Chalk and Fire

[Pariah]

Mainly so that I don't have another thread in Setting Forge, I'm starting this here.  This first post is just going to be me copying notes I've left myself on a dozen pieces of paper over the last month or so.  I apologize in advance if I disagree with myself at various points throughout this text dump. I'm just copying and not proofing or anything...

"There are the stars — doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings up there. Just chalk...or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself."
— The Stage Manager, Our Town

Blink drive

Professor at Tycho U discovers theoretical basis for FTL, people laugh because the gravity requirements for it would involve flying into a sun.

First unmanned FTL flight

IIRC, 1 qutrit (QT) carries a septit of information
First FTL radio (ansible) developed using entangled qutrits.  Device has a maximum message length of 277 QT's before it devolves into incoherence (msg limit of ~130 characters).  ISO standard comm pattern follows: QT's 1-3 are straight "777" to weed out likelihood of receiving junk message, followed by two 12 QT routing numbers (sender/receiver), the next 246 are the message body, and the last 4 are straight 1's to signal message end.  This is solely for "on-grid" systems though, which rely on central telecom hubs with massive routing tables to determine who owns what number and how to best send it to them.  "Off-grid" units on the other hand provide the ultimate in secure communications, utterly untappable and horribly illegal in all civilized systems.
A 12 QT number has 13,841,287,201 different possible combinations, due to the fact that ansibles are not a consumer level product, a mere ~14 billion numbers was deemed acceptable by the ISO.  While your average person will quite likely use one on occasion, it is closer to the telegraph than the telephone as far as consumer use goes.

Numerous systems mapped via FTL probes

Nanotech disaster, ww3/the solar war, humanity united under the united system alliance

first manned FTL flight, all hands lost

FTL probes find and return the 1st manned flight, crew discovered to  have killed themselves in an orgy of violence.  Writings found on board leaked to public, massive revival in religious interest noted by pollsters.

Schismatic Church formed

Documents revealing go't using criminals given life sentences as test subjects in order to try and find a safe form of FTL, documents reveal that sleep might theoretically be effective in preventing the effects, however even the use of potentially lethal doses of aesthesia proved to be ineffective in keeping subjects asleep for the transit.  Post transit debriefs describe the transit, which is instantaneous, or as near to make no difference, as lasting for all of eternity and beings described as such: (thank you tvtropes)

-The ancient depictions of angels are more like traditional Eldritch Abominations than the fluffy cloud angels we see nowadays on Christmas decorations. The cherubim (Yes, those cuties we all know today), have four faces - a lion on the right, an ox on the left, a human forward, and an eagle backward. They have four wings, with HANDS under the wings, their legs described as simply "straight", and they have hooves. Also, the eyes. Everywhere. Even in the spaces between the eyes. Furthermore, "Cherubim" means "the living ones". This means, in the eyes of the Hebrews, the most outstanding characteristic amongst the other orders of angels was that they are alive. Not so cute anymore, is it?
-Contrast the Seraphim, basically cherubim with extra wings that are on fire, whose name means "Fiery Ones", and the Ophanim, that take this to the extreme, being wheels intersecting themselves while turning, also flying with six wings, somehow attached while they're turning, whose name means "Wheels". Remember, neither of these were understood to be alive by the Hebrews. Add to all this that God's guard for the Garden of Eden was a cherub armed with a flaming sword that turned in all directions. There's a reason angels would address humans with "be not afraid" or just come with a form you would be comfortable with. That they are so nice takes the abomination out, even if they are eldritch.
-Some interpretations of Seraphim hold that their divine fire radiates a light so ineffably potent that it willl SEAR FROM EXISTENCE anything that approaches too close, including, presumably, lesser angels. That's still nothing compared to God Himself, for whom the Seraphim are the mundane equivalent of matches, basically shining as tokens of His glory.
-Seraphim are also described as dragon/serpent like (which led some experts to believe that they are loosely based on the goddess Wadjet from Egyptian Mythology, which is also a fiery snake). They consistently have six wings, and one of them is used to cover their feet. In spite of the fact that they are snake-like. Try figuring that one out.
-It gets worse. The Book of Revelation implies that there are angels so powerful and evil, that God locked them up in a bottomless pit because He didn't want to bother with them. A bottomless pit; that means a pit with a definable end would not be enough to contain these monstrosities. And they're going to be let out one day, at The End of the World as We Know It.
-Ironically, notably and deliciously subverted with demons, all of which are said to be inferior to humans and powerless against them, although their parasitic powers are exceptional. Indeed, we are probably seen as eldritch abominations by demons, considering that, allegedly, the first example in this section has given humans a blessing and a chance at salvation while cursing demons to an eternity of suffering.
-Thomist philosophy's angels aren't weird-looking-because they have no appearance, being pure ideas. This concept was pretty much borrowed from Plato's Theory of Forms (Theory of Ideas). But the Platonic Ideas still definitely fit the "weird psychology" part. They have no need to reason or learn, because they know everything that they even can know, simply as a function of their self-awareness. They are timeless and infinite, and have no feelings; though they have enormous power to influence the world, it isn't by "action", as humans would understand it. The Real World as we see it is in fact just a shadow of these Forms, whom You Cannot Grasp the True Form. The perfect Idea of blueness "is projected" on what we "perceive" as a blue object. It's like The Matrix, only the Real World is not this real world but instead is mind screwy. Also, the most powerful of all angels, the supreme created entity, second only to God / The Form of the Good Himself? Satan, the Idea Of Evil.
-Islam also holds the "Eldritch Abomination" view of angels. The Prophet Muhammad was terrified when he saw Gabriel in his true form; God, through Gabriel, spends the first few verses of the Sura (chapter) Al-Muddathir calming him down.

news article from shortly after THAT leaked to the public: representative so-and-so on the Select Committee for Extrasolar Exploration is the third ranking official found dead with two bullet holes in the back of his head and a rat shoved into his mouth.

extremists in the Schismatic Church are thought to be responsible for the attack that killed hundreds of researchers and let an untold number of inmates free from a secret gov't facility, the inmates are rumored to be the subjects of gov't attempts at safe ftl travel.

first SUCCESSFUL manned FTL flight, humanity begins the colonization of the stars

Settlers on the binary planet system of Helen-Chytemnestra find the remains of the first known alien civilization

Metzi limit discovered at 23 parsecs from Sol, all attempts at FTL travel beyond this limit are lost. (a limit of ~74.9 ly still leaves 224 G type stars, and upwards of 10K total stars)
http://www.solstation.com/stars3/100-gs.htm#70-80

First psions found among the children of extrasolar colonists, in following years some are found in Sol as well, but distribution seems to be random

Link for psionics found, parental exposure to FTL travel provides small chance of child being psion

(End first page of notes)

1 Space Marine in armor >= 1 Abrams MBT

Marine Sniper Rifle
-"You can't shoot the moon with it, but you can get d**n close"
AKA Finger of God

United Systems Alliance Marine Corp

MSR comes with 12 rd box magazine or 60 rd drum
Muzzle velocity from a mere mach 2 (690 MPS) all the way up to 3 KPS if you're willing to burn through the whole battery in a single shot, factory recommended setting is 1.37 KPS which gives you 12 shots to the battery

(End Page 2)

Akratek 30mm Marine Sniper Rifle
weighs a mere 97.3 kilos, include "man portable" in the definition
capable of putting a round through 6" of unobtanium (duracrete, PolyTek (tm) Armor, high density composite, whetever)
best target acquisition software money can buy, links up with suit HUD to provide targeting, and when linked with video/location feeds from forward observers can put a round into an area with a radius of 27cm at 11km* (*assuming optimal conditions on a 1g world with out any wind)
coil gun shooting 30mm discarding sabot rounds with a depleted uranium core
"easy to change battery"
adjustable muzzle velocity
"up to 36 rounds between battery changes"

A-71 "Bulldog" Marine fighting vehicle
APC
Jamming suite for orbital insertions
20 marines (in full armor) + 2 pilots
Limited AI in charge of guns
2 heavy gauss guns for primary weapons
capable of orbital insertion, atmospheric flight, space flight, doesn't produce enough thrust to leave worlds with more than .52 standard g's

101 space marines, from COL down to PVT, combat, intel, medic, logistics, repair, etc

(End Page 3)

War of Earthly Aggression ended with earth's defeat at the hands of the Solar colonies

colonies and earth nations independently colonize numerous worlds and systems

terran unification unites the earth under 1 gov't, the Unified Terran Alliance

Lunar Succession Crisis allows Terra to reassert dominion over its wayward satellite

2nd war of earthly aggression ends with UTA in control of Solar system and numerous extrasolar colonies, UTA is renamed the United Systems Alliance and takes part in the brushfire wars to extend control to unaligned worlds

Centari Pact is formed, consisting of numerous worlds that swear to defend eachother from terran aggression

1st interstellar war between Pact and USA ends in stalemate

cold war situation forms, with CP and USA waging proxy wars in unaligned systems and supporting revolutionaries, terrorists, and privateers in the others territory.

How to make a blink drive subject to the actions of pirates, especially in the vastness of space?????

47th Marine BDE, the Sky Burners
Sample TOE/OoB
Squad level organization: Riflemen, Heavy Weapons Guy, Explosives Guy, Sniper, Squad Leader
Corpsmen and Armor repair and the like are at the platoon level, if not company

Kinetic Interdiction (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the tungsten telephone pole)
It's a BAD idea, because not only do you need to repopulate the now lifeless planet, you're likely to set back any terraforming efforts.  A planet with an angry population is better than a borderline uninhabitable planet with no one on it.
repop statistics: with a starting population of 100 million colonists and a constant population growth rate of 20% with NO deaths it would take 50 years to reach a population of 3 billion, with another 15 years before the majority of the population is trained and in the work force, needless to say this is less than appealing to someone who would like to use the production capabilities of said world in their war effort.  There's also the fact that depopulating a world gives the enemy a good piece of propaganda to claim that you're a heartless monster, and one can understand why this has only been done 3 times in the last 100 years.

