Again, do the scientist and soldier bots even have that skill (along with any sex and pleasure subroutines)?[/quote]
Whether or not they start with that skill, I do believe it’s important to Calinas that they pick up sufficient social skill to successfully charm one of the royals. Furthermore, a soldier’s physical abilities will lend themselves well to the dance floor as well as other demonstrations of athletic prowess, while the thinker’s mental abilities make them not only extremely fast learners, but potentially highly knowledgeable regarding not only bedroom skills, but also regarding human psychology.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:1023, topic:15992, full:true”][quote=“P_Tigras, post:1021, topic:15992”]
It seems odd that a society that turns a blind eye to cheating and even orgies insists that eligible girls be pretty asexual statues…
[/quote]
Well human society, like most everything else in the gameworld seems be royally screwed up in many, many ways.[/quote]
Our brilliant author has put substantial time into world-building, so I expect there’s an entirely reasonable explanation.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:1023, topic:15992, full:true”][quote=“P_Tigras, post:1021, topic:15992”]
If you can transcribe many human genes into their functional mymidon equivalents when creating a myrmidon, I don’t see why you can’t take that same knowledge, and do the reverse, transcribing mymidon genes into their human equivalent, especially when you have the networked computing power of the thinker’s higher mind available, as well as the abilities of both the myrmidon-production and baby-making forges available. So I’m hoping that your “it serves the story to deny it for now” changes later…
[/quote]
You do need to be or upgrade to the Thinker to make that work though. The bigger question however is why would we want to?
Wouldn’t it just be easier to use the Thinker’s brain power to make an custom designed purely organic baby, using the dna of the human of your choice combined with either DNA retrieved from old storage units, or that of the real Flash in the most optimal combination possible? Provided we can find such storage or extract a sample of Flash’s DNA from that forge, of course.[/quote]
If Flash’s intact DNA is preserved somewhere that would be a perfectly acceptable compromise to me. It’s my desire that the child have features of both the MC and his spouse so as to put to rest any question of either paternity or maternity.
You misunderstand me. I don’t want a Frankenstein cyborg. I want a perfectly human child with royal DNA so they can bind with a blue bird, a perfectly human child that also has features of the MC. How we get there isn’t as important as finding a way to get there.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:1023, topic:15992, full:true”]I also wonder how far those “functional equivalents” go. As the original Flash was noted to be rather handsome for example, does that mean the mc’s always is too and the Concubine abilities merely enhance that, or do the others loose some of that in the approximation? Is there an “uncanny valley” here?
[/quote]
True, however I think that’s potential sequel territory as the world within the rings certainly seems enough to carry the first game.
The gate itself has been closed for millennia, but maybe there are ways to bypass it, with outside leading airlocks and a spacewalk or some sort of transporter/teleporter systems perhaps. If that sort of traffic does exist it does not seem to be a major problem at the moment, it could of course become one during to course of the game, but from what we know I don’t think it’s all that likely.
Possible, but without the necessary systems and/or subroutines they’d derive absolutely no pleasure or satisfaction from it themselves and that does seem like a less than desirable situation.
Well it does state that it drains away and catalogs and stores Flash’s component parts for “later use” and if you go with the “noble” path you’d just need to figure out how to make it cough up a sample. From the game “its constituent parts drained away into hidden tanks for later use or disposal.” One of the noble path teaser scenes does make it abundantly clear however that the forge is not ordered to dispose of it, as it clearly remains available for the Lady to attempt a second “child” after an unspecified period of time.
Reading that part again also strengthens my conviction that the “user” is Wolf or some other ancient intelligence who seems to have taking a Q-like fascination to toying with what’s left of humanity as the Forge states that the user has admin level access and the magister’s whole quests is to gain that, if he already had it all along this whole charade would have been pointless for him. Unless the gate is on an entirely separate system, which is certainly a possibility.
That it is, we’ll see if he wishes to grant us the satisfaction of an answer, though we’ll likely find out in-game sooner or later.
