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vaurca#Overview
  
• Information has been reorganized and the tone changed.

 

These are very comprehensive changes and it's pretty much a requirement that Vaurca whitelist holders read through it.

With that said, what do you think of the changes? Are these positive changes? Are they negative changes? Do they address what you wanted to see in the Vaurca?

[ChevalierMalFet]

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

[DaBurs]

Come on, people dislike Vaurca because they aren't your typical la-la standard fur-race or scalies, they might say they don't like them for how they "act" or whatever but we all know the truth is that people who hate them do so because they don't physically appeal to their attractive fur-fantasy.

Voted to keep Vaurca.

[Dreviore]

I can't exactly describe what it is I don't like about the Vaurca race.

If you want a good place to start, moderate all Vaurca players and ensure that they aren't acting how they originally were, which is where my distaste for them come from, I feel they weren't developed enough to be allowed to be a playable race on the server leading to a lot of Vaurca players to just act out.

The other issue i have with them is they appear to be a reskinned IPC race. A lot of what made Vaurca would be equally as understandable as IPCs.

They're essentially IPCs with a true government structure, and a form of worship where IPCs rely more so on fact then belief.

I'll read up on the wiki a bit later in my shift and give more input on the changes but until I see Vaurca players get cleaned up I stand by wanting the race replaced entirely.

[LordFowl]

This is not necessarily the thread for it, but any idea of 'replacing' the Vaurca is to me as reprehensible as keeping them. We should be focusing our efforts on improving the established legacy races before we idle ourselves away with flights of fancy embodied in fantastical other-races.

[Guest]

Come on, people dislike Vaurca because they aren't your typical la-la standard fur-race or scalies, they might say they don't like them for how they "act" or whatever but we all know the truth is that people who hate them do so because they don't physically appeal to their attractive fur-fantasy.

Voted to keep Vaurca.

 

freaking furries they did it again

Do you really think the issue with the Vaurca not being a well-liked species is because it isn't a furry race?

[Dreviore]

This is not necessarily the thread for it, but any idea of 'replacing' the Vaurca is to me as reprehensible as keeping them. We should be focusing our efforts on improving the established legacy races before we idle ourselves away with flights of fancy embodied in fantastical other-races.

 

That's the other issue I have with them. I really dislike the idea of a "mechanical ant race". Once again they're seemingly IPCs.

[ChevalierMalFet]

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.

[Nanako]

I agree with pretty much everything Chevalier said. Most especially about the nature of the unbound being vessels to inhabit

I checked the viology section and i don't agree with the idea of eggs being chosen to be bound or unbound, I liked Chevalier's idea better: That all vaurca are born unbound, their minds are seperated from their bodies and uploaded to the VR, their left behind bodies become bound vaurca.

Any Unbound should come out of the VR after decades of experience learning and developing within it, to inhabit a body. No vaurca should be born to be unbound, or designated from birth for a permanant life outside the VR, imo.

[Nanako]

This is not necessarily the thread for it, but any idea of 'replacing' the Vaurca is to me as reprehensible as keeping them. We should be focusing our efforts on improving the established legacy races before we idle ourselves away with flights of fancy embodied in fantastical other-races.

 

That's the other issue I have with them. I really dislike the idea of a "mechanical ant race". Once again they're seemingly IPCs.

I find this aspect interesting. As a doctor, vaurca pose a slightly different and interesting medical challenge. They're one of the few excuses i ever have to requisition nanopaste. I have an interest in biology, and i dislike that pretty much all the other biological races are biologically identical from a medical point of view. Vaurca are an interesting anomaly that brightens up a surgeon's life by posing unusual problems

IPCs are just pure machine. if one is damaged, call robotics. As a doctor i have very little interaction with them. Vaurca as a cybernetic race, involve both medical and robotics, it promotes some more interest inter--departmental cooperation to get them fixed again

Edited April 21, 2016 by Guest

[Nanako]

If you want a good place to start, moderate all Vaurca players and ensure that they aren't acting how they originally were, which is where my distaste for them come from, I feel they weren't developed enough to be allowed to be a playable race on the server leading to a lot of Vaurca players to just act out.

 

I can agree with this.

