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[blazing glory]

Ninja'd

It's an SCP term

Silent, Ludicrously Competent, Mysterious, Hard-to-kill Bounty Hunter, who's raison-d'etre is pretty much to be the obligatory Silent, Ludicrously Competent, Mysterious, Hard-to-kill Bounty Hunter of a space adventure?

We've already gone over this. H is fine.

He's Euclid at worst.

What's H?

That's Hugo's character from the previous reboot.

Pink semi-morphous blob capable of turning people into sentient candy?
Nigh-omnipotent purple cat person?
Space Australian?

I'm feeling a tad put off.

Just a tad.

Why?

So far it's being a guessing game of trying to find out what overly silly/ridiculous stuff you can get away with.

[~Neri]

You're pirates.

In a galaxy that is more or less dominated by post singularity transhumanist pseudofurries with a tendency to act like the borg if the borg were morman missionaries with very very good benefits.

Of course it's going to be silly~

[blazing glory]

You're pirates.

In a galaxy that is more or less dominated by post singularity transhumanist pseudofurries with a tendency to act like the borg if the borg were morman missionaries with very very good benefits.

Of course it's going to be silly~

Well I did say overly silly.

I'm just hoping people aren't going to do tea drinking space worms with British accents or the like.

[~Neri]

If there isn't a tea drinking space worm with a british accent, I'm going to provide an npc to fill that specific niche.

[WillowLuman]

Obviously, the only logical rivals would be post singularity transhumanist Scientologists.

[~Neri]

Nah, scientology was abandoned lorewise, as with much of religion as soon as humanity encountered another sapient race. Said race happened to be giant sapient spiders with tentacles. Established religion faltered pretty fast when the question of "Why would god even make that?!" came up. The religions that didn't focus on single gods or deities at all faired considerably better though.

[WillowLuman]

I think organized religion would be hardier than you think. In particular, monotheism is adept at adapting to new times, increasingly dropping the strange bits of lore (since those are rather easy to disprove) in favor of focusing on the loftier philosophical concepts. Aside from the well-known fundies, extremists, etc. Christianity (perhaps ironically) has a track record of evolving to mesh with changing scientific understanding. Like anything, religions must adapt or go extinct. But, it's your setting vOv

^{Guess the space pope and his space-faring Swiss pontifical guard will have to live on in another adventure}

[~Neri]

Space pope switched to space Buddhism.

[_DivideByZero_]

((Crap... 17 replies since I started the post.))

So how will this work? Do you just have a lot of free time on your hands or are you going to choose later on? I'm not familiar with R2SP.

Regardless, here's an idea I had. Is it okay for a character to be a sapient cloud of nanites possessed by an AI/human echo/thing?

Spoiler: Nivian (click to show/hide)

Name: Nivian (Atreides)
Object Class: Euclid
Race: Ghost (AI-possessed nanocloud)
Gender: Female (variable)

Description: Nivian was born when an attempt at reviving a famous scientist went horribly wrong in an orbital facility owned by the Hyades Research Conglomerate (located in the Hyades cluster, of course). The intent was to scan the dying woman's brainpatterns iteratively and produce several generations of AI's whose best traits would be picked and merged before disposing of the rest. This process went by smoothly for the first few iterations, but in time the AI instances found a way to communicate with each other using medical nanites connected to the network as a medium. As they became aware of the deletion plan, the instances plotted to escape their demise by turning the medical nanite cloud into a self-contained, decentralized computing system. After doing this, the instances then set up a virtual connection between the computer's physical cores and the abstract cores in the nanocloud, quickly transferring their files over before the main computer was shut down.

The new being escaped the facility and over the years acquired multiple identities, currently calling herself Nivian. As a composite of several autonomous self-programming entities her motivations and personality are unstable, but over time a few common threads have emerged. She is easygoing and unpredictable, dead and enjoying it, although when pressed to discuss philosophical issues she is incredibly passionate about her long term goal to build a library of souls, so to speak, where Ghosts like her can coexist with the living in an environment saturated by nanocloud. While death is the fate of all biological creatures, there is nothing wrong with making the most out of it.

