The New Vaurca Loredev Thread

In this thread, I'm going to document all the changes that I make to the Vaurca and answer any queries that you have about them. For the time being, my go-to source is my Google doc, but this is all still first-draft stuff and some details might change. I will attack the Wiki over the next few days, section-by-section.

As of this moment, the most important stuff:

- Everybody keeps their whitelist.

- Job restrictions stay.

- Everybody keeps their AoR if they have one. I should clarify that the AoR is one bug - one job.

- Characters do not have to pick a brood for naming purposes; you can stay Zo'Ra if you want.

- The broad outlines of the Vaurca metaplot - Hive Ship Titan Prime, the ghettos of New Gibson, the Elyra business, &c - all stay. If you are a Vaurca, you are a second-class citizen, you are stuck in a ghetto, you are getting hit by the Black Numbers, and you are currently going hungry due to the blockade.

So my to-do list is as follows:

- Process any whitelist apps that come up.

- Start culling the wiki and replacing it with my new material.

- Put together an all-Vaurca newsthread.

- Answer burning questions!

6PM Edit, 6/13: Busy bees today. Most of the Vaurca wiki (sans history, which is a whole other can of worms) is now looking more-or-less the way I want it; for player use, the most important thing is that the Broods are now up. Next up is history!

3PM Edit, 6/15: The history section is now fixed, and with that, the wiki - at least, that page of the wiki - is now basically complete.

3PM Edit, 6/17: I'm keeping the 'read at your peril' warning on the main Vaurca page for the time being because I'm still tinkering with the tone; in particular, I'm fine-tuning the history to bring the themes of hubris and nemesis into finer focus. I also wanted to focus on the elements of isolation, and how their civilization keeps splitting and fragmenting, and especially on the fact that "our" Hive-ship line has no idea what happened to any of the others. In addition, I've also drafted up a few (secret) documents on places their metaplot can go, along with more explicit statements about their narrative placement.

I've had several productive conversations with the other loredevs, and I do genuinely mean 'productive' in that we came up with good ideas and a spirit of happiness prevailed throughout. Now I am thinking about Broods.

My initial idea about Broods was that I wanted to cover bases for modes of play. Without getting into any kind of mess about 'dramatic frontage,' my goal was that I wanted to preserve modes of play - the actual business of doing things and reacting to events around you, the 'meat and potatoes' of RP - that had been present in V2 and V2.5. (Those being Fowl's and Jackboot's stewardships, respectively.) In terms of what your character actually did or what they were like, I wanted to preserve a framework that would let them stay that way. Part of the reason I trailed away from Vaurca during V2 is because of how restrictive the new setting seemed to be with regards to character personalities and motivations, and I have it as a real goal that most personality types are available somewhere in the new lore. The absolute last thing I want to do is creep up on someone's shoulder and say 'your character is a good one, but not as a Vaurca - behave differently.'

Hence the Broods, of which we have five. I was very careful that they all started with different sounds, so that we didn't have to worry as much about spelling them correctly. Broods Y and (t)L epitomize my ideas for V3, and L especially hearkens back to the Dialogues and to the system of noyaus and boards.

(t)Z and K, however, I feel hearken back to v2. Z especially so - I wanted characters who really went helter-skelter with the 'loyal worker toiling to serve the hive' mindset to have a home there. As for K, I made them exempt from the Procedure system by giving them a genuine autocracy; their Conductor, Tlakoxaya, fills the same role as the Lesser Queens used to for those who need a strong, dictatorial personality. Between the two of them, my hope is that all the old bases get covered.

So my question is, what modes of play, present in the old system, are unavailable in the new ones? And if there are some missing, how can I add them in?

Myself and a few other people who played Vaurca compiled a Google Doc of thoughts about the new Vaurca. This was done shortly after the Wiki was updated. It should give you an alright idea of what some people may have issues with.

You'll notice that it is mostly complaints, and I hope that does not discourage you, Chev. We had positive things to say. We just wanted to get the negatives out in the open.

I think you're doing interesting work, and I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i4yuk3oRuX6Jbi2c15ZI0RkNkHPWW--lQ1B79raS2cw/edit?usp=sharing

Myself and a few other people who played Vaurca compiled a Google Doc of thoughts about the new Vaurca. This was done shortly after the Wiki was updated. It should give you an alright idea of what some people may have issues with.

You'll notice that it is mostly complaints, and I hope that does not discourage you, Chev. We had positive things to say. We just wanted to get the negatives out in the open.

