Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
1. Reaper strategy?
Do the Reapers employ combat doctrines or formations in their periodical harvests, or they just conduct a disorganised galactic siege without even a speck of coordination (the cthulu rip-offs just massing system by system)?
Reapers typically don’t need to resort to such. Usually, they arrive (about 60) at the galaxy’s citadel and use the Remote Link to shut down all mass relays. They use the Caretaker race (Keepers in our galaxy, for example) to suppress and indoctrinate everyone aboard the Citadel and then use the knowledge to identify weak spots. Every hour another sixty to one hundred Reapers arrive until the First Wave (roughly five to six hundred lesser Reapers , fifty or so Greater Reapers and a few hundred thousand Occuli and destroyers) is in place and carve up the races clockwise.
Only when faced with equal power (Inusannon, Vortha, some energy beings in the past) do Reapers have to use strategy. The Reapers aren’t good at it — despite their vast intellect, none of the Three were warriors and most races warmaking methods don’t include use of the Godpower. Strategy is limited to massing several strike groups and using the Godpower to disrupt enemy weapons and then jump into their ranks, firing away.
If pressed, Reapers are more likely to sacrifice stars and rely on Godpower strikes than any kind of strategy.
2. Reverse Engineering
Could each species reverse engineer the technology of the others to advance their own? For example, alien firearms and other military tech tend to be abandoned in battlefields (either spent or simply because the user was killed), why won’t just the SA RE them gain an advantage?
To some degree. Most parts that are unique are wrapped in a special kind of omnifoam shell that if broken sprays acid or deconstructive nanites over the special stuff — DRM in effect.
However, some reverse engineering, especially in ships and industrial stuff, has taken place. Ashland Eldfell HE3 fueling stations are never taken intact because the hyperscoops have VI’s that trigger self-destructs, but other captures of tech have happened. Salarians are the best at reverse engineering, followed by quarians. Asari engineers are the worst at it.
However, most military forces combat engineers will do all they can to wreck left behind gear — turians go so far as to equip their combat medics and engineers with cans of deconstructive nano just for that purpose.
3. Batarian eyes
What’s with Batarians consecrating their eyes? I know that they do this because of the Black Leviathans (except when an eyeball is sacrificed to them) but why would they even care for the body part, it’s not like those are significant to their plans… Right?
The batarian eyes are of religious significance. The batarians claim the soul has four parts, each one exiting through a specific eye. If not lost in a fitting manner, the spirit is believed to be fractured and weak.
There is no real significance in terms of the Black Leviathans, but the Influence tends to make organics more mystical, superstitious and believing in … otherworldly events, due to the fucked up dreams and visions they entail.
4. Even fight
During the Eternal War, the Ascended’s battle with the Darkness is clearly asymmetric (The Levis being 9D while the Darkness is 11D), making them highly outmatched by the latter.
But… let’s imagine a scenario: Let’s say the Darkness (we still don’t know if this thing is even a single entity or a species) is 9D as well.
With their… dimensional ratings even, how could’ve the war gone?
Mutual destruction. Even with the might of the Darkness, it couldn’t destroy the All-Highest — a great portion of its strength was spent in locking the All-Highest and a chunk of the Darkness into an eternal sealed time-like looped curve.
Without the advantage of being fully superscalar, the Darkness might have lost. The Ascended were (and are) disgustingly powerful.
Keep in mind – clowns like Mr. Mxyzptlk, one the most powerful DC villians, is a FIFTH Dimensional being. Much lower on the totem pole.
5. Katha and the Dark Gods
Since you revealed that the Ascended god-king arranged his species into a tier of pantheons, where would Katha and the Black Leviathans be placed? As stated in the Hanar Miscelany, these guys are the military-types. Which of these individuals are superior and subordinate, and why do i have the inkling feeling that Katha is the Ascended ‘God’ of War?
Katha was pretty much the military leader of the species, and probably the physically strongest Leviathan. His Godpower abilities were weaker than Lethath and the All-Highest by far, but his attacks (blasts of biotic and pure energy, ‘screams’ and ‘war-chants’ and the like) were much stronger, and his ability to use ‘focused-mind’ techniques to channel energy into his direct physical strikes was enourmous — he could shatter a planet with a few blows.
The All-Highest and the Court of Eternal Gaze were on top of the society — the shaman-kings who explored the Godpower. Below them were the Seekers of the Way — Ascended Godpower scientists — and the Tenders — those who ruled over the thousands of galaxies and altered / created new life.
Below them was the military, mainly responsible for smashing any races that dared touch the Godpower and to destroy multidimensonal dangers (like the Darkness but much weaker) that came through the unfinished Eternity Gate.
Below that were Ascended ‘civilians’ — power creators, those who shaped galaxies, those who created biosciences, and regular scientists. Each one of these had an ‘array’ of things they were responsible for (and worshipped for in the expanded society).
