Vigil & Inusannon/Thoi'han technology

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    • #1191
      Sikor_Seraph
      Participant

      Creating a forum posting to discuss this, from a comment from the TWCD Editing Gang document.

      I’m off to reread the OSABC chapter with Vigils brooding.

    • #1192
      Logical Premise
      Keymaster

      Not sure if people had questions about that or not

      Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.

    • #1193
      Sikor_Seraph
      Participant

      I had some questions about the Protheans in an earlier forum posting that might be relevant to this, but they also might be too vague.

      Vigil’s an unreliable narrator, which has made for some good layering in the mysteries of this fiction. I suspect Vigil has many false memories, and was likely “born” much later than he thinks, possibly even at the very very end of the Inusannon empire. I also suspect most of the description of the battles between them is not real, because the given body count by the Reapers is much shorter than even the original vanguard the Reapers sent, as is 30,000 years of preparations for over 1,000 ships. I would suggest the truth is only one battle on Eingana, while the rest of the race was diverted elsewhere.

      I would imagine no species “modified” by previous races would believe they are anything but natural. That the Inusannon AND Thoi’han were both capable of resisting indoctrination and incapable of infesting the other suggested being modified, as that’s terribly unfair in the evolutionary lottery. I believe you also mentioned they were shielded by one of the Leviathan factions, and gifted with the insight to create the weapon (the Catalyst?).

      Your reimagining of the Inusannon was one of my favorite parts when I first read this story, and I’m legit working on including them in a ME mod for Stellaris. But the more I think about them, the more I think they’re small fish in a big pond, and just more advanced tools for a greater faction. I also think they’d be entirely unsociable and galactically destabilizing if they were active now. They’re suspiciously absent in your 15,000 years later story, which suspects they’ll be a sacrifice or be destroyed around the ME4 time.

      The above has been a little vague, but if I could write some questions:
      1) To what extent does the Destiny Ascension being an Inusannon/Prothean flagship affect past/future events, or would have affected Sovereign’s attack on the Citadel if it were merely the most advanced contemporary technology based dreadnought? Does Vigil have any plans or control over it?
      2) Did the Inusannon interact with humanity at all (I believe you mentioned some Inusannon tech being at the Mars Archives)?
      3) To what extent does the lack of Inusannon visibility in 15,000 years also connected to the disappearance of the salarians, krogan, hanar, batarians, and elcor?

      Thanks for the insight, and as always, thanks for being willing to answer questions.

    • #1205
      Logical Premise
      Keymaster

      1) To what extent does the Destiny Ascension being an Inusannon/Prothean flagship affect past/future events, or would have affected Sovereign’s attack on the Citadel if it were merely the most advanced contemporary technology based dreadnought? Does Vigil have any plans or control over it?

      The Protheans salvaged the ship from Eingana, at terrifying expense, and it was shot down in what became asari space. The asari found it and rebuilt it again, on top of what was already there — that’s also how they got ahold of the missiles.

      It’s not particularly important except that Vigil made sure to point it out to the Protheans to troll Nazara with. He was delighted when he found the asari did the same thing…and he’s not in control of it, but he does have a tracking nodule aboard.

      So that if this cycle loses, he can point the wreck out to the Yahg for maximum trollage.

      2) Did the Inusannon interact with humanity at all (I believe you mentioned some Inusannon tech being at the Mars Archives)?

      Only indirectly. Vigil was part of why the Archives were there and why things went down the way they did on Thessia, but more will be made clear in the next chapter.

      Suffice it to say, the Inusannon themselves didn’t know (or care) humanity existed.

      3) To what extent does the lack of Inusannon visibility in 15,000 years also connected to the disappearance of the salarians, krogan, hanar, batarians, and elcor?

      You mean in Fear Unrelenting?

      Not much. Most of those cultures simply collapsed over the years. By the time Fear unrelenting rolls around, the salarians were long dead from too much DNA tampering, the batarians got destroyed by Shepard for trying to violate the Severity, the hanar…eh, spoilers, and the elcor simply stopped participating in galactic society after a certain point, mostly returning to Elkunna and taking up a non-technological lifestyle.

      The krogan… it’s not relevant to the story, really, but Okeer had a statis clone set up on a remote worksite and it woke up a couple of thousand years after the Reaper wars and tried to infiltrate and take over krogan culture. This lead to a civil war that decimated the race and ruined most of Tuchanka. A few million krogan made it off world and their few colonies survived but they were too broken to have (or need) a council rep.

      Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.

      • #1225
        Sikor_Seraph
        Participant

        Had some more Inusannon questions, if you’ve got a moment.

        1) Can you go into more detail about what strange aspects of the Inusannon were natural, and which they developed over time?
        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.
        3) Any interesting details about what’s going on with the biotic-reactive ruins of Gryt-III?

        Thanks again for your willingness to answer questions, and happy thanksgiving to everyone!

    • #1218
      mrosera
      Moderator

      I’ve got one about our favorite troll AI – is there any limit to how much primitive tech hacking he can do at once?

      • #1219
        Sikor_Seraph
        Participant

        I’ve got one about our favorite troll AI – is there any limit to how much primitive tech hacking he can do at once?

        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.

    • #1282
      Logical Premise
      Keymaster

      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.

    • #1283
      Logical Premise
      Keymaster

      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.

    • #1385
      SLotH4
      Moderator

      Not much. Most of those cultures simply collapsed over the years. By the time Fear unrelenting rolls around, the salarians were long dead from too much DNA tampering, the batarians got destroyed by Shepard for trying to violate the Severity, the hanar…eh, spoilers, and the elcor simply stopped participating in galactic society after a certain point, mostly returning to Elkunna and taking up a non-technological lifestyle.

      When did humanity merge with the asari? Are they unisex or are there humari males?

      How does the punishment for violating the Severity work? Did no batarians survive to reproduce in the Terminus Systems? Were they all killed by Shepard?

      https://www.fanfiction.net/~sloth4

    • #1389
      Logical Premise
      Keymaster

      When did humanity merge with the asari? Are they unisex or are there humari males?

      The humari are … strange. They came about as a result of collapses in asari birth viability after certain incidents as well as socio-cultural merging.

      I haven’t decided if they’re monogender or hermaphroditic or weird. It happened way into the future though, far beyond the span of ME4. I think about six to seven thousand years ahead.

      How does the punishment for violating the Severity work?

      They were Unmade using the Catalyst, the only time Shepard made active, direct use of the Godpower herself.

      Every batarian ceased to exist instantly, six key protein groups specific to batarian beings were removed from reality. Khar’Shan itself was destroyed by a pair of colliding superstrings, which took out all of the core batarian worlds.

      Shepard’s choice was very heavily protested, but there was nothing to be done. Given the power she had, she could have had the Catalyst make her and Liara immortal or even beings with a similar level of power to a Leviathan, on top of [REDACTED]. That she chose to instead [REDACTED] is proof of her force of will.

      Also, [REDACTED]. For what that’s worth.

      [THIS POST HAS BEEN REDACTED BY VIGIL. U MAD, PRIMITIVES?]

      Purge the alien. Kill the heretic. Suffer not the witch to live.

    • #1390
      mrosera
      Moderator

      A bit of Memories we forget to remember Ch 2 makes more sense now.

      Her voice grew colder. “I had a lot of options when things blew up with the Reapers, and then a century later with the Leviathans. I could have done shit differently and maybe things might have been .. .better. I don’t see anyone second guessing me or my fucking legacy, even though you can lay twenty billion fucking deaths at my door.”

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