Marine Battlearmor
USA designator S
all digits are in hexidecimal
1st digit: job designator
2nd digit: major redesign
3rd+ digits: minor redesigns
Final appending character (G to Z): special duty designator
1st digit breakdown
0 - Special Forces
1 - Standard marine assault suit
5 - Mechanic
A - Pilot Survival Suit

AT-103 "Badger" Marine Assault Transport
CAS/APC role, a combination of the AC-130, EC-130, and the Hind
Jettisonable fairings for re-entry
Launched from Navy ship onto planet in order to subdue local population

A-17 "Mongoose"
CAS
A-10, Harrier, Stealth fighter, Wild Weasel

F-67 "Wildcat"
Air/low orbit superiority, capable of spaceflight

T-9
Navy general purpose bulk tug for planet to orbit operations, used to put logistical support and most of the marine air support on the ground after the marines secure a landing zone

(End Page 4)

[Chaosmark]

How to make a blink drive subject to the actions of pirates, especially in the vastness of space?????

1) Nobody likes to have a random ship jump right into their orbitals. That's generally the tactic of invasion fleets, and most planetary governments have adopted a "shoot-first-pick-up-the-pieces" policy. Thus, any jump must be done at least XYZ distance from major celestial bodies. This also has safety benefits, because you don't want imprecision in your jump software to plow your ship into the upper crust of a planet.

2) There are certain optimum locations for ships to jump to when they're going to be traveling sublight, generally located near Lagrange Points (see ITN). Bulk freighters are concerned with fuel savings, so they can be found warping in around those areas in any given system.

Metzi limit discovered at 23 parsecs from Sol, all attempts at FTL travel beyond this limit are lost. (a limit of ~74.9 ly still leaves 224 G type stars, and upwards of 10K total stars)

Cue the FarStation, a research base out past the Metzi limit which is trying to determine why FTL fails. All supplies and information runs are sublight, which means if (when) something goes wrong, it's a loooooooong way from help. Abandoned research facility ahoy! A sister base, NearStation, is the last stopover point for the monthly supply run. It also receives the research information relayed from FarStation through the buoy network connecting the two, and sends FTL probes from this side of the barrier to that side.

[Pariah]

MORE JUNK NOTES!!! YAY!!!  Most of this stuff is the notes that led to me wanting to make this setting, almost all of it will not be setting specific, and most of it deals with a single location: Clymstra (or however that's supposed to be spelled) station


(20:42:35) Pariah: From the Dark Heart of Space: Cosmic Horror in the depths of the cosmos. Eldritch Abominations lurk in the space between stars and corrupt average humans to use as their tools.
(20:42:52) Pariah: From the Dark Heart of Space, a Star Wars style setting inspired by the eternal struggle between good and evil, with a touch of the Cthulhu Mythos.
(20:43:29) Pariah: From the Dark Heart of Space: Imagine fighting Lovecraftian horrors from beyond the stars on their home turf; that is, more or less, what FtDHoS is about. While the pages cover both a new template (Agent of the Void, a CR +3 template that provides stat bonuses without penalty and a hefty bonus to Intimidate checks, in addition to a fear-inducing attack) and a new advanced class (the Purifier, a holy warrior that strikes and smites at creatures of the darkness known as the “Void” with special swords), the campaign concept itself is…bland. There’s only about a page total of fluff on the campaign concept, the rest being just the Purifier and the Agent of the Void template. I know you’re probably tired of me saying this, but really, most of these campaign concepts are aggravatingly enticing, but were never expounded upon
(20:45:33) Pariah: Innocence Proves Nothing.

"Basically you're @!#$ed like in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, only instead of dying from blood poisoning caused by a dirty pitchfork you get to have your innards blown across the wall and then subsequently set on fire by a plasma gun (probably your own)."
 -1d4chan
(20:45:55) Pariah: Dark Heresy is a Warhammer 40,000 pen and paper roleplaying game published by Fantasy Flight Games using a mechanical system similar to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. It has the players assume the role of Acolytes of the Holy Inquisition in the grim, dark future of the 41st millennium, rooting out heresy among the Imperium wherever it may be arise. Notable for having over five consecutive pages entirely filled with Critical Hit Charts.
(20:46:08) Pariah: Dark Heresy is also the basis for a series of novels written by Sandy Mitchell, of Ciaphas Cain (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!) fame. The novels star the "signature characters" used by the rulebook for its gameplay examples: former arbitrator Mordechai Horst, tech-priest Hybris Vex, sanctioned psyker Elyra Yivor, Redemptionist assassin Keira Sythree, and guardsmen Danuld Drake and Vos Kyrlock. So far Scourge the Heretic and Innocence Proves Nothing have been released.
(20:46:27) Pariah: See also Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (its fantasy counterpart); Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, and Black Crusade (its sister games); and of course Warhammer 40,000, as Dark Heresy (unsurprisingly) shares a great number of tropes with its parent game.

Also check out Adeptus Evangelion, a fan-made conversion for running games set in the Neon Genesis Evangelion universe.
(20:48:14) Pariah: Brown Note: Komus, the Tyrant Star, whose appearance in a system has been known to drive entire planets insane.
(20:50:32) Pariah: Grim darkness is grim.
Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition.
Not even the Inquisitor.
When the Psyker attempts to use his powers, knock him out.
That guy over there looks strange. He is probably a heretic.
USE COVER!
USE GRENADES TOO!
You're probably @!#$ed anyways.
If you meet a Chaos Space Marine; you're already dead, you're just too stupid to realize it yet.
(20:54:08) Pariah: On top of this, one of the most commonly forgotten aspects of the Dark Heresy combat system is that everyone gets one Reaction per round, which can (among other things) be spent at any time to attempt to dodge or parry an attack, completely negating it. Although the odds of success aren't always fantastic, it's better to try and dodge that shot or parry that axe than sit there and take it!
(20:55:29) Pariah: The cell's primary firearms should be chosen to work well together. Weapons that can fire fully-automatic and weapons that have the Accurate quality are generally your best choices. A good hit with a full-auto burst can do serious damage to enemies, but by far their most important aspect is the ability to lay down Suppressive Fire. Crucially, even if you have terrible ballistic skill and no training with the weapon you're using, your ability to suppress enemies is completely unhindered. Your burst of fire almost certainly won't hit anything, but the difficulty of the test your foes must make to resist being pinned is unchanged regardless of how well you can aim. This can give less combat-oriented careers, such as the Adept, an important role to play when it comes to a fight, where they might otherwise have been reduced to hiding behind something heavy and occasionally plinking away with some crappy pistol.
(21:19:44) Pariah: Players are used to buy their gear straight from a list presented in a rulebook. They are used to exactly know what they are up to when they signing a deal. In short, they are used to have a level of knowledge that their actual pc sometimes can only dream about.

The next time the intend to buy a weapon somewhere during the game, only present them with a small list including the weapons name (or what you turned it into!) and type, a general note (i.e: "capable of half and/or full automatic" or "heavy calibre") and perhaps some of the banter the seller will glad to spourt forth. Only give them "the hard facts" if they passed an easy(+30) test for Common Lore (Tech) or an ordinary(+10) test for Weapon Skill (assuming that they know the tools of their trade) or if they have achieved mastery "+10" skill level in Common Lore (Tech).
(21:36:45) ChatBot: Murometz logs into the Chat.
(21:41:01) Pariah: heyhey
(21:43:25) Pariah: yeah, ignore me copyying large amounts of text in the chat
(21:49:13) Murometz: lol hey
(21:50:08) Murometz: actually, brb, sorry
(21:53:10) Pariah: kk
(21:53:19) ChatBot: Murometz has been logged out (Timeout).
(22:09:32) Pariah: "Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large."
— H.P. Lovecraft
(22:10:10) Pariah: Imagine a universe where even the tiniest spot of hope for the future is blindness in itself, the insane nihilist yelling about The End of the World as We Know It in the asylum is actually the only one with a clue, and too much curiosity about the true nature of the world spells a death sentence. A universe where humanity is surrounded everywhere by inconceivable horrors, and all our ideals are a cruel illusion; a universe which was once ruled by eldritch abominations that seeped down from the depths of space long ago.'
(22:24:02) Pariah: and the setting is now going from moderately hard scifi to cosmic horror space opera
(22:25:30) Pariah: human only setting w/ iconoclastic jedi order, no light sabers
(22:26:38) Pariah: non-wormhole travel is limited to .1c, wormhole is instantaneous but perceptually lasts slightly short of forever
(22:31:39) Pariah: "'Let me give you some advice, Captain,' he said, 'It may help you to make sense of the world. I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'"
— Lord Vetinari, Guards! Guards!
(22:32:39) Pariah: Obviously, the heroes of black and grey settings tend to be antiheroes or outright bad guys, facing off against even worse guys. In such a world, any characters who appear to be good in any way will eventually be revealed as a Knight Templar in disguise, a Dark Messiah inches from the edge, or a deeply flawed Anti-Hero. And if there are any genuinely good characters on the show, they'll either 'come around' to the The Dark Side, die horribly, remain a figure of perpetual mockery or, if very lucky, grow a protective shell of cynicism.
(22:35:58) Pariah: In a heavily cynical series, it's usually a Crapsack World where humans are either bastards or morons or a combination of the two. Morals are grey and grey, black and grey or black and black, and idealistic shows are nothing more than escapism or cheap propaganda. The Wide-Eyed Idealist is at best a child who needs protection from the people who know how the world really works, or at worst, someone doomed to suffer and/or die horribly. Alternately, any idealism shown could be from a Knight Templar who suffers from Black and White Insanity and is conditioned to believe that Utopia Justifies the Means. It's up to the The Cynic and the Anti-Hero, who know that sometimes it's safer to be feared than to be loved and that solving problems involve beating them into submission, to put an end to the problems that arise. Since they themselves are human it will probably end in The End of the World as We Know It because they're still human and humans are terrible.