Ultimately, Katha was not a ‘high ranking’ Ascended, but he was VERY well known by all Ascended and even the All-Highest was … cautious about pissing him off. Katha was not like most Ascended even before the Fall, and he’s only grown less like them over the years.
At this point the best reference would actually be Asura from Asura’s wrath. He may seem cool and tranquil but he is fucking FURIOUS at the incompetance of the All-Highest and the Seekers for getting not only their people massacred and either destroyed or crammed into cheap Reaper knockoffs, but also for the loss of until quadrillions of their worshippers, who expected their gods to protect them.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
I think the fact that I somehow never managed to connect symmetrical breaking in constrained degenerate energy states (such as a naked singularity) and how you can use brane/membrane variants to induce the needed perturbation is what made me giggle.
You can indeed use such a thing as a weapon. You can, of course, do much, much worse. Tell me, skipping the math and reading those articles — what happens if you pass said naked singularity through a ring?
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
1. NGO powers
This applies to the Mercenaries and Megacorps. How did they get away from government scrutiny, i mean… governments wouldn’t want organization outside their sphere with that much influence(militarily and economically). Take the Megacorps for example, aren’t antitrust laws supposed to keep them in a leash?
So… why did the governments permit their existence?
Mercs and Megacorps have very different beginnings.
Mercenary security companies were originally brought into being by the salarians, who had a long history of experts selling themselves to the highest bidder. Asari maidens were quick to join up looking for adventure, and while the krogan were extant before the Rebellions, they too added cachet and drama to mercs.
Mercenaries had to (and still have to) apply to the Citadel for licensing, as well as the governments of the space they wish to operate in.
The primary reason for their growth was twofold. First, military forces were strictly limited in activities beyond their own borders, and were ‘official’ in nature — merc groups were deniable in who hired them. Most merc work was carried out in support of mega corps, separatists and revolutionaries, and governments who wanted to keep things quiet.
Bigger mercenary corporations didn’t really evolve until the formation of Azure’s Kiss, an asari outcast group based in Omega. At first derided as criminals, they worked very hard to establish legitimate business contacts on Ilium and Vol Prime. Eclipse followed shortly thereafter, using a different model of ‘chapters’ with loose obedience to Jona Sederis usually shaped by the ‘co-founder- of the time period, which was always her lover — when one died she ‘remade’ the organization with a new one.
Megacorps evolved organically from the need to have independent legal enclaves when interacting with highly alien species, and extraterritoriality to protect certain government actions. They were primarily a focus of the Volus, and the turians copied them like they did in most things financial. Asari megacorps are almost non-existant outside of Ilium, as most large concerns are run by ‘councils’ (like the Armali Council with weapons, or Serrice Council with bio amps) that combine clan and Thirty together.
Earth megacorps were given a pass by the Manswells, who wanted the richest and most powerful individuals on the planet outside of the Lords of Sol to back them and their endeavors.
2. Red Sand
What does it do exactly? All we know is that it’s the contemporary cocaine.
Red sand is a substance that provides a euphoric high, amplifies both the power and stability of biotics, denudes ionic discharge channels in the nervous system to make cooldowns almost zero, and provides a baseline biotic field boost to strength and speed. It can make a non-biotic a weak demibiotic for a short time, or turn a powerful biotic into a nightmare.
Red sand CAN be used by the otherwise non biotic elcor, but does nothing for hanar except make them very ill.
3. Leviathan power struggle?
Given how every single Ascended bore a god-complex so much that they stopped reproducing to hoard power, how come the entire race didn’t descend into a… cataclysmic FFA for the title of ‘true’ god?
There were two main reasons. The first is that the most powerful of the Leviathans, the All-Highest, literally held that position. He was at least twenty or thirty times as strong as the next nearest competitor, and he had organized society into a tier of pantheons. Each Ascended was a ‘god’ of a specific aspect that concerned them.
The second reason is that the Ascended did not have any instinct to fight one another, aside from in their very ancient days feeding on elders too large to support their own weight before they became gods. Ascended were linked by a psionic network of incredible complexity and power.
A third, lesser reason is most of them were simply too busy to pay much attention to other Ascended. Aside from the moratorium on having offspring — which they planned to rescind as soon as their experiment had succeeded — the Ascended despised limits and laws…and were adept at placing themselves in positions where interactions were limited.
4. Thrall races
Being able to do virtually anything without effort, why bother with having other races serving them and giving ‘tribute’. From what i can garner from Fear Unrelenting, all races evolved from Itharian lifeforms seeded by them on countless planets.
Is it because they’re downright lazy or just overwhelmingly egoistic to be worshiped?