As a personal issue, i feel that bound vaurca should be disallowed from playing antagonists. That they should stick to their servile, helpful roles. We've had lots of interesting RP about the concepts of the bound not being accountable for their actions due to essentially being animals, and it feels really silly for such things to be throwwn back in our faces because the bound repeatedly turned out to be a lii'dra antagonist.. Maybe this is just because the people who played them tended to opt into lots of antag roles, but it irked me. IO remember more bound antags than helpful bound servants, it's like NT can't ever buy a good worker drone

[Nanako]

Oh and i'm also disappointed at the removal of hive vess'ex, i liked the idea of having a hive that was especially interested in humanity, and i was hoping to meet a vess'ex unbound and have some interesting RP teaching them about human culture

[Nanako]

This is not necessarily the thread for it, but any idea of 'replacing' the Vaurca is to me as reprehensible as keeping them. We should be focusing our efforts on improving the established legacy races before we idle ourselves away with flights of fancy embodied in fantastical other-races.

I think most of the existing races are well developed as is, there's certainly no shortage of people playing every other one of them

We have division of labour for these things, jackboot is obviously interested in working on their lore. From a development point of view, does it concern you as a mapper? Is one more or less race going to eat up your time and resources?

[Nanako]

Oh and final thought for now, the link in my signature. I want to see them given their proper food, instead of havign to rely on human food.

The vaurca have a lot of exceptions and special rules about them. Dietary requirements, medical treatment, social conventions, responsibility, etc

Some would call this snowflakey, but i don't see it as a bad thing, it encourages interesting RP.

The unathi, tajarans and skrell are all just humans with a slight twist, The additional requirements they have don't really impact on gameplay much, and they're functionally interchangeable with humans in most cases, i find that boring. Vaurca are truly alien, and imo more worthwhile to have around than several more races that are just 'human, but x'

[DaBurs]

You use the word 'snowflake' a lot I think without actually knowing what it means, but I agree, the Vaurca are a unique race that needs to stay on the server.

[Zundy]

The issue you're going to have with banning bound ants as antags is that unbound can just pretend to be bound. They are evil syndi/whatever agents after all.

I like the new lore etc, the trick is for ant players to actually follow this and not do dumb things like gib rats for epic ant keks.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

A bound that rolls antag can be just as Zundy said: A recently freed Bound seeking to achieve an objective (revenge?), or someone who was unbound all along, or simply a Bound with faulty programming.

[SierraKomodo]

A bound that rolls antag can be just as Zundy said: A recently freed Bound seeking to achieve an objective (revenge?), or someone who was unbound all along, or simply a Bound with faulty programming.

 

What about a bound that's actually bound to the 'Antag' hive? I think I recall you saying that there was a hive reserved for antag shenannigans.

[LordFowl]

I think most of the existing races are well developed as is, there's certainly no shortage of people playing every other one of them

We have division of labour for these things, jackboot is obviously interested in working on their lore. From a development point of view, does it concern you as a mapper? Is one more or less race going to eat up your time and resources?

 

No, it does not concern me as a mapper- it concerns me as a player. I don't know what you're trying to say there, but I'm going to chalk it up as a misunderstanding.

You say that all the other races are well-developed, but numerous times in your other posts (Did you know there's an edit button?) you have pointed out that the other races are little more than slight twists from humanity. You refer to their mechanics, and I agree. But then I go a step further and say that their lore is derivative also. Each race is little more than a different flavor of humanity. This is in part the fault of the lore, but I hold that mechanics are more to blame, after all mechanics are just as responsible for how a race is played as lore is. In short, I say we should focus our efforts on the legacy races, instead of diluting it upon whatever new race is popular on paper, abhorred in practice.

[Nanako]

No, it does not concern me as a mapper- it concerns me as a player. I don't know what you're trying to say there, but I'm going to chalk it up as a misunderstanding.

 

You were talking about what 'we' should be working on. I took that to mean from a development viewpoint, you felt that the vaurca were a waste of developer time,

If you're speaking as a player, then it's not really a player's concern how developers divide their time, and no reason why they wouldnt try to work on everything at once, or only what interests them. Clearly this interests jackboot

 

You say that all the other races are well-developed, but numerous times in your other posts (Did you know there's an edit button?) you have pointed out that the other races are little more than slight twists from humanity.

 

I did say that, and i'm saying its not ideal to have so many other races that are quite close to humanity in many ways.

But, i'm also saying that, love or hate their current state, those races have many players who seem to like where they're at now. Changing them will make them unhappy, as can be seeen from the uproar in the tajaran sexuality thread. For better or worse, i think those other races should be left alone.