Possible, but without the necessary systems and/or subroutines they’d derive absolutely no pleasure or satisfaction from it themselves and that does seem like a less than desirable situation.[/quote]
The MC has free will and is not bound by their programming, but is instead free to develop and learn. Furthermore I don’t see why the MC would be limited in the way you indicate.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:1025, topic:15992, full:true”][quote=“P_Tigras, post:1024, topic:15992”]
If Flash’s intact DNA is preserved somewhere that would be a perfectly acceptable compromise to me.
[/quote]
Well it does state that it drains away and catalogs and stores Flash’s component parts for “later use” and if you go with the “noble” path you’d just need to figure out how to make it cough up a sample.[/quote]
I had been under the impression that those “component parts” were broken down into biomolecules that were then used to construct the MC, and the rest was disposed of. I will make a point of reading that portion of text again however.
Reading it in conjunction with that teaser scene near the end of the Rebel path, it does seem to retain enough information about Flash, likely including his DNA to make a second copy of the Flash droid for the Lady.
If you’re on the noble path your only difficulty would lie in finding out how to make it cough up a sample for you.
Mostly efficiency, my computer does not make or serve me tea or dinner, it simple wasn’t designed for those sorts of things, similarly if the pre-fall scientific institutes or the military commissioned androids I don’t think they’d waste the resources to give them perfectly functioning sex-organ equivalents, what purpose would it serve? Those things would only distract the science android from its assigned research duty and for a military bot the ability to be seduced by enemy humans or androids would be a severe weakness.
It could be that those things were included for all variants in those “user” instructions, or that the semi-sentient Forge decides that we must have them. “It sends a specific list of commands that are to be entered into the android’s firmware, but otherwise gives the Forge discretion as to which components to use.”.
However I’m personally under the impression that those extra commands have more to do with giving the mc admin and/or above top-secret clearance for ancient tech and databases though they could certainly include, pleasure and sexual subroutines.
Mostly efficiency, my computer does not make or serve me tea or dinner, it simple wasn’t designed for those sorts of things, [/quote]
Your computer wasn’t designed to look and feel human.
The more abilities the bot has the greater its value. Not everyone is going to want a second bot for pleasure, one with pleasure extra’s that go beyond human. Some would be perfectly pleased to have their thinker or combat bot pull double duty. It’s kind of like offering a car with air conditioning. Sure, in the beginning they were optional, and primarily sold in hotter areas. Nevertheless it’s now impossible to find a car without air conditioning. They’ve become standard equipment. I don’t doubt the same would hold true for human-like features on human-appearing androids over time.
The science android’s duty was whatever it’s “owner” wanted that duty to be. And originally they couldn’t be seduced away from their owner because they lacked free will. So that wasn’t a consideration at the time they were designed.
You’re thinking strikes me as a bit too limited. Pre-fall society was far beyond what we have today. There’s no need for them to make only “basic” model androids with no frills, when they can add in all the human-like trimmings at little extra cost.
[quote]However I’m personally under the impression that those extra commands have more to do with giving the mc admin and/or above top-secret clearance for ancient tech and databases though they could certainly include, pleasure and sexual subroutines.
[/quote]
I don’t see the need for such “subroutines”. The MC has free will, and thus has become self-programming. The MC doesn’t need a specific program to give it permission to feel or do something. If an ability was built into the MC such as the ability to feel pleasure, I don’t see why the myrmidon can’t associate pleasure with the sense of touch or to the act of sex.
Hmmm…it does seem a waste of computational power to me to spend our precious time self-programming these sorts of things, but I suppose if you choose the “noble” or rebel path you are kind of setting yourself up for this,which is why I want my Thinker mc to go the “mage” path, no need to waste our abilities on awkward fumbling with love and romance there, one would hope.
Little extra cost is not the same as no extra cost, still our own society has plenty of wasteful practices as well so I wouldn’t be really surprised if pre-fall humanity eventually started to do such things just because they could.
Just having it however doesn’t mean most pre-fall combat and science droids ever got to use it and while they may have had the hardware it doesn’t seem that the combat and science droids have the software for it installed by default.