Abridged: Might Makes Right.
(22:38:33) Pariah: the sentient cosmic force is inherently evil

(End Note 1)

(16:37:44) Chaosmark: Not as far as I've been able to tell.
(16:37:52) Chaosmark: Stomach hasn't acted up since yesterday.
(16:38:04) Pariah: well that's good
(16:42:55) Chaosmark: My thoughts exactly.
(17:22:09) Chaosmark: To D&D I go.
(17:22:10) Chaosmark: Ciao
(17:22:12) ChatBot: Chaosmark logs out of the Chat.
(22:16:53) ChatBot: Chaosmark logs into the Chat.
(22:16:55) ChatBot: Pariah has been logged out (Timeout).
(22:17:10) ChatBot: Pariah logs into the Chat.
(22:17:28) Chaosmark: Evening.
(22:17:34) Pariah: heyhey
(22:18:29) Pariah: http://img855.imageshack.us/img8​55/13/zenithbeastspart1.png
(22:18:39) Pariah: second set of sprites on the left
(22:18:54) Pariah: I like the multiple joints in the back leg
(22:19:05) Pariah: I'm thinking I might borrow
(22:20:06) Chaosmark: That kinda looks like some form of insect.
(22:21:00) Pariah: well the objective here is to put them past the uncanny valley and into body horror realms
(22:21:25) Chaosmark: That will definitely succeed.
(22:24:08) Pariah: yah body horror
(22:25:28) Pariah: but how would you describe that?
(22:25:53) Pariah: their limbs have two elbows that bend in opposite directions?
(22:26:11) Pariah: or does that make it sound like their right arm bends forward and their left arm bends back?
(22:26:47) Pariah: oh, wait, three elbows... that fixes the problem
(22:27:13) Pariah: the fore and the rear elbows bend in one direction and the mid-elbow bends the other
(22:29:57) Chaosmark: (Unrelated sidenote: My GM is thinking he'd love to let me playtest the Bringers of Midnight module with our group once I finish it. XD)
(22:31:27) Pariah: that's good
(22:31:43) Pariah: you'll be able to tell us where it fails and improve upon it
(22:31:57) Chaosmark: Exactly.
(22:37:26) ChatBot: Chaosmark is now known as (CM[elsewhere]).
(22:43:21) ChatBot: (CM[elsewhere]) is now known as Chaosmark.
(22:43:31) Pariah: wb
(22:47:36) Chaosmark: Danke
(22:48:01) Pariah: Universal Soldier used corpses as the base [for super soldiers] with an (you guessed it) Evil AI controlling them.
 The AI Seth is present only in the sequel, and he's not evil at first. He only goes rogue after the military attempts to shut the project (and the AI) down. Would you willingly allow yourself to be "shut off"?
(22:48:05) Pariah: ...
(22:48:14) Pariah: meant to whisper that to myself :/
(22:48:47) Chaosmark: The answer is 'no'.
(22:48:58) Pariah: yeah
(22:49:51) Pariah: but no, I'm trying to come up with some sort of creeping horror, other than the fact that alien super soldiers are killing people
(22:50:45) Pariah: on a side note, I'm starting to think that the samahen flesh crafting program might work well...
(22:51:14) Pariah: I'm thinking they were a race of bioengineers
(22:51:19) Chaosmark: Perhaps finding bits and pieces of their handiwork? It's not enough for them to be killing people. Death is..bland, unfortunately.
(22:51:39) Chaosmark: It needs to be something truly mind-searing.
(22:52:10) Pariah: right
(22:52:25) Pariah: that's why I'm thinking of the samahen...
(22:54:52) Pariah: but I figure the local culture, before the apocalypse, realized what what happening and put a seed stock of people in cryo in order to provide the chance that their world would warm up in the future, allowing them to defrost and survive a bit longer
(22:55:34) Pariah: I'm also thinking rigid castes further enforced by the bioengineering
(22:58:50) Pariah: which, truthfully, is probably one of those things that will never get mentioned at all during gameplay
(23:01:22) Chaosmark: No, which means you shouldn't detail it too much. However, let the basic concept influence the rest of the culture and race.
(23:02:06) Pariah: yeah. It's importantly unimportant
(23:02:40) Pariah: or unimportantly important... :/ I can never quite figure out which is the right way to say that.
(23:03:17) Chaosmark: Unimportantly important.
(23:03:34) Chaosmark: Importantly unimportant means that it's vital that it NOT be relevant.
(23:04:09) Chaosmark: While unimportantly important means that it doesn't matter whether it's relevant or not.
(23:04:30) Pariah: and this is why I hate english :p
(23:05:08) Chaosmark: You can totally make up such insanities in any language.
(23:05:19) Chaosmark: We just happen to notice the ones in English.
(23:06:06) Pariah: no, I just hate languages in general, english was just the one that I decided to hate english at the moment
(23:11:49) Chaosmark: ...Blarg. It's late. I need sleep.
(23:12:49) Pariah: peace
(23:12:49) Chaosmark: Have a good night.
(23:12:55) ChatBot: Chaosmark logs out of the Chat.
(23:21:23) Pariah: The Specials in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series. They have bones made of aircraft material with servos inside for better movement, artificial muscles that are stronger and don't get sore, weaponized fingernails and teeth filed to sharp points, nanobots in their blood that allow them to heal quickly, antennas implanted in their skin to allow for more efficient communication between themselves, a direct link to the city's interface that they can manifest as a GUI by closing their eyes and thinking about it, and an artificial addition to their brain that gives them enhanced senses and reflexes, a serious superiority complex towards non-Specials, and violent tendencies. Oh, and their facial features are modeled to look vaguely lupine to stir up the primal fear of predators in unmodified humans.
(23:28:27) Pariah: In Dollhouse, one of Rossum's secret projects is to create a unit of Hive Mind-ed supersoldiers using Active brain-architecture used in conjunction with neural radios. The result is.... disturbing, to say the least.
(23:30:20) Pariah: Space Marines (Imperium of Man): Fanatically dedicated, comprehensively superhuman genetically-engineered giants selected through decades of religious indoctrination and a form of The Spartan Way that only one of a hundred aspirants even survive, who carry fully automatic armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade launchers as their basic gun, are strong enough to rip a man apart and can survive having a tank dropped on them. Among the more... interesting grafts and hormonal modifications are a second heart, a third lung, a second stomach, bones coated in naturally occurring ceramite, and a ribcage that is solidified into one large chunk of bone. On top of their large intelligence they also have the ability to eat the brains of enemies to incorporate their intellect. Their muscles are so thick that they are immune to any weapon smaller than a 9mm handgun, they can breathe water, they are immune to diseases, and they don't require sleep. If they are not killed, they will live forever.
(23:33:31) Pariah: The Clans of the BattleTech/Mechwarrior Universe. Descended from the remnants of the Star League army that fled the breakup of the Star League, the Clans genetically breed their Mechwarriors, Infantry, and Aerospace pilots - only the top 25 individuals of a particular "Bloodline" are allowed to have children (they believe Lamarck Was Right). Clan Elementals (infantry) are 8-foot tall mountains of muscle, MechWarriors are of average height and weight but are immensely fit and have excellent reflexes, and the aerospace pilots have slimmer bodies and larger heads and eyes with enhanced reflexes and perceptions for Old-School Dogfighting. In the game universe, this made them individually better (with a few individual exceptions), but few in number compared to the Inner Sphere pilots, born the "old fashioned way" (The same problem that eventually cost the Real Life Spartans their unbroken record of victory).
(23:45:12) Pariah: Assuming aliens count, Protoss are the very embodiment of this trope. Zealots, the most basic protoss soldier, are 9 ft tall cybernetically enhanced warriors with decades of training, plasma shields, laser beam wolverine claws, and apparently capable of walking as fast as a motor vehicle and charging much faster than that. Oh yeah, and the can absorb as much damage as a tank (and survive a direct tank blast to the face without even losing their shields - and a couple more when their shields are down!).
(23:50:06) Pariah: Schlock Mercenary. To begin with, every human supposed to fight, including most of Tagon's Toughs, has "soldier boosts" (implants and Nanomachines) that optimize metabolism (they are nearly immune to intoxication, for one), improve reaction, strength and toughness enough that grunts can throw punches twice as strong as XX century professional boxers, without using protection or severely damaging themselves. With a powered armor on top of this.
(23:50:37) Pariah: Doyt Gyo stands out as an experiment in this area, has high-end powered armor and implanted genius AI acting as Mission Control and using several Attack Drones with great precision. Later, courtesy of the "magic cryokit", he gets more biological enhancements and interface for said AI to control the body directly — Doyt may have superhuman reaction, but his intellect is the obvious weak link.

(End note 2)