This makes me wonder what would they do if they actually did meet ‘alien’ lifeforms, particularly if on-par with their god-like status.
Their egoism was incredibly titanic, to be sure. And they had a huge taste for being worshipped.
They were the first life that developed, and on occasion they ran across true non-Ilthorian life (silicon based in several instances). Anything with potential for Godpower they destroyed utterly, in some cases incinerating entire galaxies in sheer rage at the effrontery of something daring to evolve to counter them.
5. Jack’s friends
Being the main reason why Jack Harper became TIM in the first place, how did they die enough to change a man. The only thing i know is that both of them perished brutally over the course of the FCW.
Basically, Desolus used them to get Jacks’ insurgents to surrender. Then he killed them. Then the SA used a hidden tracking beacon to blow up Desolus’s camp and blew the fuck out of the bodies.
Eva Core was Jacks’ fiance and pregnant with his child. Ben was his best friend, and the woman who’d helped raise him was also killed.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
If this doesn’t qualify me for a cameo as Aish Ashland’s long-suffering brother than nothing does.
You will have to write all his lines. I’ll send you the necessary information at the time he gets to speak later in ME2.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
There are two ‘types’ of arcology on Earth. The differences are mostly confined to the shape and distribution.
The majority of arcologies are ‘conal class’. These are built in replacement of the city they cover, stacked in huge circular rings that slowly decrease in size as they increase in altitude. Most conals have ten levels — the bottom level is given to the military and support machinery, the lower levels to the poor, the middle levels to the wealthy, and the top two levels to defenses. Conal class arcologies replaced most small to midsized cities due to the damage done during the war.
The second kind is the archclass. Two huge arches meet in an X shape, and a thick wall runs around the outside of the ends of each arch. Everything within is protected by powerful layered kinetic, magnetic and omni-shield barriers (the omni-shields require geothermic taps to power and usually only activate during armada storms or direct attack). The outer ‘wall’ is half a mile thick and riddled with defenses and military emplacement, while the pre-Iron city sits underneath the dome just as it did. Many roads have been replaced by mag-lines, but for the most part the cities have not changed. The arches are full of mounted weapons, defense platforms, and the like.
Huge cities like New York, Vancouver and London are usually archclass arcologies.
One final unofficial kind of arcology can be found at what is today Yellowstone Park. The entire supercaldera there has been drilled and converted into a giant power-source, generating titanically thick and powerful kinetic and omni-barriers over the Bastion: an emergency military command bunker buried a mile into the earth. The Bastion is ringed with the most powerful anti-space and anti-air defenses on the planet, and is the official base of the Solguard.
Cryogentically frozen seed stock and DNA from every surviving lifeform on earth (as well as millions of donated fertilized human eggs) is stored here, as well as emergency stocks of eezo and other rare materials. A third of the facility is given over to water and food generation and storage. In case of outright siege invasion of Earth, the High Lords would instruct military commanders to fall back to this location and hold for as long as possible. (The High Lords would not retreat to such a position.)
Arcologies are fully sealed against the environment — they chemically crack water from the local water table or rivers and lakes into oxygen and hydrogen. Some is them recombined to form chemically pure water. O2 is stocked in tanks and other machines extract nitrogen from the atmosphere to make artificial air. Hydrogen not used is given to the fusion reactors.
Each arcology also has powerful air and water filtration systems, if the machinery to create their own goes down and to filter areas where aircraft or mag-line trains enter and exit. The surrounding lands of each arcology are heavily fortified and millions of mechs and Penal Legionares patrol the wastes around each arcology. Most have outlying farm and ranch automated buildings in close proximity.
Order is maintained by the arcology police, and a system of mercenary police units called bounty services, who capture or kill criminals in return for money. Police are typically reserved for more dangerous crimes and riot control.
All services are government operated and owned — it is illegal to sell air or clean water for a profit.
Most arcologies are secured by a mix of war mechs, local military units, small Solguard detachments, and infantry units rotated to Earth as a reward for good service. Most civilians are allowed very light mass accelration weapons if they are ex-military (the USA, Argentina, and South Africa allow all citizens with no citizenship restriction to bear arms). Local citizens can sign up for militias to aid in defense, and each arcology has enough weapons, light body armor and medigel to arm every man, woman and child over the age of 12 in case of invasion.
Most conal arcologies are very hierarchal, and newer than the archclass arcologies. There is a great deal of ‘money flight’ — the rich prefer out of the way, smaller arcologies with a small middle-class service population. This has resulted in the archclass arcologies becoming increasingly segregated — outlying areas given over to the rich, while the downtown areas are also given over to the rich, ringed about with middleclass homes and slums for the poor.