I think you're doing interesting work, and I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i4yuk3oRuX6Jbi2c15ZI0RkNkHPWW--lQ1B79raS2cw/edit?usp=sharing

I would like to be added

Question that may require an answer or may require a change:

Bound are barred from the security department. They are free to take civilian jobs (except Quartermaster and Chaplain) or engineering jobs. They are also free to be menial lab assistants, or orderlies in the medical department. They do not need to be formally promoted before taking these jobs. Because Za bodies are only for combat, and because Bound cannot join Security, playing a Za'Viax is not permitted.

Could a Za'Viax be possible as antagonist (Syndicate Operative) ?

Question that may require an answer or may require a change:

Bound are barred from the security department. They are free to take civilian jobs (except Quartermaster and Chaplain) or engineering jobs. They are also free to be menial lab assistants, or orderlies in the medical department. They do not need to be formally promoted before taking these jobs. Because Za bodies are only for combat, and because Bound cannot join Security, playing a Za'Viax is not permitted.

Could a Za'Viax be possible as antagonist (Syndicate Operative) ?

I'm working my way through all of this, and I'll try to have some things up tonight because I'm leaving on a trip tomorrow, but I can say that while there's no theoretical reason to bar it, it's generally possible to distinguish between Ka and Za at a glance (especially to other Vaurca), so infiltrating as a Za would be very difficult. If you're coming in guns blazing, though, I don't see why not.

Okay, thanks for the hasty response

It's unfortunate that I cannot comment on the google doc but lemme point out one thing.

LACK OF CONTACT

None of us at any point have been approached to talk about what you’re adding.

This is dumb. Please realize that there is no obligation to approach players personally regarding lore changes. Granted, it is preferred that a public announcement/discussion be held at some early-to-mid stage of a rewrite and that's happening right now it seems(?). But ergh. This last point is meh v.v

Against Skull's opinion, Id say before rewriting an entire species with many players, consultation should happen.

It was done with skrell, PMs were sent out and things ended nicely.

LACK OF CONTACT

None of us at any point have been approached to talk about what you’re adding.

Whom should've been contacted? Who are these self-proclaimed pillars of the Vaurcae community? While I understand keeping a community in touch about changes, there are 49 Vaurcae whitelists out there. Which of these 49 individuals was he supposed to get ahold of? Those who wrote this google doc? If five Tajara players (out of the 115 whitelistees) got together and handed me a manifesto of every issue they had with my lore, am I really supposed to take them as proper representatives of the entire Tajaran community?

It's important to compile and present our criticisms, but I agree with Skull on this one. We can't seriously have demanded that CMF go out of his way to contact a handful of players and request their permission to make the changes he campaigned on. All the changes he was going to make were in his lore dev application thread. The perfect chance to manifest opposition was during the lengthy time in which the lore dev applications were open. He applied for the job and then did exactly what he applied to do when he was accepted for it.

I mean the point here is that the majority of ACTIVE Vaurca players have got together to voice these concerns. There is normally only about one bug onboard at any time and I guarantee its' one of these guys and not listening to the criticism they are given will leave the species player less.

I don't think their points are, "There shouldn't be criticism," it's just that a loredev shouldn't be viewed negatively for not personally contacting community members about lore changes, especially since said changes are usually displayed on the forums before they are fully implemented.

However, Mofo's use of numbers is a little off. Yes, 5 Taj players making a complaint wouldn't be that big of a deal considering there are over 100 Taj whitelists and usually more than 5 Taj players active daily. That is simply not the case with Vaurca players. There are maybe 5 or so Vaurca players a day. Plus there are much fewer Vaurca whitelists in general, so those 5 voicing their opinions is a bigger percentage than the hypothetical 5 Taj players.

That being said I think this is the best way to go about having problems, work together, get your points, and make them known. Maybe the last point is moot, maybe it is not. That's not what matters. What matters is there are some people who have played a lot of Vaurca approaching the loredev about issues they have in the hopes of finding a conclusion.

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.

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.

<3 I'm jealous really, Never been to New Orleans before.

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.

Of all the changes, I dislike broods the most. They make the system overly complicated. While I am sure such divisions in hive exist, I don't think they need to be listed. It's better left to the imagination of writers or players.

As for the rest, I continue to believe that the measured approach to redefining the species is to perceive each hive as a giant organism, with Unbound serving as nerve cells in this superorganism and Bound as everything else. This body approach neatly bridges the gaps between the old and new lore. The Mind contemplates the orders of the rest of the hive, weighing and debating their answers with each other. Each other organ of the hive does this in microcosm. The immune system of the hive would debate amongst itself just like the Mind would, but they are less concerned for why it should be done, but more concerned with how it should be done. This view covers everything from efficiency driven space bugs to philosophizing space bugs. This is because the Vaurca aren't a hive mind, they never were. Each person was their own person, but each person was born with a duty to their hive. This plays into each Vaurca being extremely specialized, as well.