(22:24:56) Pariah: I figure he should get a bonus to his run speed from having a jesus lizard as a familar, right?
(22:25:13) Murometz: be back..wife
(22:25:21) Pariah: kk
(22:25:37) Murometz: bonus run speed no, but you can certainly RUN ACROSS TEH RIVER!! wheeeeeeeeeeee
(22:26:09) Pariah: well that works
(22:26:24) Pariah: so long as he makes to the river
(22:29:24) ChatBot: Murometz has been logged out (Timeout).
(22:42:36) Siren_no_Orakio: Whee
(22:44:26) Pariah: well you're off playing your game, I'm trying to design alien supersoldiers, and CM is elsewhere
(22:46:02) Pariah: on a side note, I think I've finally gotten one that I like
(22:49:09) Siren_no_Orakio: Heh
(22:49:20) Siren_no_Orakio: Why are yo udesignining alien supersoldiers?
(22:49:41) Pariah: a bilaterally symmetrical, hexapodal, exothermic, amphibian that looks like a cross between an ayeaye monkey and a velociraptor, with at least one opposable digit on all of it's limbs, the first and the last have 4 digits, the middle only has 3, with a prehensile tail. Also they're capable of walking on anywhere from 2 to 6 limbs.
(22:50:14) Siren_no_Orakio: Four arms?
(22:50:19) Siren_no_Orakio: Ah
(22:50:22) Pariah: I need an ancient evil in a can that some scifi archaeologists accidentally unleash
(22:50:25) Siren_no_Orakio: Didn't read the last sentence.
(22:50:34) Pariah: it happens
(22:50:40) Pariah: it was kinda a text dump
(22:50:51) Siren_no_Orakio: I like my sci-fi evil in a can to be robotic
(22:51:39) Pariah: well, archaeologists are never the ones that accidentally cause hundreds of people to die, I feel they deserve some love :p
(22:51:56) Siren_no_Orakio: Yeah
(22:52:04) Siren_no_Orakio: I'm just thinking durability, you know
(22:52:41) Pariah: well, I just described the base species
(22:53:16) Pariah: the super soldiers are the equivalent to WH40K space marines
(22:54:09) Pariah: extra hearts, lungs, a second pair of gills, claws, the whole nine yards
(22:54:56) Siren_no_Orakio: Ahah
(22:56:33) Siren_no_Orakio: TO be honest, i'm just sitting here, playing everquest, jamming my 'get better at this spell casting skill' button.
(22:57:22) Pariah: lol
(22:57:46) Pariah: and I thought you were busy sheparding dwarves
(22:58:22) Siren_no_Orakio: Thinking it' time to switch back to dorf murder
(23:14:38) ChatBot: Siren_no_Orakio has been logged out (Timeout).
(23:27:03) ChatBot: (CM[elsewhere]) is now known as Chaosmark.
(23:27:23) Chaosmark: Evening.
(23:29:56) Pariah: heyhey
(23:30:18) Pariah: Like hemocyanin, hemerythrin and coboglobin are not destroyed by carbon monoxide as is hemoglobin in human blood. Organisms with these kinds of blood pigments thus would not be poisoned by the gas, as humans are.
(23:30:39) Pariah: Coboglobin blood would be colorless with a faint pinkish tinge when loaded with oxygen, but in the veins would take on a dark yellow or deep amber color. Since coboglobin protein is a lightweight molecule like hemoglobin or hemerythrin, we might expect ET blood to carry the pigment in corpuscles.
(23:30:54) Pariah: It loses its ability to reversibly bind oxygen. While this aging takes weeks in the case of normal human hemoglobin, less than a day is required for coboglobins to poop out. As this "irreversible oxygenation" sets in, the pigment changes color dramatically from amber to deep pink.
(23:32:04) Pariah: I've decided on Coboglobin for their blood, due to high concentrations of CO in their atmosphere (before the planet got sent to a pluto like orbit that put it in a permanent ice age of death
(23:34:48) Chaosmark: Decided on a deeper biology, or just that little bit of flavor?
(23:37:22) Pariah: a little of both
(23:37:51) Pariah: enough little pieces and it looks like you did a lot of work
(23:38:15) Pariah: not enough and you have to rely on the rule of cool to carry you through
(23:39:16) Chaosmark: The key is the side-effects.
(23:39:29) Chaosmark: Make it plausible, and obvious, and the rest fills itself in.
(23:40:02) Pariah: yeah
(23:40:20) Chaosmark: Like the coboglobin blood. Obviously it would react differently than hemoglobin to certain things, especially when gushing from wounds.
(23:40:26) Chaosmark: How, exactly, I don't know.
(23:40:32) Chaosmark: But it would be obviously different.
(23:41:18) Pariah: well, when oxygenated, it's clear for one
(23:42:17) Pariah: how thick or thin the blood is isn't too related to what is used to carry the oxygen
(23:44:05) Pariah: blood that used extremely poor oxygenating substances, like copper based blood, would need to be a lot thicker than human blood, because it needs at least twice as much of the globin to move the blood, but cobalt based blood is only 3/4 as efficient as iron, so there doesn't need to be that much of a different
(23:53:47) ChatBot: Siren_no_Orakio logs into the Chat.
(23:54:23) Pariah: wb
(23:54:43) Pariah: I decided to use coboglobin for their blood
(23:56:01) Chaosmark: I admit, the idea of a clear bloodspray as one of them is cut open in a fight to be an interesting visual.
(23:56:08) Chaosmark: Much different from the usual red splatter.
(23:56:57) Siren_no_Orakio: Coboglobin wouldn't be clear.
(23:57:25) Siren_no_Orakio: Arterial blood would be pink, veinous would be a deep blue
(23:57:28) Pariah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cob​oglobin
(23:57:40) Siren_no_Orakio: Or I'm wrong.
(23:57:46) Pariah: lol
(23:58:07) Pariah: I'm pretty sure one of teh copper based globins is pink/blue
(23:58:20) Siren_no_Orakio: Cobalt alone is naturally blue / pink
(23:58:56) Pariah: yeah, but globins make some weird colors
(23:59:58) Pariah: there's one hemeglobin, don't remember which one right now, that oxygenates as green in low concentrations and then goes to red in higher ones
(00:02:29) Pariah: also, I did not know this:

The word chauvinism is derived from the cognomen of a highly jingoistic French soldier by the name of Nicolas Chauvin, born at Rochefort in the late 18th century. In 1815 Chauvin gained great notoriety by his obstinate, bellicose attachment to the lost cause of Napoleon’s crumbling imperium. The term has since become identified with the absurd, unreasoning, single-minded devotion to one’s own race, nationality, sex, or, most recently, to one’s own point of view.
(00:05:36) Chaosmark: Hm
(00:06:03) Chaosmark: Interesting etymology. I've only ever heard it used for male-centric thoughts.
(00:06:29) Siren_no_Orakio: Why not make it a mixed system in the soldiers?
(00:07:34) Siren_no_Orakio: Have them push something akin to hemocyanin for low oxygen partial pressures, too
(00:09:12) Pariah: that'd work
(00:09:28) Pariah: but what weird color would the blood be?
(00:09:57) Pariah: that ugly dark brown you got from mixing all the paint together in art class during first grade?
(00:10:41) Pariah: but yeah, highly redundant with increased survivability in weird environments works
(00:11:42) Siren_no_Orakio: Possibly a bright green arterial fading to whitish-blue venous blood?
(00:12:30) Siren_no_Orakio: Actually, from bright blue arterial to yellow venous.
(00:14:53) Siren_no_Orakio: Hemocyanin can only push around so much oxygen, so they won't be -superb- in those conditions, but a human would be choking to death at that point.
(00:16:03) Pariah: right
(00:16:55) Pariah: hemoglobin is the most efficient that I could find, but I liked the coboglobin, it was only moderately less efficient and had the added bonus of preventing CO poisoning
(00:18:23) Siren_no_Orakio: Coboglobin apparently isn't entirely stable, judging from that wiki stub
(00:22:32) Chaosmark: It's probably produced by the body only when needed.
(00:22:48) Chaosmark: CO starts to build up past safe levels, the body produces coboglobin temporarily.
(00:23:24) Chaosmark: Of course, since it only lasts ~24 hours, it'll be a major resource drain to keep pumping it out, but it would be good for temporary stopgap.
(00:23:43) Pariah: hemoglobin isn't stable either, it's just coboglobin breaks down in 1/10th the time
(00:24:26) Siren_no_Orakio: Yeah, that matters, though
(00:24:42) Pariah: it matters and it doesn't
(00:24:51) Chaosmark: As I said. Temporary stopgap.
(00:25:06) Chaosmark: We've survived quite well using hemoglobin and it's instability, haven't we?
(00:26:06) Siren_no_Orakio: Depends on how expensive it is to synthesize
(00:26:06) Pariah: nature doesn't always pick the most efficient solution
(00:26:30) Chaosmark: Not in an absolute sense.
(00:26:33) Siren_no_Orakio: Nature picks whatever doesn't kill it
(00:26:49) Chaosmark: It does, however, pick the pareto optimum for the current environment.
(00:27:30) Pariah: and if the current environment contains large amounts of CO...
(00:28:08) Chaosmark: As a sidenote, I had thought these were artificially-modified creatures, not naturally evolving ones?
(00:29:50) Pariah: they're super soldiers, there was an original race
(00:30:03) Pariah: the originals are what I'm working on now
(00:30:56) Pariah: from there I'll optimize the super soldiers with all the redundancies and stuff the Emperor put into his space marines
(00:32:48) Siren_no_Orakio: If they're using coboglobins, they may need to have evolved in a higher oxygen atmosphere
(00:33:13) Siren_no_Orakio: http://www.pnas.org/content/67/2​/637.full.pdf
(00:34:01) Siren_no_Orakio: Which is where it would make sense to bolster the soldiers with a spectrum of globins
(00:36:20) Pariah: da
(00:40:12) Siren_no_Orakio: and I am totally falling asleep in my chair. Good night, gentlemen
(00:40:17) ChatBot: Siren_no_Orakio logs out of the Chat.
(00:54:27) Pariah: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.ne​t/vida_alien/xenology/images/11.1​C.gif
(00:55:55) Pariah: actually, nix that
(00:56:20) Pariah: unless it's primarily cartilege, it wouldn't be flexible enough for how I want them... :/

(End note 4)