Vancouver does not allow anyone but those with annual incomes in the top 20% of Earth Citizens to reside within the arcology’s boundaries — two separate conal arcologies in close proximity provide the population for service industries.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
I know that this is quite a… sensitive subject to discuss with you LP. But know that there’s no offense intended, i’m just curious.
I’d also like to address this.
As a rule, as a black guy, I tend to see about 95% of claims of ‘racism’ as bullshit. Having been to Apartheid era South Africa and a few other charming destinations, I’m more aware than most what ‘real’ racism looks like.
I never want anyone to think they can’t discuss racial issues with me, although I would submit that it’s probably better done in PM or in the chat room (not that this question was inappropiate — I think it fits). In fact I’d much rather engage any form of that sort of discussion than avoid it, since I firmly believe the first step to moving past the bullshit is talking about it.
I also want to say that there’s nothing any of my readers can bring up that would piss me off — I’m grateful to each one of you for giving me some kind of … anchor to focus on considering the state of my life. If Quentin cannot get under my skin (and he cannot :p) then none of you can either 😀
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
Some elements of the Klan ended up in EAGL and other organizations that were viciously purged from America by the SA over time, but the majority of the membership was probably killed in the Days of Iron. Southern America had the least amount of preparedness for disasters, low investments in support infrastructure, and waaay too many people who had long prepared for ‘teh end of the world’.
Racism in the modern-day SA is almost entirely sublimated except for a very slight bias (especially in business) for euro-chinese types, and extreme racism towards anyone with Brazilian heritage.
So much racial mixing occurred (by design, Victor Maxwell was an asshole on many levels but he was actually rather fond of dog breeding and felt the concept of hybrid vigour could be applied en masse to humanity) that ‘racism’ as we would understand it today would be almost incomprehensible to modern SA citizens.
I’m not sure if it’s sad or infuriating that I’m so cynical I think racism can’t be overcome except by the world literally being destroyed.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
1) Temple of Athame
I’m writing an update to No Single Raindrop that will cover the Temple in more details.
2) Terrorism
What is the state of terrorism and terrorist organisations in the Premiseverse?Terrorism is still very common, especially with turian separtists, quarian exiles, and fringe groups in the Systems Alliance.
The scale varies. Most governments disdain getting involved in backing terrorists, since they are highly unreliable and likely to sell out their backers. No non-human terrorists are religous in nature, while most human terrorists are (Christian, Muslim, and Jewish fundamentalists).
None of the terrorist groups have any really advanced tech, mostly being threats to outlying colonies and trade lanes. Whenever one does start developing real power, Spectres (or other black ops groups) tend to kill them off. Most of them are tolerated as live-fire training for their militaries and as scapegoats for other actions taken either by aliens or by internal security teams.
3) Grey Goo and Nanotech
The League of Zero file will touch on a lot of it. Gray Goo is impossible with most available nanotech, as it is explicitly designed to not self-replicate past a certain point (and has no programming to do so) and can be deactivated fairly easily with EMP or RF.
Black nano is so feared and illegal because it can self-replicate and is hard to shut off, but even then such a scenario is EXTREMELY unlikely. Outbreaks in the past were contained with fusion explosives and/or corrosive orbital bombardments.
I’ve gone over some of the nanotech stuff in the tech guide, but basically nanothreading (what was done to Benezia and Saren) is the line. Complete physical reconstruction from almost anything that doesn’t vaporize the body entirely. Nanotech is still a field very much in expansion in the Council races, since it stalled for centuries until salarians invented more creative methods of HF order transmissions to individual nanites.
4) Cybernetic society
How disruptive is automated technology, robotic manufacturing, VI operators, mechs and omni gel technology to human and alien societies? This is slowly becoming an issue right now in real life and it’s only going to get worse (or better, depending on your perspective) and we launch ahead into the 21st century. There’s already a great deal of pressure in some sectors by automation and robotic workers, and what we have now would be cartoonishly primitive compared to what we see in the Premiseverse or even ME canon. How did the various civilisations adjust and adapt to it over time? How disruptive was this technology to their societies, economies or even cultures? Are there masses of restless drones pissed off that mechs are superior to them for most work? Just how much regular work (by our standards) is simply not a thing done by people anymore? How did the various civilsations cope with having 25-50% of their population made suddenly redundant or at least insecure?It depends a LOT on the species. Some races, like quarians, are by definition always cybernetic due to their unique issues, while others (batarians, most volus, krogan) rarely if ever use it.
Most people don’t think of ‘manufacturing’ as a job, it’s something done by VI’s and omnifoundries, or big robotics setups. However, products are so complex that almost all automated production needs supervision, which is a large source of jobs.
Omni-gel tech shut down a lot of repair facilities, and now most ‘repair facilties’ actually work on either things too expensive or delicate for omnifoundries or on DRM sealed packages.