Pre-fall whether or not combat or science droids got the software to actually use it would have likely been contained in the personalized data burst that our mc’s didn’t receive. I’m still guessing that a scientific megacorp or the military whose executives and senior officers could likely afford entire harems of dedicated pleasure bots may not have used or activated that functionality much on their “worker” droids much, little mom and pop shop operations on the other hand…
Since the mc has no limitations installed we can still “learn” it through self-programming, I suppose, but I do not relish the thought of my Thinker droid fumbling about like some silly teenager during the trial and error process such an operation would entail.
I’m not sure it was, doesn’t mean it can’t be self-programmed, though I suppose if it was my Thinker would be more concerned with finding out how to turn off the “emotion chip”, though that seems yet another thing for the “mage” path as I suppose the ability to “feel” or at least to mimic feeling emotions is pretty important on the other two.
Perhaps, however the stated goal of that scene is to let the mc have a glimpse of the sort of life they could have had, but rejected.
Little extra cost is not the same as no extra cost, still our own society has plenty of wasteful practices as well so I wouldn’t be really surprised if pre-fall humanity eventually started to do such things just because the could.[/quote]
The human-like android body is a frill in and of itself. Once you spend on that frill, it’s pretty easy to continue spending on the rest. And yes, humans can be extremely wasteful when there is no immediate penalty.
I think the biggest difference between the myrmidon models is not software but hardware. Each model has extra’s the others lack. It’s those hardware extra’s that can’t be changed, at least not without the help of a Forge.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:1029, topic:15992, full:true”]Pre-fall whether or not combat or science droids got the software to actually use it would have likely been contained in the personalized data burst that our mc’s didn’t receive. I’m still guessing that a scientific megacorp or the military whose executives and senior officers could likely afford entire harems of dedicated pleasure bots may not have used or activated that functionality much on their “worker” droids much, little mom and pop shop operations on the other hand…
Since the mc has no limitations installed we can still “learn” it through self-programming, I suppose, but I do not relish the thought of my Thinker droid fumbling about like some silly teenager during the trial and error process such an operation would entail.[/quote]
Given that even the Thinker bot is far more dextrous than any teen-ager, I doubt that the Thinker would do much fumbling once it downloaded the appropriate anatomical schematics. There might be slight delays the first time as it continually asked the higher brain procedural questions and put into action the responses, but it would learn incredibly fast.
[quote=“idonotlikeusernames, post:1029, topic:15992, full:true”][quote=“P_Tigras, post:1028, topic:15992”]
If an ability was built into the MC such as the ability to feel pleasure
[/quote]
I’m not sure it was, doesn’t mean it can’t be self-programmed, though I suppose if it was my Thinker would be more concerned with finding out how to turn off the “emotion chip”, though that seems yet another thing for the “mage” path as I suppose the ability to “feel” or at least to mimic feeling emotions is pretty important on the other two.[/quote]
Whether or not that “emotion chip” can be turned off really depends on whether there is an actual “emotion chip”. The MC isn’t purely mechanical, the MC has a major biological component as well, complete with DNA of its own. If emotions are part of the biology, than you may be out of luck…
Those “all-too familiar eyes” could be another “Flash droid”, but that’s not the only possible interpretation. They could also be Radjack’s, or another captured friend’s…
[/quote]
Perhaps, however the stated goal of that scene is to let the mc have a glimpse of the sort of life they could have had, but rejected.
[/quote]
As I said earlier, it may or may not be another “Flash droid”. Mommy Dearest may have simply fed another of the MC’s friends to the Forge to produce a second more agreeable mymidon to replace the MC. Nevertheless if you’re right and it is another Flash, that bodes well for the possibility of getting the mymidon-making Forge to provide a DNA sample for the baby-making Forge.
The issues are many and manifold but if Myrmidons can reproduce sexually, why haven’t they overrun the Humans? Being immortal and capable of self-reproduction means that within a few generations the Myrmidons would likely have overrun the Humans entirely, the relatively small ecosphere of the Rings would be too small for both of them. My notions may change as the story goes on, but at the moment giving Myrmidons a ‘make more Myrmidons’ function would be an ecological disaster.