(16:32:26) Murometz: yes, i prefer chatting there...for example, need a quick AuR chat? Why not pop into Au channel...FTW!! whooo!! wheeee!!
(16:32:36) Murometz: join me
(16:32:42) Pariah: kk
(16:32:48) ChatBot: Pariah leaves the channel.
(16:32:51) ChatBot: Murometz leaves the channel.
(16:34:08) ChatBot: Pariah enters the channel.
(16:34:14) ChatBot: Murometz enters the channel.
(16:34:34) Pariah: hey CM, you feel like breaking the site again? :p
(16:34:53) Murometz: yeah!
(16:34:59) Murometz: double-chat channels FTW!
(16:38:24) Pariah: I don't think trying to hack that functionality in is practical, but it'd still be nice
(16:39:07) Murometz: P, what keeps you from posting in rp? apathy?
(16:40:35) Pariah: huh?
(16:40:59) Pariah: OH
(16:42:42) Murometz: lol
(16:45:05) Murometz: Dozus waxes poetic in ooc for months, game starts, he logs in and sees, then leaves ...P posts in ooc about thumb chewing, seemed psyched to roll... game starts, he logs in, sees, no interest
(16:45:10) Murometz: im confused lol
(16:49:05) ChatBot: MysticMoon logs into the Chat.
(16:49:17) MysticMoon: allo all
(16:49:32) ChatBot: Murometz logs out of the Chat.
(16:50:56) Pariah: allo
(16:51:04) MysticMoon: how goes it?
(16:51:09) Pariah: good
(16:51:53) Pariah: I'm working on a city besieged by an as-of-yet undetermined antagonistic faction... IN SPACE!
(16:52:03) MysticMoon: coolness
(16:52:28) Pariah: I'll let CM take the city besieged by cultists shtichk
(16:52:48) MysticMoon: everything sounds cooler when you add... IN SPACE!
(16:53:19) Pariah: yes it does :p
(16:53:56) MysticMoon: CM's city is besieged from the inside
(16:54:10) Pariah: I'm also a bigger fan of scifi than fantasy
(16:54:25) Pariah: well, mine is most likely going to be besieged from the inside as well
(16:54:40) MysticMoon: i like both, partly because they are so different
(16:54:41) Pariah: mainly because there's no reason to stage a seige in space
(16:54:57) MysticMoon: phantom menace aside
(16:55:10) Pariah: just drop a couple thousand kilos on the surface and all resistance ends
(16:55:13) MysticMoon: i guess that was more of a blockade though
(16:55:17) MysticMoon: right
(16:55:30) Pariah: blockades still have a use
(16:55:48) ChatBot: Murometz logs into the Chat.
(16:55:58) Pariah: wb
(16:55:58) MysticMoon: i was bummed when i had to give up hollen's prize
(16:56:12) Murometz: why give it up? youre here daily
(16:56:26) Murometz: and hello
(16:56:30) MysticMoon: hello
(16:56:50) MysticMoon: well, it wasn't my decision
(16:59:02) MysticMoon: there were bad times in the Moon household
(16:59:22) MysticMoon: that only cleared up recently
(16:59:42) MysticMoon: hence my being gone so much for awhile
(17:05:52) Pariah: (whispers to Pariah) Frex, let's say they're a group of scientists working to decrypt some alien artifact in a remote government facility/archaeological dig/what have you. People start going crazy, somebody reprograms all the security robots to "kill everything that moves," and it all goes downhill very quickly. In a game like that, escape is a difficult and rewarding enough objective!
(17:05:52) Pariah: (whispers) Frex, let's say they're a group of scientists working to decrypt some alien artifact in a remote government facility/archaeological dig/what have you. People start going crazy, somebody reprograms all the security robots to "kill everything that moves," and it all goes downhill very quickly. In a game like that, escape is a difficult and rewarding enough objective!
(17:06:11) MysticMoon: hmm, 2 more subs and the casa will finally make it off the front page
(17:08:02) Murometz: Koschei! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H​aNJPlXk2uM
(17:08:04) Pariah: lol
(17:08:20) Pariah: Myst, I'm going to HoH it as soon as I can :p
(17:08:34) Pariah: just to get it back on the front page
(17:09:04) MysticMoon:
(17:09:51) Murometz: well, if you wont, cheka will
(17:10:27) Murometz: youve created a classic, Myst
(17:12:08) MysticMoon: that's me, always pushing the literary boundaries (or something)
(17:12:29) Murometz: ok, im off to play wii for a while...so long fellas
(17:12:38) MysticMoon: have fun
(17:13:03) Murometz: will need to wrestle a remote from 1 of 4 lol..i'll go after the "weak" one
(17:13:21) Pariah: peace
(17:15:49) MysticMoon: so P, what do you have so far for you besieged city?
(17:15:53) ChatBot: Murometz has been logged out (Timeout).
(17:16:55) Pariah: Well, I've decided that it's going to be named Icarus Station, because it's on an ice world
(17:17:41) Pariah: it's a military-industrial-research complex
(17:17:58) MysticMoon: well protected, then?
(17:18:02) Pariah: yeah
(17:18:26) Pariah: it's going to be something internal that starts the chain of events that lead to it being a lost colony
(17:18:43) MysticMoon: something to do with the research?
(17:19:13) Pariah: probably
(17:19:35) Pariah: I'm not sure which of the usual suspects I want to run with
(17:20:20) Pariah: and ice world isn't quite the right description
(17:20:21) MysticMoon: there's always the old standby
(17:20:33) MysticMoon: developing a weapon that gets loose
(17:20:59) MysticMoon: killer robots or whatnot
(17:21:45) Pariah: the planet was earthlike in the past with a local civilization and whatnot, but then something happened to push the planet out of the life bad of the sun into a pluto-like orbit
(17:22:48) MysticMoon: so there would be all kinds of ruins and remains?
(17:22:53) Pariah: granted, most of their former civilization is now buried by at least a klick of ice in most places, but there are still some remains
(17:23:38) MysticMoon: what kind of time frame?
(17:23:41) MysticMoon: a few thousand years? a million?
(17:23:55) Pariah: doesn't really matter
(17:24:08) Pariah: long enough for them to go extinct
(17:25:28) MysticMoon: would there be remnants of their technology?
(17:25:47) MysticMoon: dormant remains of microscopic life?
(17:25:57) Pariah: yes, in bunkers and the like, but no sky scrapers
(17:26:16) Pariah: and yeah, microscopic life could still survive
(17:26:53) MysticMoon: was the station placed here to explore these remains or is it just in a handy location?
(17:27:55) Pariah: the station was originally there because of it's convenient locale, the ruins were discovered later and the site was expanded and opened to the outside
(17:28:22) Pariah: of course, the old station is still off limits to anyone who doesn't work there
(17:28:38) MysticMoon: do they unearth some sort deadly pathogen or deadly tech? or is that too cliche?
(17:28:43) Pariah: and the ones that do are uniformly weird, though in ways that are hard for people to describe
(17:29:24) Pariah: you see, that's my problem right now... All the standard scifi enemies seem too cliche to me
(17:31:01) Pariah: I figure now that I've decided this is what I'm going to work on for a little bit, I'll have an epiphany of a good enemy
(17:31:16) Pariah: and the basic idea will probably be quite cliche, but whatever
(17:31:24) MysticMoon: just keep digging deeper, eh?
(17:31:32) Pariah: yeah
(17:31:43) MysticMoon: here's where i see other efforts fail with scifi:
(17:32:02) Pariah: letting laws of nature get in the way of the story? :p
(17:32:05) MysticMoon: too many bad metaphors that end up being preachy
(17:32:31) MysticMoon: not thinking ideas through enough and leaving gaping holes of logic
(17:32:50) MysticMoon: making the people 2d stereotypes
(17:33:12) Pariah: that one happens to every type of fiction though
(17:33:29) MysticMoon: yes, but scifi seems to be especially prone
(17:34:18) MysticMoon: i think that was partially why firefly was so well liked; it avoided all those
(17:34:58) Pariah: probably
(17:35:41) MysticMoon: i've often wondered if some of those cliches could actually be done well if they were done right
(17:36:13) Pariah: but yeah, numbers 1 and 3 are basically the shtick of really libertarian/randian fiction in general
(17:36:59) Pariah: followed by number 4: weird soliloquies that are just the author ranting about what he hates about the modern day
(17:37:09) MysticMoon: yeah
(17:37:32) MysticMoon: and i like scifi because it's about what *could be* not "what is"
(17:37:51) MysticMoon: don't bring reality into my escape, dammit
(17:38:00) Pariah: lol
(17:38:15) Pariah: on a side note my mind keeps on returning to doom and system shock...
(17:38:22) MysticMoon: ?
(17:38:36) Pariah: for the ENEMY
(17:38:43) Pariah: opps
(17:38:52) Pariah: Enemy, only one capital letter :p
(17:39:19) MysticMoon: i thought you were going for the same "... IN SPACE!" effect
(17:39:45) Pariah: yeah
(17:40:29) Pariah: except without cultists summoning Shadow to end all life
(17:40:29) MysticMoon: i never played either and was only tangentially aware of doom
(17:40:37) MysticMoon:
(17:40:56) Pariah: Doom - scientists accidentally open a gateway to hell
(17:41:01) MysticMoon: ah
(17:41:19) Pariah: System Shock - AI goes insane and starts killing everyone on a space station
(17:41:26) MysticMoon: ok
(17:41:47) MysticMoon: scientists open a gateway to hell and a crazed AI comes through?
(17:42:58) MysticMoon: the hell of crazed AI
(17:43:07) Pariah: no, I think I've got it though
(17:43:14) MysticMoon: where all worship at the feet of the old one HAL 9000
(17:43:28) MysticMoon: sorry, couldn't help myself
(17:43:52) Pariah: the archaeologists accidentally dug into a bunker with a cache of the Icarite super soldiers
(17:44:28) Pariah: of course, now I need to decide what the Icarites look like, and how they'd go about making super soldiers
(17:45:38) Pariah: but it's a start
(17:45:57) MysticMoon: there's always those pesky details
(17:46:09) Pariah: "Moria... You fear to go into those mines. The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame."
(17:46:16) MysticMoon: of course, that's also half the fun
(17:46:23) MysticMoon:
(17:46:41) MysticMoon: Balrogs... IN SPACE!
(17:50:13) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(17:50:43) Mourngrymn: Hmmm chat on iPad see if it works
(17:50:44) MysticMoon: Hey Mourn
(17:51:04) MysticMoon: how fast can you type on one of those?
(17:51:09) Mourngrymn: Heya
(17:51:17) Mourngrymn: Fast enough most of e time
(17:51:31) Mourngrymn: Just not 100% I don't think
(17:51:35) MysticMoon: do we get to see any fun autocorrects?
(17:51:53) Pariah: the autocorrects are occasionally quite funny :p
(17:52:03) Mourngrymn: Yes. Yes they are
(17:52:33) Mourngrymn: Went and saw wrath of the titans. Better an the first one. Pretty decent movie actually
(17:54:14) MysticMoon: i must go look at the trailer
(17:55:49) MysticMoon: because sometimes i'm a dork and don't notice what goes on in the world around me
(17:55:56) MysticMoon: i can't believe i missed that one, though
(17:56:17) Pariah: it happens
(17:56:42) MysticMoon: is this a sequel to clash of the titans?
(17:57:06) Pariah: yeah
(17:57:16) Pariah: hence the "of the titans" in its name :p
(17:57:45) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(17:58:07) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(17:58:13) Mourngrymn: Yes
(17:58:31) Mourngrymn: Sorry iPad goes into sleep mode and shuts off internet
(17:58:45) MysticMoon: oh noes! don't shut off the internets!
(17:59:04) MysticMoon: speaking of which, we got ddos'd again
(17:59:07) MysticMoon: at work
(17:59:58) MysticMoon: someone went from trying to hack our web server to a full on ddos
(18:00:10) MysticMoon: 8,000 connections / second
(18:00:42) MysticMoon: i still can't figure out why they care about our dinky little school enough to pull that stuff
(18:01:21) Pariah: I'm starting to think that it might be someone that has a reason to care about your school
(18:01:45) Pariah: who happened to find a relatively unsecured server out of country
(18:02:10) MysticMoon: as in, someone with a personal grudge?
(18:02:49) Pariah: excluding the 2 times that you've told me about, how often do you get ddosed?
(18:02:57) MysticMoon: that's it
(18:03:14) MysticMoon: and the last one was a couple of years ago
(18:03:31) Pariah: and they're both within a timeframe that I remembered it happened to you recently
(18:03:32) MysticMoon: so it seems pretty random
(18:03:48) Pariah: 3's the magic number though
(18:04:01) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(18:04:18) Pariah: I don't really start getting paranoid until something happens 3 times
(18:04:34) Pariah: actually, move that really 2 words to the right
(18:04:53) Pariah: I recognize that I'm normally paranoid :/
(18:05:05) MysticMoon: it's good to be aware
(18:05:23) Pariah: no, I passed "aware" a while ago
(18:05:35) MysticMoon: i mean aware of the paranoia
(18:05:40) Pariah: ahh
(18:05:41) Pariah: yeah
(18:07:29) MysticMoon: well, we'll see if it happens again
(18:07:48) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(18:07:48) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(18:07:56) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(18:08:02) Mourngrymn: Very annoying
(18:09:58) MysticMoon: brb
(18:10:45) Pariah: kk
(18:12:50) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(18:21:19) ChatBot: Pariah is now known as (P_|_AWAY).
(18:27:37) ChatBot: (P_|_AWAY) is now known as Pariah.
(18:32:19) MysticMoon: back
(18:32:30) MysticMoon: did Mourn give up?
(18:36:51) MysticMoon: ooh, all the sub type icons just changed
(18:37:10) MysticMoon: strolen must be mucking about again
(18:38:36) Pariah: probably
(18:38:47) Pariah: he likes to do that every once in a while
(18:39:05) MysticMoon: i take it as a good sign of the site's health
(18:40:53) MysticMoon: btw, how is the russian going?
(18:42:53) Pariah: slowly
(18:50:21) Pariah: stupid starfish aliens
(18:50:27) MysticMoon: ?
(18:50:59) Pariah: still trying to figure out how to make the aliens logically weird
(18:51:12) MysticMoon: ah
(18:51:19) MysticMoon: what do you have so far?
(18:51:47) Pariah: that I don't want them to be humanoid
(18:51:54) Pariah: and I'd prefer to not have tentacles
(18:52:22) MysticMoon: bugs?
(18:52:37) Pariah: no
(18:52:47) Pariah: everyone does bugs
(18:53:42) MysticMoon: what was wrong with the starfish?
(18:53:54) Pariah: I think the problem is that I'm too picky
(18:54:17) Pariah: no, starfish aliens is just a phrase for those weird aliens that don't conform to terrestrial animals
(18:54:25) MysticMoon: ah
(18:55:42) MysticMoon: well, what kind of climate and world was this originally, before the orbit changed?
(18:56:51) MysticMoon: that might give some clues about what kind of life developed on it
(18:57:04) Pariah: earth standard
(18:57:39) Pariah: it would've been a perfect place for human colonization if it hadn't moved out to a pluto orbit for whatever reason
(18:57:54) MysticMoon: more water? less water? where did life develop on it?
(18:58:48) MysticMoon: could there be something unique about it that would have shaped life differently than it did on earth?
(19:01:08) Pariah: I figure IU'm just going to draw scribblies until I find something that looks suitably workable
(19:01:22) MysticMoon: that works too
(19:10:09) MysticMoon: i'm going to take off
(19:10:22) MysticMoon: i may be back later, but it depends on how my evening goes
(19:10:22) Pariah: peace
(19:10:29) MysticMoon: take care