A lot of wage suppression in the poorer parts of Earth, Thessia, Sur’Kesh and Irune can be laid at the feet of automation and the use of mechs, and it’s not getting better. In many places you can get a better standard of living by going and joining pirates/slavers/raiders, which is ultimately what the big governments want — release valves for difficult citizens.
That being said, the wealthy tend to want things ‘hand made’, and niche industries (like on Inte’sai) can be very profitable wtih knickknacks, art, custom furniture, etc.
Some races (particularly drell and elcor) hate industrialization and automation and in the case of the elcor are the main reason why they aren’t more powerful — elcor produce everything manually.
5) Other Spectres. We haven’t heard much about them, but these people have to be the finest their species have to offer. Each one of them would be the hero of any other story. So, any big names we’ve yet to meet? How does the rest of the Spectre Corp actually operate? What are their relationships like with each other and with their home species? Do we get to hear the legend of Jondam Bau? (He, Tazzik, Eni Geisha, Aria, and Tyrion No Kage clearly deserve their own STG reports).
A lot of the Spectre’s tend to fly under the radar. There’s only about eight ‘big name’ Spectres — Vasir and Bau are the most famous at this time. There’s a lot of turian Spectres and quite a few salarians. One quarian joined the ranks a few months before Shepard woke up, and there’s talk of making Valerie Kyle a Spectre.
For the most part, Spectres fall inte one of three groups — specialists in some form of technology or operations, assassins, and soldier-special ops. Almost half of all Spectres are specialists, which range from poisoners and hackers to drone rig operators and financial analysts. 40% of Spectres are assasins, focusing on stealth and speed along with sniping or CQB. Very few are the special ops types that get all the limelight.
6) Catalyst. What does he do with all his time, if he’s truly trapped or at least localised to the Citadel? Compute and ponder all of existence? Run simulations of entire universes stretched out over billions of years, all in his mind? Does Catalyst have a plan of its own? Can it access or influence things outside of the Citadel?
Catalyst is localized to the Citadel, but that’s not really a smart thing for the Reapers to have done, given that Catalyst built the place. THe Citadel can be reconfigured and can move. He just hasn’t bothered to do so.
Most of his time is spent modeling outcomes and (since Lethath woke him up) aiding the Old One scientist in experiments and sensor readings. Catalyst can hack much better than Vigil can and has pretty much complete access to everything going on in the galaxy except for the Collectors.
Catalyst can ‘control’ individual Keepers and has already assigned more than a few in hidden areas of the Citadel to build him a mobile form, should one be needed. He also has access to the Archives, so many critical secrets he already knows about.
Catalyst can’t tap into Godpower directly, but he knows a fuck of a lot more about it than Reapers do, and is certainly capable of wrenching Godpower in action out of a Reaper’s tentacles and turning it back on them. While he can’t defeat all Reapers at once, he’s more than powerful enough in a direct hacking contest to smash the minds of dozens of them at a time.
Much of his time is also spent pondering on how to deal with the Darkness, and beyond that on whether or not it should have Lethath killed (since he’s , y’know, the reason EVERYTHING is fucked up).
For now he’s more focused on humiliating the Three and watching the antics of Vigil laying his own plans. He thinks Vigil is cute, kind of like a small, yappy puppy who tries to act tough. Most organics are beneath his notice rihgt now, but he’s carefully watching Richard Williams, Shepard, Muvai Solus, Uressa, and P., and deciding which one he will back when the time comes.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
I will have to ponder the third and second questions a bit before responding….but interesting choices.
The First one is easy: at each step they can travel and affect things of that dimension: space, space-time interaction, gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, exclusivity, relativistic acceleration, and finally strings themselves.
Halo’s creators are being sloppy. There can be ‘interaction planes’ between dimensions — but slipspace would be a hyperspace variant, which does NOT fit into the M-String theory system. That being said, Cantor’s theorums of infinite numbers and declinations means such a thing is … theoretically possible, but it’s hard to say which dimensions it would be ‘between’.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
There is that part during Garrus’ recruiting mission where Vigil acknowledges he’s facing limits over opposing hacking attempts. I mentioned this seems like a fake limit, and suggested Vigil is likely much more limited by how many connections he’s got to secret ships somewhere, and got an innocent whistle from LP.
To be fair, there is only so much data that can be handled at a given time. If Vigil splits into maximum bandwidth configuratation (six main cores, each surrounded by eighteen subunits) he could conceivably hack everything.
In the galaxy.
At the same time.
The problem is speed of light limitations. Unless he’s line of sight to what he’s hacking, he can’t bend the rules. His own ansible (faster than light) relay time is effectively zero, so he cheats by making a subunit where he needs to hack and then hacking through the subunit, but there’s a limit to how many subunits each core can handle, and he can only make six cores.
