Dark Forest in a nutshell. Also could you please not list an ending I was planning here, forcing me to invent a new one?
If you managed to represent a ground force war across the surface of an actual star in Aurora I would not even be mad that you
stole "borrowed" my idea, only very impressed.
Ooh. This explains the strange case of having multiple races crewing their ships.
Expect it actually doesn't because Zenn were left to die together with their homeworld. They should be extinct by now.
I had imagined that they somehow managed to also make it off the planet and join forces with their fellow race to Dark Forest the rest fo the galaxy to smithereens, but I suppose I was getting ahead of myself.
Now, there are a series of new updates here to be read...
Almost twelve hibernation cycles after the battle of Qi and briefly after return of the last interstellar expedition, Conglomerate decided to hold the biggest conference and discussion pannel up to date.
Would you say this could be considered a "naval conference"?
We are the Groaxians,
Dark Forest is against our nature and is the ultimate threat. Not only for our survival, but also for everything we value. It was true even for Humanity. As we all know from their history discovered so far, despite being much fiercer warriors, most among their species still could not bear the weight of a Dark Forest Theory and they struggled to develop agreement on how to approach the miracle of sentient life. But data gathered so far is ruthless - those who fight to protect us are all doomed to fall out of balance sooner or later. Thanks to the Transcendent speech we were able to work with them and achieve more promising results, but we are far from ideal. We know some of us are different. This has alwasy been the case. And since some of us are indeed different, we need to put it into good use. Our nature is endangered, so as a whole we shall designate those who will adapt to a human way of thinking to handle space combat better and they will be transparent with this so that others will be able to distance themselves from the cruelty of interstellar war and as such our civilisation will continue to grow.
An interesting statement to make. On one hand, the idea of separating the military arm of society from the rest has potential to be severely isolating for the military, especially as the future is likely to cause them to be increasingly distant from their people in space as well. On the other hand the commitment to seeking ways through Transcendent Speech to solve the problem has to be encouraging for the soldiers to reassure them that while they do their duty their people are not abandoning them to their fates. It's a fine line to walk for sure.
Guards and soulseekers working with alive Umbaras have manged to pull one more thing out of them: the mention of a Maigh Eo binary system. It was believed to not have any planets orbiting either one of the stars which was confirmed by the information obtained. Just two stars and nothing else to be there. Yet for whatever reason it was an important system for the aliens Groaxians dealt with. Something was there, even though at the same time evidence spoke there was nothing there. Without much reason to continue discussing a moot point, an expedition had to be sent to investigate the system.
Very interesting. Before reading further my guess is that it is an important gateway system of some sort, either it is a major transport hub of some kind or this is a bottleneck system where the Umbara have placed their major defensive forces. Of course in this universe, we do not have jump points, so either of these would only be important if they mapped a way through the big wall of black holes previously mentioned.
So, I dunno, some kind of crack in the wall?
...and the actual Crack turns out to be far more intriguing. A unique region of space which allows for FTL? How strange.
Despite suspicions rising, Conglomerate obviously saw no way but to continue investing into Mimung development. It was somehow relieved to do so when soulseekers came up with a safety guarantee for interstellar colonisation which was in fact a simple statement: if colonies were to grow hostile about their homeworld, that'd mean Groaxians shouldn't colonise other solar systems than Qi. But given the high risk of Qi position being either already known to Dark Forest Lords or likely to be revealed to them in the near future, that'd mean certain doom and the end of civilisation should Dark Forest attack (since if a colony would do something considered "wrong" Groaxians would simply stop any interstellar colonisation program in order to avoid producing more enemies), without even the smallest seed surviving to rebuild. And so colonies growing hostile was nothing but dooming the entire race for extinction.
So basically, a colony would not revolt against the homeworld because that would compromise the survival of both the colony and the homeworld. Usually, this would be the point to observe that even though this is a very rational argument, rarely do sentient beings behave purely rationally. However, the Groaxians are eminently rational, so I am sure they all realize this and nothing bad can happen.
What was somewhat more important than weapons and technology used, were the names chosen for these two classes of next-gen combat spaceships: they were called exactly like two out of three types of ships on which first serious military space fleet of Humanity was based, fleet that saw a lot of combat with Invaders from Bootes Void and brought many victories for the humans, keeping their systems as secure as possible at a time.
Both interesting ships. Quite a lot of space has to be used for the curvature propulsion systems, so the armaments are a bit light, but they will do well for their purpose of quickly destroying enemy attackers from a safe distance.
From some other perspective, teaching about Amazons Program also served as a kind of backdoor to the Groaxian mind. On the one hand it was to teach soldiers how they should think in battle to be more effective at their job, but on the other it was supposed to make them well-aware about the type of training they're going through and to have them understand the way it works "from the inside", to show them that Humanity struggled with what Groaxian society has problems with right now too. Soulseekers hoped that once their service is over, this self-awareness about what they were put through would prevent Groaxians from completely forgetting about their true instincts and allow for some kind of therapy restoring their previous mental shape, possibly even leading to a breakthrough in search for a cure for Dark Forest Disease.
I think it should be encouraging to the Groaxians, that even with how much humanity had changed to survive in the Dark Forest they still retained the better part of their nature to act out of altruism to help the Groaxians with the Monolith. For Groaxians this should be a sign of hope that even with their own social upheaval they can retain the better part of their own nature and not turn into mindless, drug-addicted killing machines like the Umbara seem to be.
An obvious next step in space exploration was to fly towards the Crack and utilise its potential to explore some stars further from Qi, while at the same time trying to determine where exactly the superluminal highway ends, how wide and tall it actually is and why is it there, or rather why it isn't anywhere else. First system to reach using it was Naegling
[...]
Next star in the exploration queue was Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi.