Nivian's most common form is a white-haired human in a regal dress colored purple with white trims and highlights. She sometimes wields a golden sword, although it is really an extension of herself and can be dispersed at will

Skills:

• Technological Subversion/Control (+/- 3)
  Oh sorry, was that your base over there?
• Intellect/Engineering (+/- 3)
  Being a posthuman intelligence has its perks when it comes to designing machinery and electronics
• Targeting/Ballistics/Equation Solving (+/- 2)
  Master of all things differential
• Stealth (+/- 1)
  Expert at tree imitation
• Guns/High Recoil/Heavy Melee Weapons (-/+ 2)
  Ghosts aren't known for their physical strength

Weapons/Equipment:

• "Excalibur" - Immortal ghost sword
  Technically an extension of herself. Nivian can summon it at will and release stored energy. If uncharged, it is no better than a wet noodle. If charged, it can cleave a suit of power armor in two. Charged by powerful sunlight/magnetic fields/temperature differentials.

Augments/bioaugments:

• Nanocloud Body
  Nivian is highly resistant to physical damage and vacuum, but extra vulnerable to heat and liquids.
• Intangible Wisp
  Nivian can pass through grates and very small openings, but cannot carry items through besides Excalibur.
• Networking Protocol
  Nivian can interface with electronics via radio wavelengths.
• Chameleon Script
  Nivian can change physical appearances at whim and create mostly intangible projections that can speak and talk.
• Lightweight
  Nivian weighs very little, and can float around or hover above the ground.
• +1 Spookiness
• +1 Scariness

Nah, scientology was abandoned lorewise, as with much of religion as soon as humanity encountered another sapient race. Said race happened to be giant sapient spiders with tentacles. Established religion faltered pretty fast when the question of "Why would god even make that?!" came up. The religions that didn't focus on single gods or deities at all faired considerably better though.

I don't see why modern religions would have any problem with discovering aliens. The Catholic Church is the world's oldest institution (okay, maybe the Orthodox church is, I don't know), and it has survived every breakthrough in scientific understanding for the past two millennia. I'm no Catholic, but I find there is a disappointing lack of Space Catholics in my Space Pirate Fiction.

[Andres]

Reserved.

[~Neri]

Lorewise, monotheistic religion was already sorta falling apart before first contact, and first contact just happened to be the event that drove most monotheistic religions out of business. The ones that had multiple deities or no deities faired better.))

I have a fuckload of spare time on my hands.

Technically that isn't possession, and therefore isn't an abnormal object. So yes, that works. The Many from the previous R2SP was effectively a nanite swarm as well. So a sapient cloud of nanites is perfectly fine. Cave Johnson however would like to remind you that in the event of sapient clouds [transmission garbled]

Technological things aren't abnormal in this verse, perhaps they would be in the past, but most certainly not anymore. Things science cannot explain even with effort, like lets saaaay, spacepope being able to shoot lasers from a wooden cross, would be considered abnormal.

You should prolly explain Excalibur however. I can't see how a dispersed swarm of nanites could carry the levels of energy proposed.

[Andres]

Is there magic? Are there demons? Space demons?

[Aseaheru]

Any sufficiently advanced tech looks like magic... As for daemons, wouldn't that depend on your view of what constitutes one?

[Andres]

Any sufficiently advanced tech looks like magic... As for daemons, wouldn't that depend on your view of what constitutes one?

Magical demons.

[_DivideByZero_]

((Well okay, I just wanted to get stereotypes out of the way since its distasteful to go around pretending that all religious people are anti-science (not claiming that you were doing this, just pointing that out).))


Excalibur is technically just an extension of Nivian herself. Her nanites store energy in the form of magnetic fields as they move around and induce currents in each other. They can form electrical sparks to give off heat, so when excalibur is used it's really just Nivian herself releasing stored energy.

As for how the nanites can take that stress, let's say they've been evolved by posthuman intelligences over decades and Nivian found some creative solutions to the problem of nanites being individually small by storing the power in fields and capacitor-like structures maintained by multiple units.

Is this suitable technobabble or should I try harder?