Vigil, unified with all cores and subunits subsumed into himself, is fully capable of going toe-to-toe with most Reapers in terms of hacking strength, but the Catalyst would crush him in seconds.
Vigil cannot hack anything that’s hardlined away from the extranet, nor can he hack hardened systems that don’t have inputs. He can’t hack, for example, the High Lords main server, because that has NO external connections and only wired ones (armored cables buried a mile underground).
Vigil can also be overwhelmed with counter-hacks — enough geth or Silver Legion runtimes simply waste so many processing cycles he can’t keep up, and while they’re no match for him they might still get lucky and inflict some damage.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
I seem to have missed this. Huh.
1) Can you go into more detail about what strange aspects of the Inusannon were natural, and which they developed over time?
The Inusannon evolved very strangely. Ilos was already fucked up even before their race arose, as a far older race had been running dimensional fatigue experiments on it.
While they did not design the Inusannon, the results of weakened reality levels lead many creatures on Ilos to develop an ability to perceive flashes of the future (or past) and to utilize the fifth and sixth dimensions to ‘bend’ spacetime and allow for quick movement.
I’m sorry I don’t have better terms, but it’s like describing three dimensions to a being who lives in two dimensions. Inusannon in battle can ‘see’ a hazy outline of the possible movements a foe’s body will make, or the trajectories of weapons before they fire. They can ‘hear’ dimensional weirdness like the ‘sound’ eezo emits.
They can ‘smell’ … or ‘taste’ … beings who have tampered with or use higher dimensional effects.
Being able to partially phase into the fifth and sixth dimensions means their physical aspect is never all present in realspace at once. The Inusannon ‘body’ — humanoid with a tentacular face and three glowing eyes — is only ‘part’ of them. If they get injured, they can shift matter from phasespace to realspace…which to us looks like they instantly heal any wounds.
2) I’m sure this is a spoiler heavy question, but what’s going on with the weirdness of Ylana and her base? Some of her wording comes across as being controlled by the Inusannon, but the explicit mention of “Gift of Sight” sounds like what the Leviathans did.
Ylana had figured out some of how the Tho’ians managed to disrupt indoctrination. However, the project failed…and she had to be ‘upgraded’ to deal with the damage Tho’ian spores did to her.
The Collectors realized quickly that Ylana’s group, while it had a LOT of money, didn’t have the scientific knowledge (or mobility) to assemble what they needed. They thus staked her out as a lightning rod once the Broker came calling.
3) Any interesting details about what’s going on with the biotic-reactive ruins of Gryt-III?
Hint: read the description carefully…and think about what race built them.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
This is the worst kind of teasing. And all the smiley faces later on? That’s just rubbing it in.
😀 😀 😀
Okay, I’ll take the bait. Who’s Yahg Lord Flashheart and what did he do to earn each of those names? Did he know Ty’tra’yect before? Surely they would have at least met or crossed paths at one point. Surely the Broker would HATE even the concept of there being a superior predator to him.
The Yahg Emperor earned five of his Names the same way Ty’tra’yect did, by going outside the walls alone and fighting the most fucked up shit on Parnack during True Night.
The other two he earned for killing would-be challengers to the throne.
Unlike our ideas of ‘Emperor’, the position is held by the yahg with the most power…until he’s challenged and killed. Ty’tra’yect was planning on being the next Emperor.
I wonder if the act of eating a subordinate carries a certain kind of weight in Yahg culture. Like it’s seen as the ultimate act of power without restraint, of forcing compliance for a subordinate. Is it especially horrifying to them or is this just one of Ty’tra’yect’s weird rage fetish’s that even other Yahg look at and think ‘mate, you’re a complete freak’?
It’s gonna be great when we get the Cerberus/STG file on the Broker/Yahg/Parnack and find out in detail about their planet, biology, psychology, etc.
Cannibalism is part of yagh power challenge culture and funerary rites. It is seen as in a mystical light (absorbing the power/anima of the eaten) as well as a cruelly pragmatic one — an enemy who is killed can leave their possessions to who they like, but one who is ritually eaten ceases to exist and his possessions default to the eater.
That being said, outside of funerals it’s strictly regulated, and those who do so outside the law have their limbs slowly burned off, eyes plucked out, and are staked outside the walls for the wildlife to devour.
Yagh…are not nice poeple. Although they do a mean bit of knitting and crocheting.
Does anyone else look at the relationship between those three and see a dark and ultimately tragic family dynamic? Tetrimus and Tazzik are basically the closet thing each other has to friends and it’s an almost brotherly relationship, whilst like you said the Broker raised Tazzik and despite being being murderous and pragmatic still took both of them in when they’d been left to die. It’s one of the most underrated relationships in the whole Premiseverse.