Every eligible male at court thinks themselves as brave as Malleus Finn, and see aloofness as a challenge rather than a warning.
All quite true, but somewhat gauche for a woman in her position. Romanticism is a powerful force in Noble society, the notion that love should be a higher, enervating practice is pervasive and hard to shake off. For all their preoccupation with sex and sexuality, they have very strong views that one must give the illusion of being taken with someone before bedding them. That’s why the Prince and Princess have to be wooed, they could just be paired up with any old fishmonger’s daughter and take whatever lovers they wanted, but there is a pervasive notion that they must be enamoured with their new spouse, despite how awkward it makes the whole process for the entire nation.
Ah, she was told to be a pretty statue, but not an asexual one. Her disinterest in the purely physical is an entirely personal choice, one that may be subject to change if the story wills it.
These questions go right to the heart of the character, and while I’d like to let them be found organically through the narrative, there’s no harm in giving a little background I suppose…
The girl who would eventually become Lady Calinas was not originally one of the ‘true’ upper crust, being the daughter of a wealthy merchant without any titles to speak of. Of course even then it was plain to see that she was beautiful, and she was educated in all the fine things a Lady should need to know.
The Lord Calinas was your stereotypical Nobleman, well-educated, entitled, with more money than sense and an inherent belief that he could have anything he wanted.
He decided that he wanted her.
Her fiancee at the time was merely a minor irritation, happily brushed aside in a very final manner so that the two of them could marry without controversy.
She learned a great deal from him.
I’m glad you’re all so enamoured with the Thinker, but be careful what you wish for…
(Scribbles notes) Sad Radjack smooches… Gotcha.
It started out as a creepy box with weird arms in it, but it became so much more…
Yup. Punch spends most of the performance cackling with high-pitched laughter.
I would recommend you read Neil Gaiman’s The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. Mostly because of Dave McKean’s amazing artwork, but the story itself is so good.
The MC Myrmidon in question is designed from inception to be a reasonable facsimile of Flash, ergo they must have all the necessary components to really sell the illusion. Ergo human genetalia. Not all Myrmidons need or have them, but some do.
Part of the reason Flash was chosen was their physical attractiveness, you can’t seduce a Prince with something that looks like it fell face-first into a meat-grinder now can you? Ergo the Myrmidon will retail Flash’s physical appearance while gaining the augmentations necessary to stand out in a crowd of pretty young things.
Well the wall is two miles high, so the atmosphere up there is basically non-existent, and the Nomad is tall enough to poke its head over the ramparts as if it were a garden fence, so you’re not entirely defenceless…
You are entirely too generous, I assure you…
Its true, you could likely lay hands on some without too much difficulty if you were willing to properly interface with the Forge, however given that we no longer know whether the Forge is alive itself, do you really want to challenge it to a battle of wits?
There is a door. A bloody great door. And it has been locked for a very long time. And nobody remembers where the key is.
So Arinthas made a new one…
Remember that the Forge is made out of meat, and the brain is still a basic facsimile of Flash’s brain (even the Thinker is basically a bog-standard brain, the only difference is that it is connected to a much larger brain elsewhere). There is no reason to intimate that the Myrmidon lacks the physical or mental prerequisites for physical pleasure.
The Wolf is the original provider of the code-fragments necessary to personally interact with the gate and its Guardian, which he gave Arinthas decades ago in exchange for a favour which I will not talk about here. Unfortunately the Wolf is somewhat given to changing his mind.
There were a great number of different variations of Myrmidons made by different factories and processes, so there is no set component list. Perhaps the Vovodans were sensualists, devoting their livs to the sort of endless hedonism that would require a willing sexual partner to be in every room they enter, regardless of their own duties. I haven’t thought about it, but the reason Flash is so endowed is a custom choice stipulated by Arinthas, because the brief was to create a facsimile of the subject.