Your vision of VR could easily be the nerve system of the hive, where unbound communicate with each other. I see lesser queens being the de facto leaders of these micro-communities and the ones who receive and send information to the Mind of the hive. You have to remember, that your body will do many things to preserve itself even at the expense of other parts of the body, and this is the heart of the Vaurcan mindset, the preservation of the Hive-Body. Everything that a Vaurca does should lead back to this single, simple and easy to understand premise. Exploring the depths of such a premise is easy, and it can be taken in many different directions. I see Vaurcae perhaps taking up human hobbies as distractions to their misery and lack of VR, to find avenues of escape for being cut off in such a way from their very being. I believe this approach is the best of both worlds, It keeps the servers culture's interpretation of Vaurca, while as expanding on them, and giving them new pathways for further growth.

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.'

I don't think Vaurca in different sectors of the hive would consider themselves a higher cast. They are simply a part of the hive-body, just as everyone else and I don't believe Vaurca in different sections of the hive-body wouldn't have ambitions, I just think that different unbound would gravitate towards parts of the hive-body that they are best at. Perhaps age and knowledge of a Unbound is important, but Ego isn't. I suppose personal achievement towards the hive body might. There is no 'higher caste'. The mind is listened to simply because that is where all the smart unbounds are. Clearly parts of the mind that are most familiar with combat would have the most voice in a situation where the hive-body must combat something, etc.

And consider this. The broods make actually playing a character harder. I have no idea what brood my characters would be, so I've ignored using them. I've not seen any Vaurca player except you use them. They are really making it confusing as to who is what, and I believe they have no place in the current lore. It doesn't make sense to fracture the hive into different sections. Yes, those sections can exist, but they can exist without being listed. Its extremely confusing to write about Vaurca, because of all these changes.

EDIT: You should also look at the newest whitelist applicants for Vaurca, none of them are using the naming scheme that Vaurca use because it's no longer immediately obvious that they should.

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.

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.

What I am saying is that broods are very confusing.KISS is important in writing, Lesser Queens are a simpler solution. Broods don't need to exist for the hive to have disagreements. They are infinitely more complex than lesser queens and mix up the naming system that's already hardwired to identify hive in server culture. Pretty soon we are going to have K'lax broods, and I don't much enjoy having to reference a wiki every time I need to know whichever brood a Vaurca is.

What I am saying is that broods are very confusing.KISS is important in writing, Lesser Queens are a simpler solution. Broods don't need to exist for the hive to have disagreements. They are infinitely more complex than lesser queens and mix up the naming system that's already hardwired to identify hive in server culture. Pretty soon we are going to have K'lax broods, and I don't much enjoy having to reference a wiki every time I need to know whichever brood a Vaurca is.

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?

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.

Then at the very least separate broods from the naming scheme. I just saw your new changes. Broods work now, Its most important that the wiki is clear, and concise about naming, and you have made it very clear.

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?

Indeed! I particularly liked reading about that and to me, it is interesting reading about the Ra and Kza body types. I see Ra Unbound being effectively pages for older, wiser Unbound and Ra probably being the first job a new Unbound is given when it is brought into existence in the Virtual. Though I would say that Cephalon's are the single largest part of the Virtual neural-net. I see the entire map being something like...

Cephalons are the processing centers of a biomechanical neural net, hemispheres of the brain if you will, Ra are carrier cells, meant to send information between Cephalons in this biomechanical neural net. and Kza are routing centers in this biomechanical neural net, sending information where its suppose to go.

You very neatly described a neural net and now the Hive-net and Virtual feels like a brain, which is exactly what you were going for! I think now this thinking should be applied to the rest of the body, Since a large portion of the hive is made up of bound drones I think they would be the muscles or hands of the hive-body. As for Unbound, I feel that they should be extremely pragmatic when it comes to the preservation of the hive-body. The loss of a single Cephalon would be akin to a nuclear holocaust after all.

Your writing also highlights the Vaurcan mastery of genetics. The actual amount of binary data a human body holds encoded from DNA is around 150 Zettabytes. It makes complete sense that Vaurca would not seek mechanization when they hold much more efficient avenues of computing power. Nothing short of quantum computing comes close, so it makes sense that they were advanced to the point of building such large vessels and ships in the past and why recapturing the old glories from ancient Vaurca is a focus for them now. I imagine Vaurca romanticizing their history even more so than humans do because of this, which leads to the warrior-poet mindsets and philosophies.

The biggest difference between Vaurcan philosophy and human philosophy I feel would be the importance of truth and morality. Human philosophy attempts to define truth within the context of a morality, Vaurcan philosophy attempts to define truth in relation to the similarity of those who came before.

Then at the very least separate broods from the naming scheme. I just saw your new changes. Broods work now, Its most important that the wiki is clear, and concise about naming, and you have made it very clear.

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.

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.