Tetrimus hates everything living, pretty much. He sort of likes Tazzik but there’s a part of him that finds him sloppy and stupid. That being said, only half the reason Tetrimus acted to suggest the Broker save him had to do with feelings — he also didn’t want to have to deal with a replacement, or even worse, Almnrut.
Given that Yahg definition of friendship then…how does the Broker view Tetrimus, and vice versa? Tetrimus would probably have the best chance of killing the Broker and hasn’t betrayed him at all (and vice versa).
The Broker views all non-yahg as useful tools. And Tetrimus has about as much chance to be the Broker as Lieutenant Traynor has in getting into a threesome with Liara and Shepard.
That is, none at all. Yahg are never biotic… but Parnack is heavily dosed with eezo. All yahg are biotic nulls.
Lolz.
Almnrut. Ideas, anyone? I’ll assume he’s male and possibly some kind of specialist, something we haven’t seen or even heard of. Another Yahg? A renegade Collector or Geth Prime unit, possible a part of the Darkline Network that we haven’t seen? Some kind of salvaged relic like a defrosted Prothean? Or something that had contact with an Arca Device or whatever it is that’s effected P. and Uressa? I’m terrible at this kind of detective work.
Male? Yes…sort of.
Specialist? Only in murder.
Yahg, Collector, Geth? No.
Prothean? No.
Arca? No.Stop trying to ruin the surprise!
I don’t suppose we’ll get a glimpse of any of this in the revamped Batarian Cerberus File? Or will most of it have to wait til ME4?
Some of it. Certainly in the OOC chapter after the People of Importance the Black Leviathans will be discussed, that’s too much of an infodump for in-story work.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
But the resulting back hole is temporary right?
Very temporary, it only lasts about fifteen or twenty seconds. After that it dissolves in a titanic blast of Hawking radiation…that would probably kill anything within a few miles.
The natives of this cycle can figure out neutronium flex explosives. The Inusannon and Tho’ians primary weapons were NFE missiles and quark degenerative blasts or torpedoes.
Electron degenerate implosion beams were the main weapon of the Leviathans, and Lethath was their inventor and has been tinkering with them.
The Darkness effectively uses anti-muon beams (which unbind quarks…and turn whatever they hit to dust) and force-phase transition weapons, which convert matter to energy and then use the energy to shift the state of nearby matter to gas.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
The Thanix weapon actually doesn’t scale up much in power, only in the size of the impact –something Thanix Palavanus will be disappointed to find out.
Thanix Frigate sized guns are about half as powerful as dreadnaught guns. This is IMPORTANT as it allows the larger masses of smaller ships the allies have to actually have an impact in the main Reaper fight, rather than only dreadnaughts having the firepower to do so (and makes sense, given how the weapon works).
That being said, a Thanix cannon doesn’t possess the Godpower-enhanced energy field or time-tweaking value of the full Reaper weapon, and is based on the weapon Nazara had, which was deliberately stepped down in sheer power and didn’t include the focusing arrays. A Reaper’s main gun is about five to eight times more powerful than the most powerful Thanix projector.
Tha main difference between the frigate and dreadnaught is how much and how often it can fire. A frigate can only store a very small amount of liquid iron slurry, a dreadnaught has space for lots and lots.
Reapers create it with Godpower, and have unlimited ammo.
The Thanix cannon designs will be “obtained” through Vigil, of course. No one else does any work around here.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
1) Speculation: Morality of the Old Guard
What keeps these guys going at that? What do the Thirty, SIX, Palavanus or High Lords keep telling themselves – that let’s them sleep at night, knowing what they are doing.
What is each level of power – telling themself in the night, NOT to others. But to themselves. What says, even Maxwell Manswell – of what he is allowing to happen. Destroying and using lives like currency.
It doesn’t sound like your writing MO, to just say ‘lulz they are evil all’. Cause you say, that no white-black scenario here. Should we show any sympathy for the various Old Guard from various races. Or should we laugh with glee, as they are killed. Without having to feel remorse, since they deserve everything they get from the Reapers.
They shouldn’t be conflated as having the same rationales, but applying human morals to aliens is kinda pointless.
The SIX are what they are. To salarians, after having seen the Collapse, survival is the most important thing. The SIX believe that they are doing what needs to be done for the survival of the salarian people, and honestly don’t care if that kills off everyone else. They don’t see the value in life.
That’s not to say they want to kill everyone, only that very few salarians identify more with the Other than with themselves.
The Thirty are covering up the crime that lead them to be in charge. They are acting mostly out of selfishness and greed, to be honest. They see themselves as superior and honestly don’t understand why clearly inferior and short lived races SHOULD be considered their equals. Doing so out of some ideal about equal rights is literally insanity to them. If you aren’t as smart or strong or long lived as asari, why should you get a voice?