The vaurca exist as a more truly different alternative to them, and have a smaller playerbase as a result, but they're still there. If the other races are made more obscure and different, it will definitely annoy their existing playerbases and reduce how much they're played

 

I say we should focus our efforts on the legacy races, instead of diluting it upon whatever new race is popular on paper, abhorred in practice.

 

And i say those groups that are happy should be left along. The Vaurca players should be asked for their input on the race, and those who don't play it shouldn't be allowed to take away someone else's enjoyment

[ChevalierMalFet]

A bound that rolls antag can be just as Zundy said: A recently freed Bound seeking to achieve an objective (revenge?), or someone who was unbound all along, or simply a Bound with faulty programming.

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.

[Nikov]

I don't get why there are breeders outside of high royalty serving 'no function' when their every incentive is to become powerful enough to ascend the throne themselves.

I also don't understand why they lobotomize their own species, aside from grimdark. Can't they be genuinely unable to develop intelligence as a side effect of sterility? How would this society develop in the first place? Well yes, Himmler, we could throw them in the ovens. But what if we just started cutting chunks of their brains out? No? Too expensive?

I don't see this race developing from a natural starting point of intelligent ants into a society of VR nerds served by the teeming masses. Ants who become VR addicts just... it makes no sense to me.

[Nanako]

I also don't understand why they lobotomize their own species, aside from grimdark. Can't they be genuinely unable to develop intelligence as a side effect of sterility? How would this society develop in the first place? Well yes, Himmler, we could throw them in the ovens. But what if we just started cutting chunks of their brains out? No? Too expensive?

You're missing the point. They're not lobotomising their own people. They're seperating mind and body. Every vaurca born is uploaded into the VR to live an intellectual life of science and art. The body left behind is just an empty shell

Those shells can be re-inhabited by a mind again in future (usually not the original owner), so they're not physically broken

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I don't get why there are breeders outside of high royalty serving 'no function' when their every incentive is to become powerful enough to ascend the throne themselves.

I also don't understand why they lobotomize their own species, aside from grimdark. Can't they be genuinely unable to develop intelligence as a side effect of sterility? How would this society develop in the first place? Well yes, Himmler, we could throw them in the ovens. But what if we just started cutting chunks of their brains out? No? Too expensive?

I don't see this race developing from a natural starting point of intelligent ants into a society of VR nerds served by the teeming masses. Ants who become VR addicts just... it makes no sense to me.

 

I based it on ant colonies, since they both already had a society very similar to them and I possess great knowledge on ants because of my time in my youth spent playing Sim Ant on my Windows 98.

"There are three kinds of ants in a colony: The queen, the female workers, and males. The queen and the males have wings, while the workers don't have wings. The queen is the only ant that can lay eggs. The male ant's job is to mate with future queen ants and they do not live very long afterwards."

"Queen ants are born to be queens because of a special genetic combination between their parents. "

The future queens are specially born, hatched, and raised. They are part of the great unbound Caste, but this isn't like typical royalty where there's 20 heirs running around plotting to gain the throne. There's no more than 1 - 3 Lesser Queens at any one time and any Princess would just become another Lesser Queens and take on an advisory role. There has been very little need for a complex and formal government system for the Vaurca in the Hive-ship for the last 2,000 years because all of the unbound were hooked up to VR. The queens were only taken out to lay more eggs then get hooked back up. If everyone in your town was permanently plugged into a virtual reality meant to become their new life and we're all packed into little holodecks in the town stadium for the rest of our lives then your town council might become a little irrelevant. And if generations later descendants collectively get kicked out of this VR then everyone is going to be a bit inexperienced in running the town how it was before.

It's heavily implied that the Vaurca literally forced the Bound into their social caste after rebellions and revolutions that plagued their early years of entering virtual reality, when the entire point of Bound slowly transformed into being nothing more than a support structure for the Unbound's continued existence in VR. That might be dark, but not everything that touches on dark subject matter is immediately "grimdark" because this part isn't heavily focused on and celebrated as the main theme. It's a scene setter, not the scene. Harry Potter has demon monsters that suck out your soul and kill your parents and a giant demon dog with 3 heads trying to eat children. But if you called Harry Potter grimdark you'd be laughed out of the room.

From what we can tell based on studying Vaurca records their entire culture and old way of life was phased out by VR. The Bound are 'lobotomized' (though at this point it's equally a genetic/cybernetic thing) to keep them as the unquestionable drones. They are only meant to support the Unbound, who in turn live for VR.

Basically, their entire species' now revolves around keeping the Unbound hooked up to VR.