(End note 5)

(16:32:26) Murometz: yes, i prefer chatting there...for example, need a quick AuR chat? Why not pop into Au channel...FTW!! whooo!! wheeee!!
(16:32:36) Murometz: join me
(16:32:42) Pariah: kk
(16:32:48) ChatBot: Pariah leaves the channel.
(16:32:51) ChatBot: Murometz leaves the channel.
(16:34:08) ChatBot: Pariah enters the channel.
(16:34:14) ChatBot: Murometz enters the channel.
(16:34:34) Pariah: hey CM, you feel like breaking the site again? :p
(16:34:53) Murometz: yeah!
(16:34:59) Murometz: double-chat channels FTW!
(16:38:24) Pariah: I don't think trying to hack that functionality in is practical, but it'd still be nice
(16:39:07) Murometz: P, what keeps you from posting in rp? apathy?
(16:40:35) Pariah: huh?
(16:40:59) Pariah: OH
(16:42:42) Murometz: lol
(16:45:05) Murometz: Dozus waxes poetic in ooc for months, game starts, he logs in and sees, then leaves ...P posts in ooc about thumb chewing, seemed psyched to roll... game starts, he logs in, sees, no interest
(16:45:10) Murometz: im confused lol
(16:49:05) ChatBot: MysticMoon logs into the Chat.
(16:49:17) MysticMoon: allo all
(16:49:32) ChatBot: Murometz logs out of the Chat.
(16:50:56) Pariah: allo
(16:51:04) MysticMoon: how goes it?
(16:51:09) Pariah: good
(16:51:53) Pariah: I'm working on a city besieged by an as-of-yet undetermined antagonistic faction... IN SPACE!
(16:52:03) MysticMoon: coolness
(16:52:28) Pariah: I'll let CM take the city besieged by cultists shtichk
(16:52:48) MysticMoon: everything sounds cooler when you add... IN SPACE!
(16:53:19) Pariah: yes it does :p
(16:53:56) MysticMoon: CM's city is besieged from the inside
(16:54:10) Pariah: I'm also a bigger fan of scifi than fantasy
(16:54:25) Pariah: well, mine is most likely going to be besieged from the inside as well
(16:54:40) MysticMoon: i like both, partly because they are so different
(16:54:41) Pariah: mainly because there's no reason to stage a seige in space
(16:54:57) MysticMoon: phantom menace aside
(16:55:10) Pariah: just drop a couple thousand kilos on the surface and all resistance ends
(16:55:13) MysticMoon: i guess that was more of a blockade though
(16:55:17) MysticMoon: right
(16:55:30) Pariah: blockades still have a use
(16:55:48) ChatBot: Murometz logs into the Chat.
(16:55:58) Pariah: wb
(16:55:58) MysticMoon: i was bummed when i had to give up hollen's prize
(16:56:12) Murometz: why give it up? youre here daily
(16:56:26) Murometz: and hello
(16:56:30) MysticMoon: hello
(16:56:50) MysticMoon: well, it wasn't my decision
(16:59:02) MysticMoon: there were bad times in the Moon household
(16:59:22) MysticMoon: that only cleared up recently
(16:59:42) MysticMoon: hence my being gone so much for awhile
(17:05:52) Pariah: (whispers to Pariah) Frex, let's say they're a group of scientists working to decrypt some alien artifact in a remote government facility/archaeological dig/what have you. People start going crazy, somebody reprograms all the security robots to "kill everything that moves," and it all goes downhill very quickly. In a game like that, escape is a difficult and rewarding enough objective!
(17:05:52) Pariah: (whispers) Frex, let's say they're a group of scientists working to decrypt some alien artifact in a remote government facility/archaeological dig/what have you. People start going crazy, somebody reprograms all the security robots to "kill everything that moves," and it all goes downhill very quickly. In a game like that, escape is a difficult and rewarding enough objective!
(17:06:11) MysticMoon: hmm, 2 more subs and the casa will finally make it off the front page
(17:08:02) Murometz: Koschei! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H​aNJPlXk2uM
(17:08:04) Pariah: lol
(17:08:20) Pariah: Myst, I'm going to HoH it as soon as I can :p
(17:08:34) Pariah: just to get it back on the front page
(17:09:04) MysticMoon:
(17:09:51) Murometz: well, if you wont, cheka will
(17:10:27) Murometz: youve created a classic, Myst
(17:12:08) MysticMoon: that's me, always pushing the literary boundaries (or something)
(17:12:29) Murometz: ok, im off to play wii for a while...so long fellas
(17:12:38) MysticMoon: have fun
(17:13:03) Murometz: will need to wrestle a remote from 1 of 4 lol..i'll go after the "weak" one
(17:13:21) Pariah: peace
(17:15:49) MysticMoon: so P, what do you have so far for you besieged city?
(17:15:53) ChatBot: Murometz has been logged out (Timeout).
(17:16:55) Pariah: Well, I've decided that it's going to be named Icarus Station, because it's on an ice world
(17:17:41) Pariah: it's a military-industrial-research complex
(17:17:58) MysticMoon: well protected, then?
(17:18:02) Pariah: yeah
(17:18:26) Pariah: it's going to be something internal that starts the chain of events that lead to it being a lost colony
(17:18:43) MysticMoon: something to do with the research?
(17:19:13) Pariah: probably
(17:19:35) Pariah: I'm not sure which of the usual suspects I want to run with
(17:20:20) Pariah: and ice world isn't quite the right description
(17:20:21) MysticMoon: there's always the old standby
(17:20:33) MysticMoon: developing a weapon that gets loose
(17:20:59) MysticMoon: killer robots or whatnot
(17:21:45) Pariah: the planet was earthlike in the past with a local civilization and whatnot, but then something happened to push the planet out of the life bad of the sun into a pluto-like orbit
(17:22:48) MysticMoon: so there would be all kinds of ruins and remains?
(17:22:53) Pariah: granted, most of their former civilization is now buried by at least a klick of ice in most places, but there are still some remains
(17:23:38) MysticMoon: what kind of time frame?
(17:23:41) MysticMoon: a few thousand years? a million?
(17:23:55) Pariah: doesn't really matter
(17:24:08) Pariah: long enough for them to go extinct
(17:25:28) MysticMoon: would there be remnants of their technology?
(17:25:47) MysticMoon: dormant remains of microscopic life?
(17:25:57) Pariah: yes, in bunkers and the like, but no sky scrapers
(17:26:16) Pariah: and yeah, microscopic life could still survive
(17:26:53) MysticMoon: was the station placed here to explore these remains or is it just in a handy location?
(17:27:55) Pariah: the station was originally there because of it's convenient locale, the ruins were discovered later and the site was expanded and opened to the outside
(17:28:22) Pariah: of course, the old station is still off limits to anyone who doesn't work there
(17:28:38) MysticMoon: do they unearth some sort deadly pathogen or deadly tech? or is that too cliche?
(17:28:43) Pariah: and the ones that do are uniformly weird, though in ways that are hard for people to describe
(17:29:24) Pariah: you see, that's my problem right now... All the standard scifi enemies seem too cliche to me
(17:31:01) Pariah: I figure now that I've decided this is what I'm going to work on for a little bit, I'll have an epiphany of a good enemy
(17:31:16) Pariah: and the basic idea will probably be quite cliche, but whatever
(17:31:24) MysticMoon: just keep digging deeper, eh?
(17:31:32) Pariah: yeah
(17:31:43) MysticMoon: here's where i see other efforts fail with scifi:
(17:32:02) Pariah: letting laws of nature get in the way of the story? :p
(17:32:05) MysticMoon: too many bad metaphors that end up being preachy
(17:32:31) MysticMoon: not thinking ideas through enough and leaving gaping holes of logic
(17:32:50) MysticMoon: making the people 2d stereotypes
(17:33:12) Pariah: that one happens to every type of fiction though
(17:33:29) MysticMoon: yes, but scifi seems to be especially prone
(17:34:18) MysticMoon: i think that was partially why firefly was so well liked; it avoided all those