As an aside, I'm curious how you come up with the system names. They don't seem to match any of the system name lists in-game, and as far as I can tell do not fall under a single language or linguistic group either.
It appeared that the Crack was just a specific region of space that behaved like all space should behave according to human research.
So it sounds as if the galaxy has changed at a fundamental level since humanity gave the Monolith to Qi, a mystery which requires deep investigations.
It was true that Zenn were left behind to die out with every living being of Zenn-La, but it hadn't necessarily translated into them actually doing so. Umbara fleets left the doomed world in a hurry, leaving all the facilities they used for space programs as well as research data mostly intact. Zenn still had enough time left before inevitable extinction to decipher at least parts of it. Their starships at first weren't very effective, but at least were enough to get them off the planet, out of the solar system and onwards to space while keeping them alive in a stasis.
And now I am no longer ahead of myself.
Conglomerate also tried to get the coordinates of the system in which the remnants are located and both Zenn as well as La captured after operation QiSet had a detailed description of the star and its celestial bodies stored in their heads. The only problem was that after browsing star catalogues to no end, searching through all possible candidates, it was determined that such system doesn't exist and in fact never existed. The starfield visible from within it did not match with any part of the galaxy at all and given the technology described the possibility of Umbara coming from a different one was also ruled out as no ship of theirs would ever endure such a journey without falling apart along the way somehwere in intergalactic space.
This calls for some imagination: if the Umbara, or maybe more correctly now the Zenn-La, are from another galaxy, they may have crossed over along another kind of superluminal highway like the Crack but crossing between galaxies.
Re: Time's End - Freedom
In which our heroes meet the Americans!
Joking, joking...
The side effect of all these efforts was to pull out data about another two systems explored by Umbara, but never inspected by any Groaxian from up close. They included Meirica
You know, I meant it to be a joke, but as this is one letter away from being 'Merica I now have my doubts.
A study focused on behavioural changes among generations born after discovering Dark Forest Theory sounded an alarm. While changes for the worse in themselves were nothing new, another layer of the problem has been brought to attention. For example, safety check provided by middlemen was of lower quality and more genetic errors were likely to occur during birth. There wasn't enough proof to link this with the migration of many middlemen to Yatune. In fact, scientists couldn't all agree whether it was middlemen providing genetic checksums of lower quality or lowered breeding quality in general. A common symptom of the problems was slightly increased brain temperature during birth which later was correlated with higher aggression levels or problems with hibernating. Same researchers proposed to fix the existing issues with experimental genetic modification therapy, but Conglomerate remained sceptical about these ideas, unsure whether throwing more artificiality at the problem would really help with anything. One thing to be remembered, though, was that relocating the "overheated individuals" to colder regions of Genesis had some limited positive effects. Still, many scientists couldn't see any viable solution besides fixing things at the same level they were broken which was the level of individual genes. For now the Conglomerate at least agreed to grant affected population access to implants that were responsible for keeping brain temperature in check at all times, regardless of environmental factors.
Clearly the answer is to deliberately breed these kinds of individuals and use them as super-soldiers with as many genetic modifications as Groaxian geneticists can figure out. And then in keeping with the running joke here, give them red-and-blue costumes and round shields made of some really tough metal.
Several hibernation cycles after first recruits of Human Space Forces completed their training, first conclusions on the project could've been made. Everyone expected Groaxians who served in this fleet would remain disconnected from main society, possibly forming their own enclosed community, a very different one, but that did not happen. They seemed to be quite popular among certain groups from younger generations. It was a worrying sign, because it hinted the problem once again has proven to be larger than predictions. Humanity has always been present in the culture of Groaxians for obvious reasons, but never before did it have such long-reaching influence. On top of it all, a dangerous ideology began to spread among population: for the first time in Groaxian history it was proposed that a freedom of an individual is more important than the eternal equilibrium of a carefully balanced society and that an interstellar civilisation cannot continue to exist with how things were before.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this has turned into a subtle social commentary on the present day.
The idea was obviously derived from the human concept of freedom, but experts instantly pointed out that such freedom was an illusion through the entire history of Humanity and that what is already known about them doesn't suggest any proof of an average human ever being truly free. Moreover, even if that'd be the case for Humanity, soulseekers agreed that Groaxian society could never function like this because of how connected it was via Transcended Speech. Dangerous thoughts of even one individual could lead to health problems among a few dozens others that were close enough to feel these thoughts which is why the balance was mandatory for the sake of well-being of everyone.
There was a Star Trek episode about something similar to this...Voyager I think? A particular society had the same kind of telekinetic connection of emotions, and a black market existed which traded in violent memories which then ended up infecting others of the population. I don't remember how it ended though, hopefully in this case the ending is not detrimental for Groaxian society which is even more closely communal.
While all this looked pretty grim and depressing, a glimpse of hope appeared in the form of yet another theory: sure, things were heading in the wrong direction, but at the same time there was a war going on, a war like never before. And through the past destabilisation of balance preceeded the conflict, leading directly to it, while now problems started to arise only after first battles have been fought and Groaxians still stood united, just trying to defend themselves and forge a path for them across the stars. And diving into the human mind further might hold the answer to Dark Forest, assuming they have really figured it out and haven't in the meantime gone extinct after one photonic missile too many or something. Conglomerate had to accept that it was a path worth checking out. The question "how to join Humanity across the stars" resurfaced again.
This seems like a good perspective to have. Yes, Groaxians have changed somewhat, but for the sake of survival and preserving their society rather than to tear it down. After all, sometimes change and adaptation is a good thing, the basics of biology show this - but change should be made with care and consideration always, and here the Groaxians do things correctly.
Looking forward to seeing how this unique race continues to grow, evolve, and find their place in these dark and mysterious stars.