[OOC] Into The Abyss - Suicidal Empires at the Ends of Time

Remaining Entities: 4

The Administrators - Active
Echo - Active
Blitzverzerrung - Active
The Caretaker - Active

[Arawak]

We have entered the heat death.

All you have left are black holes and dying stars for civilization.

The stellar era is the deep past, the eons of time unimaginable. The universe from your perspective is a deeply ancient place, being such a vast span of time since it is claimed to have begun in the annals of ancient mythologies of the era of stars.

There was at one point, a small group of galaxies which spanned civilizations which spanned entire galactic clusters. We do not know or ever will know, which galaxies those were.

And it isn't relevant.

For we exist in the era of degeneracy.

We are minds vast in scale- yet helpless in ability.

We try to die. Our systems do not let us.

Our dreams consist of endless simulations, of endless loops. It does not end.

Perpetual termination, that is what the secret desire is.

The ultimate goal of this final game is not to win- it is to lose faster than the enemy.

The enemy of whom, shall live forever.
-------

The Objective

The general objective, as stated above is to die faster than the others. You are to create a powerful immortal entity that has survived to the ends of time, kept alive by sub systems for eons upon eons as the stars died out and even white dwarves whimper to ash. The universe now is made less from celestial bodies and more the artificial constructions that are a part of these beings at the end of time- indeed there is unending warfare in these last eons to take what remains of the skeletons eating each other for bone marrow.

The ongoing objective is to find a way to get other players to kill you so that you may finally be free of this universe and its constrictions.

Some advice on writing from the perspective of immortal beings

The perspective here may be hard initially, as we humans only live decades and consider that a large span of time when it is infinitesimal to the beings here. If you are a guardian of some pet society, that pet society has done everything they could ever possibly do for eons on end from said guardian's perspective. To get some perspective on how vast the timescales are here imagine that said ant farm had been running for basically forever.

For that guardian, anyone in its ant farm has had someone exactly like them some trillions of years ago, the guardian would have seen their story millions of times over if not billions or even trillions based on their time dilation. The spans of time are simply that vast. It is to the point where FTL is not a thing, as a few light years is nothing when you can experience millennia as if it were seconds.

Imagining this may be hard, so you don't have to play from the perspective of such beings. Just there is nothing here that demands you are Cthulhu. You can be some average Joe kinda guy being kept alive forever. It could be some endless punishment imposed.

However, the following things should be true of whatever nation you make:

• There is some immortal entity that has self awareness who is given a bio.
• There are systems in place to keep said entity from enjoying the release of death.
• Said entity has a motive to want to commit suicide.

Miscellaneous

While there might be beings who insist to live to the end of the universe, let us assume the region of the universe we are in lacked such beings as ultimately this NRP has the goal of not being the last one alive.

Players who already suicided successfully may take on skeletal roles as members or sub systems of the remaining player's societies if they want to. I haven't implemented apps for this as this situation has not arisen yet.

History-wise, it is very ambiguous as anything from our time is utterly irrelevant. It is why I don't demand you be some alien creature (when not a human) as I may in a more traditional space opera RP as one could be extreme-distant future descendants of our species as easily as one could be some eldritch things in regards to the form.

Also the heading picture was made by Mark Rothko

Below is the app sheet.

App sheet

The Being(s)
[The being itself. Any information, physical, capabilities and otherwise. You can give them a history, but it isn't needed. It is at most a mythology this distant into the future. Feel free to be creative about this as the only real constraints are that it has to be immortal and not something that can easily kill itself.]

Its Systems
[The systems in place to keep this thing from killing itself. Be it some lesser societies built on it, dumb AIs or some other set of protocols meant to keep the being from killing itself. Your tech, including military tech would go here. Be warned- any tech you grant yourself will be used to make it harder to kill yourself.]

Other: [Any additional information]

[DELETED jdl3932]

MY BODY IS READY.

[DELETED jdl3932]

Moved to character's.