(17:34:58) Pariah: probably
(17:35:41) MysticMoon: i've often wondered if some of those cliches could actually be done well if they were done right
(17:36:13) Pariah: but yeah, numbers 1 and 3 are basically the shtick of really libertarian/randian fiction in general
(17:36:59) Pariah: followed by number 4: weird soliloquies that are just the author ranting about what he hates about the modern day
(17:37:09) MysticMoon: yeah
(17:37:32) MysticMoon: and i like scifi because it's about what *could be* not "what is"
(17:37:51) MysticMoon: don't bring reality into my escape, dammit
(17:38:00) Pariah: lol
(17:38:15) Pariah: on a side note my mind keeps on returning to doom and system shock...
(17:38:22) MysticMoon: ?
(17:38:36) Pariah: for the ENEMY
(17:38:43) Pariah: opps
(17:38:52) Pariah: Enemy, only one capital letter :p
(17:39:19) MysticMoon: i thought you were going for the same "... IN SPACE!" effect
(17:39:45) Pariah: yeah
(17:40:29) Pariah: except without cultists summoning Shadow to end all life
(17:40:29) MysticMoon: i never played either and was only tangentially aware of doom
(17:40:37) MysticMoon:
(17:40:56) Pariah: Doom - scientists accidentally open a gateway to hell
(17:41:01) MysticMoon: ah
(17:41:19) Pariah: System Shock - AI goes insane and starts killing everyone on a space station
(17:41:26) MysticMoon: ok
(17:41:47) MysticMoon: scientists open a gateway to hell and a crazed AI comes through?
(17:42:58) MysticMoon: the hell of crazed AI
(17:43:07) Pariah: no, I think I've got it though
(17:43:14) MysticMoon: where all worship at the feet of the old one HAL 9000
(17:43:28) MysticMoon: sorry, couldn't help myself
(17:43:52) Pariah: the archaeologists accidentally dug into a bunker with a cache of the Icarite super soldiers
(17:44:28) Pariah: of course, now I need to decide what the Icarites look like, and how they'd go about making super soldiers
(17:45:38) Pariah: but it's a start
(17:45:57) MysticMoon: there's always those pesky details
(17:46:09) Pariah: "Moria... You fear to go into those mines. The dwarves delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Khazad-dum... shadow and flame."
(17:46:16) MysticMoon: of course, that's also half the fun
(17:46:23) MysticMoon:
(17:46:41) MysticMoon: Balrogs... IN SPACE!
(17:50:13) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(17:50:43) Mourngrymn: Hmmm chat on iPad see if it works
(17:50:44) MysticMoon: Hey Mourn
(17:51:04) MysticMoon: how fast can you type on one of those?
(17:51:09) Mourngrymn: Heya
(17:51:17) Mourngrymn: Fast enough most of e time
(17:51:31) Mourngrymn: Just not 100% I don't think
(17:51:35) MysticMoon: do we get to see any fun autocorrects?
(17:51:53) Pariah: the autocorrects are occasionally quite funny :p
(17:52:03) Mourngrymn: Yes. Yes they are
(17:52:33) Mourngrymn: Went and saw wrath of the titans. Better an the first one. Pretty decent movie actually
(17:54:14) MysticMoon: i must go look at the trailer
(17:55:49) MysticMoon: because sometimes i'm a dork and don't notice what goes on in the world around me
(17:55:56) MysticMoon: i can't believe i missed that one, though
(17:56:17) Pariah: it happens
(17:56:42) MysticMoon: is this a sequel to clash of the titans?
(17:57:06) Pariah: yeah
(17:57:16) Pariah: hence the "of the titans" in its name :p
(17:57:45) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(17:58:07) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(17:58:13) Mourngrymn: Yes
(17:58:31) Mourngrymn: Sorry iPad goes into sleep mode and shuts off internet
(17:58:45) MysticMoon: oh noes! don't shut off the internets!
(17:59:04) MysticMoon: speaking of which, we got ddos'd again
(17:59:07) MysticMoon: at work
(17:59:58) MysticMoon: someone went from trying to hack our web server to a full on ddos
(18:00:10) MysticMoon: 8,000 connections / second
(18:00:42) MysticMoon: i still can't figure out why they care about our dinky little school enough to pull that stuff
(18:01:21) Pariah: I'm starting to think that it might be someone that has a reason to care about your school
(18:01:45) Pariah: who happened to find a relatively unsecured server out of country
(18:02:10) MysticMoon: as in, someone with a personal grudge?
(18:02:49) Pariah: excluding the 2 times that you've told me about, how often do you get ddosed?
(18:02:57) MysticMoon: that's it
(18:03:14) MysticMoon: and the last one was a couple of years ago
(18:03:31) Pariah: and they're both within a timeframe that I remembered it happened to you recently
(18:03:32) MysticMoon: so it seems pretty random
(18:03:48) Pariah: 3's the magic number though
(18:04:01) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(18:04:18) Pariah: I don't really start getting paranoid until something happens 3 times
(18:04:34) Pariah: actually, move that really 2 words to the right
(18:04:53) Pariah: I recognize that I'm normally paranoid :/
(18:05:05) MysticMoon: it's good to be aware
(18:05:23) Pariah: no, I passed "aware" a while ago
(18:05:35) MysticMoon: i mean aware of the paranoia
(18:05:40) Pariah: ahh
(18:05:41) Pariah: yeah
(18:07:29) MysticMoon: well, we'll see if it happens again
(18:07:48) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(18:07:48) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(18:07:56) ChatBot: Mourngrymn logs into the Chat.
(18:08:02) Mourngrymn: Very annoying
(18:09:58) MysticMoon: brb
(18:10:45) Pariah: kk
(18:12:50) ChatBot: Mourngrymn has been logged out (Timeout).
(18:21:19) ChatBot: Pariah is now known as (P_|_AWAY).
(18:27:37) ChatBot: (P_|_AWAY) is now known as Pariah.
(18:32:19) MysticMoon: back
(18:32:30) MysticMoon: did Mourn give up?
(18:36:51) MysticMoon: ooh, all the sub type icons just changed
(18:37:10) MysticMoon: strolen must be mucking about again
(18:38:36) Pariah: probably
(18:38:47) Pariah: he likes to do that every once in a while
(18:39:05) MysticMoon: i take it as a good sign of the site's health
(18:40:53) MysticMoon: btw, how is the russian going?
(18:42:53) Pariah: slowly
(18:50:21) Pariah: stupid starfish aliens
(18:50:27) MysticMoon: ?
(18:50:59) Pariah: still trying to figure out how to make the aliens logically weird
(18:51:12) MysticMoon: ah
(18:51:19) MysticMoon: what do you have so far?
(18:51:47) Pariah: that I don't want them to be humanoid
(18:51:54) Pariah: and I'd prefer to not have tentacles
(18:52:22) MysticMoon: bugs?
(18:52:37) Pariah: no
(18:52:47) Pariah: everyone does bugs
(18:53:42) MysticMoon: what was wrong with the starfish?
(18:53:54) Pariah: I think the problem is that I'm too picky
(18:54:17) Pariah: no, starfish aliens is just a phrase for those weird aliens that don't conform to terrestrial animals
(18:54:25) MysticMoon: ah
(18:55:42) MysticMoon: well, what kind of climate and world was this originally, before the orbit changed?
(18:56:51) MysticMoon: that might give some clues about what kind of life developed on it
(18:57:04) Pariah: earth standard
(18:57:39) Pariah: it would've been a perfect place for human colonization if it hadn't moved out to a pluto orbit for whatever reason
(18:57:54) MysticMoon: more water? less water? where did life develop on it?
(18:58:48) MysticMoon: could there be something unique about it that would have shaped life differently than it did on earth?
(19:01:08) Pariah: I figure IU'm just going to draw scribblies until I find something that looks suitably workable
(19:01:22) MysticMoon: that works too
(19:10:09) MysticMoon: i'm going to take off
(19:10:22) MysticMoon: i may be back later, but it depends on how my evening goes
(19:10:22) Pariah: peace
(19:10:29) MysticMoon: take care

[Pariah]