Yup, made out of meat. Along with all the yucky Humanity that comes with it. To purge it is a choice that your human half rebels against.
These are all great questions, guys. Keep 'em coming!
Yep, I still think it’s the most likely of the possibilities and keep in mind that this second droid would have been “born” under much more controlled circumstances and wouldn’t have gotten the choices we have in the beginning as there would be no “cavalry” coming to their rescue nor would the magister and his droids have been present to make them the same offer they do the mc. It would simply be told the lady is his/her “mother”/owner/creator and lacking any other real options it may simply have chosen to go with the flow.
Maybe, but there would still likely be no “equivalent exchange”, you’d be rendering your human partner(s) a service without getting anything in return for it (other than some sticky fluids). Though I’m guessing that on the “noble” path you’d perhaps approach these things more with manipulation rather than pleasure in mind.
While it is certainly not impossible for an android to learn to experience pleasure from the act it would be an acquired taste rather than a biological imperative and not a given.
Most likely it’s a little of column a and a little of column b, if the Thinker didn’t have a quantum computer and a great deal of data storage in its body it would be near useless as say a “science officer” on smaller ships, or “away team” missions before humanity lost access to ftl travel, while if it was simply working for a megacorp or a government research lab it would indeed be more efficient to have it constantly plugged in and (mostly) using networked resources.
Like the EDI bot in Mass Effect who can function and retain her personality and much of her abilities both with and without being connected to the greater ship-board EDI.
True the android body would likely have first originated in either the adult or medical industry and grown from there and I suspect that a great many humans would have found working with androids who were nearly indistinguishable from them preferable to the alternatives in most circumstances. If true this does seem to suggest that we’re an (almost) perfect carbon copy of Flash’s looks and well past the “uncanny valley” no matter if we’re a Companion, Thinker or Combat bot.
@Moreau would it matter which one of the royals, would that depend on mc gender or are both valid targets regardless?
Followed by my inevitable question how is homosexuality viewed within the three Rings?
Seems like I’ve got my work cut out for me then. Of course it is rather likely that my Thinker mc on the mage path will eventually come to view his “human” half as a hindrance rather than an asset.
Seems that to get rid of the emotions in the mc we’d need to design a “logic” chip rather than switch off the emotion chip. I do think that it should be doable as there do exist some conditions that make real humans feel only some remarkably shallow emotions, the chip or implant would need to mimic this function and then boost it to filter any remaining emotions down to zero.
It also seems I’ll need to find a way to make upgrades to my droid’s in-frame processing capabilities and memory in order to be somewhat prepared for the possible loss of network connections.
From all the hints about the plots and characters and things to come I am very much looking forward to all three paths now. ^.^
I am especially looking forward to watching their hope turn to dread turn to despair and feeling that it’s all my fault as Flash’s friends realize the full extent of what has happened. :3
They might not look like it, but that’s pretty much what actually happened… (Well, was shoved…)
Fortunately they’re nobles and all that matters is appearance, not substance.
Well let’s hope that Flash had a genius level intellect of his own then, in the Thinker’s case.
It does seem preferable to trying to use whatever Frankensteinish mess the mc’s DNA is, as I have the feeling that using myrmidon DNA in a human baby wouldn’t have (m)any upsides for the poor thing.
Given Arinthas’s interaction it does seem to obey admin-privileged “users” to some degree.
Another question about the prologue and my Flash’s looks, how rare is the combination of blue skin, white hair and yellow eyes?
Of course it’s early days yet but I didn’t really see the more unusual skin colours, blue, green and red really featured or mentioned in the world-building documents or the prologue. Are those groups really rare, or are they just not normally found among the upper crust of society due to more prejudicial reasons?
Interestingly the Thinker’s quantum-entanglement communications hub means that there is no physical force in the universe that can sever or interrupt its connection with the Upper Brain, which is itself built into the inner ecosphere of a Neutron Star for safe keeping (Humans used to be a lot more impressive than they are today). Anything that has a notion of trying to ‘damage’ a neutron star is either powerful enough to threaten the entire galaxy or about to have a very bad day.