Entering human space has changed that, with Vaurca needing to leave VR en-masse due to the evacuation of their old, leaking Hive-Ship. The unbound Vaurca are now faced with all the questions and problems that they were comfortably avoiding for their 2,000 years of travel, and why collectively they've been rather easy to manipulate by human authorities. "Give you our drones to pay back the costs of housing us and not paying them or us? That seems fair! You're so generous! Wow real life might not be that bad if everyone is as nice as you!"

The Vaurca storyline is one that gives our setting a firm warning on the dangers of transhumanism. We have a species that 'transcended' normal civilization and now they're being dragged back down into it. That central storyline is the motif of the Vaurca since my rewrite, and it's the Vaurca players that have the freedom to choose how they run with this.

[Dreviore]

I don't get why there are breeders outside of high royalty serving 'no function' when their every incentive is to become powerful enough to ascend the throne themselves.

I also don't understand why they lobotomize their own species, aside from grimdark. Can't they be genuinely unable to develop intelligence as a side effect of sterility? How would this society develop in the first place? Well yes, Himmler, we could throw them in the ovens. But what if we just started cutting chunks of their brains out? No? Too expensive?

I don't see this race developing from a natural starting point of intelligent ants into a society of VR nerds served by the teeming masses. Ants who become VR addicts just... it makes no sense to me.

 

I based it on ant colonies, since they both already had a society very similar to them and I possess great knowledge on ants because of my time in my youth spent playing Sim Ant on my Windows 98.

"There are three kinds of ants in a colony: The queen, the female workers, and males. The queen and the males have wings, while the workers don't have wings. The queen is the only ant that can lay eggs. The male ant's job is to mate with future queen ants and they do not live very long afterwards."

"Queen ants are born to be queens because of a special genetic combination between their parents. "

The future queens are specially born, hatched, and raised. They are part of the great unbound Caste, but this isn't like typical royalty where there's 20 heirs running around plotting to gain the throne. There's no more than 1 - 3 Lesser Queens at any one time and any Princess would just become another Lesser Queens and take on an advisory role. There has been very little need for a complex and formal government system for the Vaurca in the Hive-ship for the last 2,000 years because all of the unbound were hooked up to VR. The queens were only taken out to lay more eggs then get hooked back up. If everyone in your town was permanently plugged into a virtual reality meant to become their new life and we're all packed into little holodecks in the town stadium for the rest of our lives then your town council might become a little irrelevant. And if generations later descendants collectively get kicked out of this VR then everyone is going to be a bit inexperienced in running the town how it was before.

It's heavily implied that the Vaurca literally forced the Bound into their social caste after rebellions and revolutions that plagued their early years of entering virtual reality, when the entire point of Bound slowly transformed into being nothing more than a support structure for the Unbound's continued existence in VR. That might be dark, but not everything that touches on dark subject matter is immediately "grimdark" because this part isn't heavily focused on and celebrated as the main theme. It's a scene setter, not the scene. Harry Potter has demon monsters that suck out your soul and kill your parents and a giant demon dog with 3 heads trying to eat children. But if you called Harry Potter grimdark you'd be laughed out of the room.

From what we can tell based on studying Vaurca records their entire culture and old way of life was phased out by VR. The Bound are 'lobotomized' (though at this point it's equally a genetic/cybernetic thing) to keep them as the unquestionable drones. They are only meant to support the Unbound, who in turn live for VR.

Basically, their entire species' now revolves around keeping the Unbound hooked up to VR.

Entering human space has changed that, with Vaurca needing to leave VR en-masse due to the evacuation of their old, leaking Hive-Ship. The unbound Vaurca are now faced with all the questions and problems that they were comfortably avoiding for their 2,000 years of travel, and why collectively they've been rather easy to manipulate by human authorities. "Give you our drones to pay back the costs of housing us and not paying them or us? That seems fair! You're so generous! Wow real life might not be that bad if everyone is as nice as you!"

The Vaurca storyline is one that gives our setting a firm warning on the dangers of transhumanism. We have a species that 'transcended' normal civilization and now they're being dragged back down into it. That central storyline is the motif of the Vaurca since my rewrite, and it's the Vaurca players that have the freedom to choose how they run with this.

 

Its a nice concept, but i stand by not liking ant people.

Their concept could be applied to a much more intelligent, and equally oppressed race with more interesting RP associated to them more so then them being easily manipulated.

Perhaps a race with a shambled political structure they're trying to hold onto.