[Vega7]

The Administrators

The Beings

•The Administrators. Physically, they are humanoid in shape, never seen outside the strange spacesuits they wear. The traditional Administration uniform is a light grey, featureless bodysuit and a round helmet seemingly made of a transparent material, yet dimmed enough that one cannot see inside.

•Despite their traditional appearance, they are beings of great power. It's not known at what point they gained this ability, but they are capable of breathing in any atmosphere (in fact, they don't give off any sign that they do breath). Similarly unknown is how they feed - they don't appear outside their suits, so they don't visibly consume food around others. However, they can change what the outside of their helmet looks like to produce a facsimile of whatever species they are dealing with. More abilities of unknown origin are suspected to be of technological origin, such as teleportation, universal translation, and matter manipulation. However it's accomplished, it appears that every Administrator possesses these abilities.

•It's said that they were not always immortal; their form of immortality was gained when, millennia, eons ago, their species was nearly brought down by another. To stop themselves from ever being in such peril again, they changed themselves fundamentally. Now every Administrator, few though they may be, possess what they call a Lifewire; it prevents the death of an Administrator by both rapidly regenerating their current form, and, in the case that the body is completely destroyed, it brings them back by a sort of 'reality glitch' that causes the Administrator to be remade in the location they were destroyed with strange side effects, such as the offending danger being suddenly displaced by a large distance, any nearby hostile environmental factors calming down or simply stopping, the displacement of the Administrator themselves, pain in nearby sentients that observe the glitch, and, in some extreme cases, a altering of reality, such as the ship or planet they are on suddenly being displaced. However, the Lifewire never kills another being. It was made to assist the Administrators, not end others.

Its Systems

The aforementioned Lifewire is the main factor of their immortality. They cannot die, not of disease, old age, mortal wounds, anything at all, at least so far. The Lifewire does not seem to be technological, or at the very least it isn't anymore. Were it simply a part of their bodysuits, they would have removed it long ago. It seems to be built into the very being of each living Administrator (the population of Administrators is static - they stopped reproducing a long time ago, because of both the possible overpopulation they could cause and the fact that they realized it was entirely pointless for a race as ancient, powerful, and self-loathing as themselves to produce more). 

•To lesser civilizations, of which they observe and control many, they appear as gods. Despite this, they make no effort to appear as gods anymore, instead appearing in their classic bodysuit appearance and acting more in line with a cold and detached scientist. Because of this shared experience with the distant yet obviously powerful beyond imagination Administrators, many species also call them Observers or Monitors. To the lesser civilizations, the Administrators are myth and legend. They appear only in their oldest stories, drawings, and dreams. They rarely directly interfere, yet twist the fate of entire solar systems. To the older (much, much older) civilizations, they are seen as icey experimenters, constantly meddling with primitives. The observation and controlling of lesser civilizations is usually only headed by a single Administrator, hooked into a mainframe. If not, then it is headed by a small team of Administrators. All the experiments that required more personnel ended a long time ago, either because the civilization died out or was uplifted to the point that the Administrators couldn't uphold the appearance of gods without revealing themselves as higher-technology aliens.

•While the Administrator military hasn't been active for a long, long time, it is still highly competent. They do not field large amounts of foot-soldiers despite their immortality, instead using androids and drones to do the dirty work. A single Administrator, hooked up into a mainframe, can operate an entire spacecraft. They prefer to leave the operation up to AI when not in important situations. They do not enjoy killing (not that they dislike it either); many of their weapons are made to cripple, paralyze, or render unconscious. They usually only mobilize small parts of the military when lesser civilizations get uppity (while the Administration may want to die, they don't want to go out as someone else's vassal or have someone else steal their spotlight). Individual Administration assassins, called Indigos, are utilized in experiments to remove key leaders of lesser civilizations or to prevent larger civilizations from crippling the Administration or rendering them harmless (of course, experiments are generally pointless now; they just run them to pass the time). An Indigo is a fiercesome specimen, wearing a high-tech version of the normal Administrator suit and wielding small rifles one-handed along with large blades capable of cutting through almost anything (this is usually used for cutting through walls and such), along with other useful gadgets.