The Palavanus, on the other hand, aren’t fully in control of how they are acting due to the influence of the Arca Device. Many of them DON’T like where things are going, but they don’t see alternatives.
The High Lords are for the most part assholes. This is NOT true of the Second and Third Rank houses, most of which are heroic and HONESTLY believe in the framework of lies Victor set out.
The High Lord’s families are also not ALL assholes. The High Lord’s don’t really have an excuse, but they tend to see the situation as ‘us against them’ and see anything as game.
Ultimately, all the groups in power see the lives of individuals as pointless because they cannot afford to think that way. If they make a serious mistake, the fallout won’t just be a few dead people, but potentially the collapse of their respective races. Tens of billions of people. No leader on Earth has EVER had to make choices that determined if humanity itself would live or die… so we can’t really compare to national leaders.
2) Speculation: Mercy
Trailing alongside the first question. Does the word mercy, even exist in their minds anymore?
Do any of the SIX, Thirty or High Lords – even admit to themselves – that what they are doing is wrong? That – they admit, they are essentially destroying the life of another sentient being.
Or whatever is their equal to mercy. To the Old Guard even have the ability to show it anymore? Or should the Reapers show them no mercy in return?
Mercy is a curious concept. It basically is forgiveness and forebearance towards one who has offended in some way.
Salarians, biologically and mentally, CANNOT understand mercy. Even cool good guys like Mordin Solus tend to see being merciful as being weak or possibly insane. Turians see mercy as dishonorable.
Asari can (and have) been merciful. But their mercy is distinctly short in scope, and is never applied when there is even the slightest doubt that something dangerous could become a problem.
To the ruling groups, concepts like mercy are all well and good for the average person. They are problematic when being ‘nice’ has backfired. They tried, as best they could, to be nice to the krogan, and look where THAT got them.
3) Speculation: US blowing up Montana with a nuke?
Alright, this was around the time of at the beginning. Where I read said USA President – used a nuke on his own state.
How did he get away with that? Sure, it was mentioned, that alot of people were in the pocket of Manswell – him included. But how did the US President – whom likely elected BY the people, managed to explain the reason for nuking a state.
War with Europe or Middle East? Sure. But nuking your OWN country? No riots, threats to get him off the chair? Coup attempts? Like cheese-wheel.
How did he manage to rally support to fight against Ardiente – when he was a bastard enough to kill his own people. Where did he get the popular support to even get such an act through like Congress or the Senate?
The President at the time was dealing with an America that was literally on the edge of a civil war with itself. And ultimately, he didn’t get away with it — there were riots EVERYWHERE, and he got his fool ass assassinated. The USA was tied up for five years with internal revolts, militia fighting and the like — Logain and his boys in EAGL were the decedents of the Freedom Fighters at this time.
The nuke of Butte happened in 2037 — it wasn’t until 2060 that Ardiente lost his mind. America was a fractured and fucked up society in the 2030’s and 2040’s, and several Amendments to the Constitution were added to prevent things like Butte from ever happening again.
4) Speculation: Asari and Beacons
This was a thought that came to mind. Is it possible, that the asari are the top-race – because they can interact with Beacons better?
Protheans had that touchy-feely-ready sense at that. While asari have the lesser version via a meld.
Could that in a way, be a possibilty? Asari able to read the Beacons better – since they were made by the Protheans and so were the asari at that.
The Asari were designed to be the middle-managers and slave controllers of a resurgent Prothean Empire, so yes.
5) Speculation: Batarians and Salarians gone?
Okay. This is a peek from a previous peek. You mentioned in a question before.
That in Fear Unrelenting – both the Batarians and Salarians are gone. Really?
Why did Shepard kill EVERY last Batarian at that? Was she that bloodthirsty then? Or was it a ‘because’ reason. And also seemed a rather, bad ‘reason’ if all Batarians had to die.
Also Salarians died due to too much DNA-rape. Salarians were deemed to be still around, by the time that Shepard and co had the opportunity to mess around with post-Reaper tech.
So question being, why did the Galaxy let the Salarian race die – wasn’t there anything they could have done, to save them for DNA-death?
Not sure why everyone assumes species that act like goddamned assholes would survive thousands of years in a culture influenced by Shepard…
However, the question is pretty simple. The batarians were never a stable culture, especially after thousands of years of being manipulated by the Black Leviathans. Most of their space was ruined by the Reaper invasion and 80% of the species was killed in the Reaper War. The survivors simply scattered and never formed another real government after the New Batarian Alliance collapsed due to economic issues.
The salarians were much the same. A few survived in scattered enclaves. But they weren’t going to be of any importance way down the line.
6) Specualtion: Human + Asari
So. Humari? How do they look? Just Asari with Human culture? Or something more along the line of fusion-dance style stuff?
Fusion. Genetic fusion.
Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.
