Jacob wrote:

1) Temple of Athame

I’m writing an update to No Single Raindrop that will cover the Temple in more details.

Jacob wrote:

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.

Jacob wrote:

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.

Jacob wrote:

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.

Jacob wrote:

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.

Jacob wrote:

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.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Logical Premise.