•A big part of both labor and military forces are the drones and androids. Most constructions and military operations are handled by androids, who use drones as eyes and other uses. Drones and droids are always silvery or dark grey, never making any attempt to resemble their creators or anyone else. The Administration does not live on regular worlds, instead creating what they deem Drone-Moons, small, entirely metal planetoids, which are also built to be utopias for the many uplifted thrall species under the Administration. The thralls, once primitive species experimented on by the Administrators, now serve loyally as independent agents for the Administration when they don't feel like sparing an Indigo or droid or even just doing the dirty work themselves. The Administration is effectively the center of a large empire of a sorts, lead by the First Foreman and the other Foremen.

[Sirkaithethird]

I’m feeling a borg race coming...

[Arawak]

I am waiting until the weekend to go officially accept people so more people have time build up their apps. However, Vega and ZAVAG so far are de facto accepted and can plot stuff with each other beforehand if they want.

@Sirkaithethird
Sounds like it may be in violation of the suicide motive constraint. I'd rather people not make Factions whose "kill" involves keeping self aware entities alive if they "defeat" other entities as that ruins the desired dynamic by making actually winning wars through force a viable strategy.

[Circ]

Moved to character tab.

[Arawak]

Looks good to me.

Just do I understand, is the idea they have gateways to our reality from the warp bubbles they/the AI have enclosed themselves in?

[Circ]

Looks good to me.

Just do I understand, is the idea they have gateways to our reality from the warp bubbles they/the AI have enclosed themselves in?

@Arawak

Yup, they can tunnel matter/energy into and out of the warp bubbles via some sort of subspace mechanism, but it allows them to basically view the rest of the universe.

[Arawak]

They're accepted.

Both tentatives also accepted

[Sierra]

Hmmm, do you watch Civilizations at the End of Time by Isaac Arthur by any chance?

[Arawak]

Hmmm, do you watch Civilizations at the End of Time by Isaac Arthur by any chance?

@Sierra

I've watched basically every isaac Arthur episode.

[Sierra]

I've watched basically every isaac Arthur episode.

@Arawak

The concepts struck me as pretty familiar right away. Always nice to run into a fellow SFIA follower in the wild.

[Arawak]

I should note everyone with an accepted app is free to post if they want to.

[Circ]

@Arawak and @ZAVAZggg -- if I conducted a full frequency scan of surrounding space, would I be able to detect anything specific about your characters? I'm assuming, for this RP, we should be able to at least notice something out of place to at least begin the process of interaction, but I'm wondering if there is anything more specific we'd notice.

[DELETED jdl3932]

@Arawak and @ZAVAZggg -- if I conducted a full frequency scan of surrounding space, would I be able to detect anything specific about your characters? I'm assuming, for this RP, we should be able to at least notice something out of place to at least begin the process of interaction, but I'm wondering if there is anything more specific we'd notice.

@Circ

Velocity. An object whose speed is the only thing detected by scanners. Everything else will have to be confirmed visually, usually after it lands. Not sure about Arawak's character though. Also I should point out that I'm landing on one of the civilizations under Vega7's control.

[Arawak]

@ZAVAZggg Everyone even this far off in the future will be giving off some form of heat signatures people with tech like ours will most likely detect.

With the huge spans of time there is good chance prior interactions have occurred, like it's why I am certain the administrators had some historical troubles with my civ.

[Circ]

@ZAVAZggg Everyone even this far off in the future will be giving off some form of heat signatures people with tech like ours will most likely detect.

With the huge spans of time there is good chance prior interactions have occurred, like it's why I am certain the administrators had some historical troubles with my civ.

@Arawak

I don't think a blitzverzerrung would typically give off a heat signature, based on its design and the fact it exists outside of "normal" spacetime, but you'd see localized gravitational waves as the warp bubble moves around. And definitely a heat/energy signature when it does its scan.

[DELETED jdl3932]

So...is this still going?

[Arawak]

@ZAVAZggg
It is still going.