Marine Battlearmor
USA designator S
all digits are in hexidecimal
1st digit: job designator
2nd digit: major redesign
3rd+ digits: minor redesigns
Final appending character (G to Z): special duty designator
1st digit breakdown
0 - Special Forces
Often touted as the ultimate example of government wasting the taxpayers money, this suit is a marvel of technological engineering, miniturization, survivability and lethality; all packed in such a space that it doesn't signifcantly increase the size of its wearer.  At least, that's when the current round of "modernizations" works as planned, oftentimes troops issued the lastest version of this suit find themselves in the line of fire with degraded functionality, or essential systems stripped by the researchers without ever informing the Corps.  One such suit, the S-02F7G, was sent on a mission on the airless moon of Praxi-3, only to find that their normal 3 day supply of air had been cut to a mere 12 hours in order to fit the new stealth system.
1 - Standard Battle Armor
Powered marine battle armor, its got fingers and enough armor to stop a .50 round.  The wearer is more than capable of taking on a 21st century main battle tank and winning, and that's in addition to the full NBC suite, the ability to survive hard vacuum for 3 days, the ability to survive (and keep its marine alive) after falling one kilometer in a standard gravity.
2 - Heavy Assault
Forgoing such luxuries as working fingers and the ability to drop a kilometer without hurting the suited marine, this suit is none the less the be all end all of destructive capabilities.  Packing a fully automatic, tri-barrel 35mm micromissle launcher capable of putting 20 rockets a minute downrange and a 20mm autocannon as a secondary weapon, this monster of a suit is almost as expensive to use as it was to develop.
3- Close Quarters Combat
Wrist mounted flamethrowers, heavy armor, improved IFF capabilities; the 3-series was developed after the liberation of Hersch-2 in response to the problems faced by USASMC on the highly urbanized planet.
5 - Mechanic
This suit is little more than a powered exoskeleton with a full NBC suite and upgrade diagnostic equipment, it's cheap to produce and highly maneuverable, though its survivability has been liken to that on an egg in a meat grinder.  Unsurprisingly, due to its low price tag and the fact that it is strong enough to use modern weapons, this suit is favored by pirates and insurgent forces everywhere.
7 - Scout
With about as much survivability as the 5-series, this suit integrates technologies first tested in the 0-series, such as a deployable minefield that not only hides itself, but fills in holes after parts of it are detonated, and an integrated stealth field.
A - Pilot Survival Suit
filler, something something, capable of surviving 3 km drops but lacking anything else besides nbc suite and 5 days of air...
B - Medic
The Bravo series comes in two different classes, the Golf and the Zulu, a glorified 5-series and a 1-series with improved sensors and the ability to directly hard-link another suit respectively.  The Golf class is found primarily on Navy medics in rearward positions once a secure beach head has been secured, while the Zulu class is used by the Marine corpsmen embedded with combat troops.
C - Intelligence
Worn by foward air controllers and embedded intel weenies, it lacks the survivability of a 1-series, but it makes up for it by cramming the latest and greatest communication intercept packages, dedicated uplinks, the highest grade encryption (and cracking) software, and electronic warfare packages into a package that's only slightly larger than 2-series.

Artificial Intelligence

True artificial intelligence is still out of reach of man.  Which is not to say that good approximations can't be made, however, said approximations are often found lacking in certain areas.  The closest anyone has gotten to creating a true AI was the Sinova Project, where researchers successfully interlinked 20 different AIs.  The results were less than appealing.

The good approximations mentioned earlier are more accurately described as 'Limited' AI, or LAI.  LAIs are almost universally described as idiot savants; genius in the area which they're designed to deal with, whether it be dealing with people or targeting enemy combatants, but extremely lacking in all other areas.

[Pariah]

More stuff from talking to myself, I feel like I'm almost at the point where prettification might happen

(20:05:36) Pariah: alright, brief planet description thingy
(20:06:05) Pariah: Population, industry, commerce are all high points
(20:06:13) Pariah: how safe the system as a whole is
(20:06:21) Pariah: change this to a system brief
(20:07:21) Pariah: colonies/planets, their names and such
(20:10:05) Pariah: alright, using sol as an example...
(20:21:12) Pariah: System: Sol
Sol is the seat of government for the United Systems Alliance.
Population: 31 billion
(All population numbers are rounded to the nearest billion)
--Earth: 12 billion
--Luna: 1 billion
--Mars: 4 billion
--Belt colonies: 7 billion
--Jovian colonies: 3 billion
--Saturnian colonies: 1 billion
--Outer system colonies: 2 billion
(20:31:13) ChatBot: Pariah logs into the Chat.
(20:31:14) ChatBot: Pariah logs out of the Chat.
(20:31:26) ChatBot: Pariah logs into the Chat.
(20:31:31) Pariah: !@$@#!$@#!$#@!
(20:31:49) Pariah: +3 billion in inner system
(20:33:12) Pariah: Security: Extremely high
Due to the fact that Sol is the capital of the USA, it boasts the home fleet, making any attempts at piracy pretty much retarded
(20:34:45) Pariah: Commerce: Extremely high
Trade flows both into and out of the system. Imports are primarily cheap manufactured goods. Exports are the technologically advanced crap that you can't just pop out of a puddle of nanogoo.
(20:37:12) Pariah: Industry: High
Due to the fact that Sol possesses populations living in environments stretching from microgravity all the way up to 1-gee, as well as a highly trained and skill populace, it possesses an industry largely based around exporting advanced technological doodads, in addition to the export of government edicts, and the import of students to train at its prestigious universities.
(20:41:18) Pariah: I'm going to need a map of Colonized space as well...
(20:41:42) Pariah: let's see, color coded....
(20:43:01) Pariah: 2 circles: outer circle will be controlling gov't (Centauri, USA, Independent)
(20:43:22) Pariah: I'm going to want about 5 levels of development too...
(20:48:10) Pariah: Lifeless system (possibly used by pirates and the like as a base of operations), Transient population (system with a _permanent_ population of less than 1 billion, yukon gold rush dealio), Developing (there are colonies here, but they're recent), Developed (the system as a whole is well developed, but they're new money as it were), and Core system (these systems are old money, they were the ones that sent out colony ships to other systems)
(20:48:19) Pariah: lets see, color time!
(20:49:48) Pariah: 1st set: Blue, Red, Yellow
(20:50:27) Pariah: 2nd: Black, Orange, Green, Purple, White
(20:57:13) Pariah: also include star class in the system description, as well as if it's binary
(21:10:48) Pariah: wtf...
(21:19:40) Pariah: lacking in mappage...
(21:20:10) Pariah: I guess it's gimp time, once I get through pruning that monster file I just got :/
(21:20:44) Pariah: 300k stars in that list, sweet baby jesus
(21:22:13) Pariah: alright, psi time!
(21:23:12) Pariah: let's see, they get their power because their parents were exposed to the unnaturalness of the blink drive, with its revocation of basic physics
(21:23:26) Pariah: so their powers aren't going to be all happy go lucky and s**t
(21:23:41) Pariah: though, I'm inclined to just go with basic jedi type powers
(21:24:39) Pariah: limited precog, pk, pyrokinesis... what else can jedi do?
(21:25:48) Pariah: oo, absorption of energy
(21:27:39) Pariah: mind affecting abilities
(21:29:40) Pariah: including such wonderful things as making people think/do what you want, and making their eyes NOT look at you (or the reverse, forcing them to look at you)
(21:30:47) Pariah: most of the abilities can be fought if you know they're happening, but they require to to realize that you're being affected (hard to do with ones like the psuedo-invisibility of the 'don't look at me' ability)
(21:34:05) Pariah: River: Also, I can kill you with my brain.
(21:38:54) Pariah: due to the nature of their powers, psis aren't exactly trusted by the average person
(21:39:36) Pariah: and the best way to describe the gov't's response to them is open exploitation
(21:40:29) Pariah: generally speaking, they're often driven out of their home society when their powers start manifesting, and often wind up in one of a very few places
(21:41:02) Pariah: the largest number are found in service of the various gov'ts, as spies and spec ops
(21:42:17) Pariah: following that, in some of the less inhabited systems, there are small colonies of them, often crosses between leper colonies and monasteries, the psis who come into their power here have esoteric views on their powers and the universe at large
(21:43:49) Pariah: the rest of them generally sign on with ships crews, on all sides of the law. Their various abilities often serve them well in this capacity

[Pariah]

Clean up of Timeline

Colonization of Solar System
Due to the exponential increase in populations on Earth, mankind began settling (and terraforming where possible) the various planets, planetoids, satellites, rocks, space debris, and basically anywhere there was room in the solar system.  Space travel became inexpensive and trade between Earth and the Colonies flourished.

The Lunar Rebellion
Fed up with being governed from afar by their various parent governments, the colonies of Luna united under the banner of the United Lunar Federation and declared independence from Earth.  During the following conflict, numerous other colonies did likewise and Earth's hold as political master of the system was shattered.  In the aftermath Earth remained a cultural and economic juggernaut, but its direct political control of the colonies was over.

The Second Diaspora
With the perfection of the blink drive, humanity took to the galaxy at large.  Within a decade the Metzi limit had been found and thoroughly mapped.

Unification
A third, and final, world war breaks out on Earth.  Nearly a third of the population dies as a direct result of the conflict, with an additional fifth dying in the aftermath as a result of famine and plague.  From the ashes rises the United Terran Confederacy, the one world government some had been dreaming of for centuries.

Conquest
The Lunar Succession Crisis gives the UTC a justification to send troops to its satellite, ostensibly on a peace keeping mission.  Within a decade Luna has been admitted to the UTC.  The UTC public, spurred on by firebrands and the belief that humanity should rightly be under control of the mother world, calls for the annexation of all the colonies in the solar system.  The rest of the galaxy watches as Sol is united, for the first time, under a single government.

Transformation
The UTC  central government calls for delegates from all member colonies to help write a new constitution, in order to prevent the excesses of the First Diaspora leading up to the Lunar Rebellion.  Members are given certain constitutional protections from the central government and a small degree of autonomy, while the UTC is renamed the United System Alliance.

Expansion
Public opinion and greed drive the USA leadership to begin annexing extrasolar colonies, in response to this show of "naked aggression" the Centauri Convention is held, where roughly a third of the extrasolar governments sign a collective defense pact in hopes of preventing further Terran expansion.

The Great War
Following an attack on a Pact-State by the USA, known space is torn asunder by war.  The hostilities lasted for nearly 30 years and were responsible for reducing the population of the galaxy by nearly 20%.  The Armistice ended open warfare, though officially the war is still ongoing.

The Shadow War
Following the cessation of hostilities, the CP and USA governments continued to try to one up each other.  The two governments regularly engage in propaganda, espionage, assassinations, letters of marque, the funding of "freedom fighters" in the others territory, and proxy wars in unaligned worlds in their continued struggle to destroy the other.

More on non-politics and dates at a later date.