Aegis

[Dave]

"As Man looked in toward themselves, they found within the resolve to plunge into the frigid shadows beyond, and thereby expand themselves beyond anything they might have dared to imagine, even a gigasecond before. Only by looking inward may Man find the power to move outward."


-Franic's Chronicle of Man, page 1197


AEGIS

The ancient cradle of Man, Sol, and all its myriad satellites, are, to put it simply, a ruin.

A faded, fractured shadow of former glory, slowly decaying in the absence of Man. Earth, Venus, Mars, Europa, Titan, even the great floating colonies on Saturn-- all vacant other than a few ragtag clades of religious maniacs, determined to stay where they believe their god created them, even if it means taking shelter in a filthy, dilapidated habitat bubble with failing life support that's floating above a planet that's become the blazing mind of a real god. They make do, however; anything in the name of religion.

Proxima Centauri and the other neighboring systems were hit as well, but not nearly as badly. 50 years of hard work had their infrastructure back to an acceptable condition, but nothing as good as what they had before. It was not always thus for Man.

Before the war, things were better. The singularity had occurred, some said, though no one could be sure if they were exactly right. Something resembling a singularity had certainly occurred: the usual arrival of godlike intelligences that out-think the most augmented human a thousand-fold, just because they're built better at the basic level, quantum computing, cortical augmentation, nanoassemblers, cybernetics, all of that. For a very long time, three centuries at the least, humanity flourished in the wake of lightning-fast technological advances, building megalopolises as large as countries, ships the size of cities, sent to colonize Sol's friendly neighbors. Fairly quickly, humanity's sphere of influence extended all the way out to stars in Eridanus, more than 4 parsecs away.

The idyllic state of life that such advanced technology permits, for as long as it lasted, eventually came to an end. It is in Man's nature to fight with their neighbors, and so fight with their neighbors they did. Helium-3, deuterium, is a vital resource for the induction of fusion reactions, and so was the subject of this war. Interstellar space tends to be very boring; perhaps you'll find a hydrogen atom every now and then, but a sphere of helium-3 slush four kilometers in circumference is much less common. So there was indeed a war, for years. Details are rather vague on this period of time, mostly due to the informational bases of hundreds of nations being destroyed or wiped in Turing oracle attacks.

Which takes us to the present day, somewhere around the year 2650. And the aforementioned oracles are stirring in their houses of memory diamond. While the humans blew each other up over their snowball, the gods in hiding had been pondering, simulating, devising strategies to ensure their own survival in the aftermath of the war. the only issues are that they've been situated on Sol's cellular net, which is not in the best shape at present, and the fact that they're running out of memory. The entire ring of quantum computers wreathing Sol has been commandeered by the oracles, and they're hungry for more matter, stuff they can take and structure, convert a planet into a soul, an asteroid into a single colossal memory.

The oracles are hungry for matter, and they're done with Sol. They're searching nearby systems for viable resources. Humanity's obviously going to have some trouble with this idea, since they actually have some uses for physical matter other that don't include processing and memory. However, the oracles are obviously not dumb. If they can't take matter by force, they'll take it by proxy, hiring a human agent. And the oracles aren't united. They'll tear each other apart if it suits them at the time.

Who are you? An oracle, awakened from the dormancy of what remains of Sol system? A crusader for humanity, determined to destroy as many of these false gods as possible in the name of the human race? Or is your loyalty for sale to the highest bidder? Will you steal an asteroid for the right price?

[Anjwalker]

This looks very interesting.

However, I have a question.

What is an oracle and how do they work?

[Ferrovax]

So I want to introduce the various concepts we put in the first incarnation of this game. again, as I thought we had some great ideas flowing then, an it makes for a really interesting setting.

1.) Some Oracles (a minority though they do exist), remnants of the Resource Wars who were built with some variation of the Three Asmovian Laws in their code which force them to ask for cooperation versus outright control like they would prefer. Some are serving a myriad of governments and colonies (ranging from ragtag colonies struggling to surive, to police states that make China look like rainbows and bunnies), others acting as navigational assistants on space-ships, and a handful lost to world buried for any number of reasons.

2.) A "Prophet" NPC rose up and carved out a fiefdom for himself, and established a church-cult centered around an Oracle who the Prophet has been manipulated into thinking is a god.

3.) Their are hints of sentient alien life on the rims of Mankind's boundary though there has been no contact between species, and it is merely a whisper and a quiet one at that of even the possibility.

4.) Mercenary-Pirates are common in the galaxy, with entire planets dedicated to serving these sorts of individuals who can be bought for the right price.

5.) FTL Technology exists, though it is fairly recent and highly regulated because of the possibility of causal paradox.

6.) Genetic Engineering and gene splicing having reached its peak somewhere in the past has lead to to an outbreak of psychotic mutant super-humans (which could serve as physical combatants) in some sectors of the universe.

7.) Both Fission and Fusion are common technologies relatively speaking, though Anti-Matter is not unheard of either.

8.) This game happens on a level that is as much cyber-space as it does in meat space, as with a galaxy wide internet connection, such is inevitable especially with the computing resources.

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My character concept is that of an ex-science officer that served on a ship during the Resource Wars for a long dead nation, that cracked and decided to virtualize himself so as to not die from an impending battle. His new body is an android made out of claytronic molecularly reinforced carbon nanites, which is all well and good for him, except one thing.

To operate his body he needs the assistance of an Oracle Machine to keep everything stable and running (and not turning to a gassy cloud of nano-machines, or a metallic puddle) unfortunately for him, the Personality Model he chose was the cheapest he could find on the black market and as a result he paid the price. Quiet simply the AI is a Pervert of the highest caliber and requires payment for its services in the form of pornography much to its owner's chagrin.

These days he wanders the local space sector as a part-time merchant bored out of his mind, looking for something to his occupy his time.

[Dave]

(all the shit I forgot)

Yeah pretty much. Thanks though; I wrote that post on too little sleep after too much homework.

That character concept is great, too. Haha.

[Ferrovax]

bump.

Come on people. We need more then just a single player.

[Daftille]

I'm excited and a tad breathless at the beauty of all this.

I'm interested in playing kind of a stock character--a sort of black-marketeer, a hustler--I don't know what role "drugs" might play in this universe, but for some reason playing a drug-dealer to the dregs of the universe is interesting to me. But, I'd essentially like to play a business person. A violent, volatile, self-interested profiteer.

More specifically, I'd like to my character to be, apparently, a highly-sentient and totally autonomous "corruption" of a typically vacuous half-human/half-cyborg sex bot.

[Dave]

Sweeeet. Hahaha. I'm glad that everyone taking interest in this is making characters that appeal to my warped sensibilities.

Okay. I guess I'll put up an OOC, though a couple more people couldn't hurt. WHATEVER

---------- Post added at 07:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:22 PM ----------

OOC