So the odds of there being a signal interrupt are so small as to be statistically improbable, however you are correct that Thinkers would be calibrated to interface with smaller personal memory units (to protect research copyright, ensure data security, reduce risk of data contamination etc) so you would be able to jerry-rig an artificial memory unit to augment your own processes.
Unfortunately the quickest and easiest way I can think of doing so is a bit… icky.
You could string several Myrmidon brains together in a ‘Rat-King’ formation that allows them to remain interconnected, puzzling through your data autonomously. You might have some problems with leftover fragments of personalities, and you’d need to keep several Myrmidon parts around to keep the brains alive. While they wouldn’t necessarily need to remain inside the original bodies, you could string them all together and sever their external communications components, leaving them ‘locked in’.
Of course… If you left the comms gear in… They would have an exceptionally powerful voice compared to other Myrmidons… They could probably mentally overpower a single Myrmidon with sheer volume and data density…
Hang on, I need to scribble down some notes…
Here we go, this is a much less disquieting question.
Both the Prince and the Princess are potential ‘targets’ simply because they have not been allowed to pursue relationships until this time, so nobody knows what they’re into. Lady Calinas is taking a gamble that at least one of the Royal Children is into Flash’s gender, but in theory both might turn him/her/zher down. She has no way of confirming, so she has to make a bet.
As to homosexuality this society is fairly Gender-Utopian in nature, having a distinct third gender that exists along a broad spectrum has meant that no solid gender roles have really been allowed to form. A woman can serve in the army, a gentleman may fall in love with another, and Androgynes drift along the ever-shifting sexual landscape, reshaping it simply by refusing to adhere to it. Homosexual relationships are not only morally accepted but legally protected. If a young gentleman wishes to marry Prince Etienne, there will be a wedding and he will officially be named Royal Consort and become a Duke in his own right. The same obviously goes for women and Androgynes.
You won’t see any notes about the different hair, eye and skin colours in the synopsis notes because the thought only occurred to me a week ago. I would say that while a great many people exist with ‘unaltered’ genetic lineages, people with unusual colour variations are common enough that you wouldn’t be scared or upset if you saw one.
Interesting, is the mc the only unit that is currently linked up with this super brain or are there other “users” and if there are can we (eventually) learn to communicate with them, perhaps learning of other (former) human worlds or at least the world beyond the three Rings?
Let’s not do it the quick and easy way then and either find a way to custom grow pristine spare myrmidon brains or try to find or build a purely mechanical miniaturized quantum computer implant.
Although being able to overpower most feral droids with what amounts to ddos attacks would come in handy within the game-world, I imagine.
Thus necessitating @P_Tigras’s need for either an intact DNA sample of the original Flash or something suitably close to it that is not myrmidon “corrupted” DNA.
So blue-skinned people, among other things, are merely “exotic” (if they’re as pretty as Flash was) and not a discriminated against minority?
Though I mainly chose that combination because I love blue-skinned space hunks (or dark-elves in space, or just plain dark elves).
Glad to that you thought to gave us all those diverse options though, really helps me to flesh out the character and make a better mental picture of them.
In theory yes, although I have yet to write any of them into the greater narrative. You might not want to look too closely at the worlds beyond the Ring, as there are some pretty awful things lurking out there in the dark. There are even one or two examples of those awful things happily wandering through the wilds of the Rings, although not in any serious numbers.
Too late, the Rattenkönig is now a canonical (and terrifying) character in the Mage path.
Happy to help with your hunk-based needs, we also offer selection of babes, heartthrobs and (for a limited time only) beefcakes.
I always make a point of welcoming new readers, they ask questions. Often good ones. Often questions that give me a new idea that ends up completely changing the direction of a later scene in the game.
So make yourself at home, and do ask if anything comes to mind, every little helps.
Haha, thanks. Now if there was a pointy ear genemod… Although I’m not so sure what practical use pointy ears actually offer over our round ones, besides looking sexy and providing more potential space for earrings, which might have been as good a reason as any for some pre-fall worlds, I guess.
