About Grandfather.....

[Easterner9504]

I just visited Tropes to add a link to it in an RPOL game. Grandfather was worse!

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION!!!!!!


Quote from TV Tropes
The Other. The Alien. The Inconceivable. The Eldritch Abomination is a type of creature defined by its disregard for the natural laws of the universe as we understand them. ................... Reality itself warps around them. Any rules that they do follow are beyond our understanding, as are what motives they might have for any of their actions.

 

[creativehum]

If you follow your reasoning to its ultimate conclusion, then the only moral standard to go by is: "Does it benefit me and my immediate family, and if I am stronger than you, yours is mine."

How many of you really would like to live is such a society?

I think the point is that, like any society, the society that doesn't stand by those sentiments have to be constructed. (And protected, and shored up, and worked on.)

The same applies to the contrary: The society you describe above would have to be constructed as well.

I don't know if we'll ever know exactly how human being should live through some natural order. But I do know some choices are better than others. And to allow those choices to flourish requires work on the part of many people.

 

[Blue Ghost]

On Grandfather.....
Was Grandfather a moral being? Was Grandfather an ethical being?

I'm not really sure I understand the purpose of this question. Are you writing an adventure with the Ancients involved? Or do you have an adventure planned where this guy shows up and starts screwing with the Imperium or something?

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

I'm not really sure I understand the purpose of this question. Are you writing an adventure with the Ancients involved? Or do you have an adventure planned where this guy shows up and starts screwing with the Imperium or something?

I was wondering about Grandfather's motivations. Why, exactly, did he do what he did in the deep past. Interfering with experiments is too pat of an answer and I am speculating on possibilities.

 

[Cryton]

Ok, lets presume that Grandfather's code of ethics was passed along to the Droyne he saves from extinction in the form of the Coyns, knowledge of their use and culture he gave them. What culture they had before his arising can only be speculated, but I do not feel that it was the same as exists in the current Imperium. What they follow for culture in the 3rd Imperial era is entirely artificial.

That being said, it is the norm that when a member of the Droyne species outlives its purpose and usefulness, they commit ritual suicide as not to become a burden to society, or they become one of the "deathless", ignored, shunned and outcast from the entire species. In essence, a death sentence.

I believe this aspect of their culture to have been added after the great-war in response to the actions of his children and grand-children refusing his orders to cease their independent research and return to aid him. (Their research was, according to him, interfering with his own).

This means that by the morals of "today's" Droyne, Grandfathers actions were entirely moral. Judging by the actions of the final war, this may not have been, and probably was not the case in Droyne culture prior to his introducing the Coyns, and the knowledge of how to use them.

If this speculation is true, it also means that Grandfather is not a moral being, but rather a Rational one. One who destroyed the culture of his entire species to ensure that his own parent species never acts against him again.

The real question is why he still remains in hiding. Why should he hide? If he really has destroyed all his children and grandchildren, then their experiments no longer interfere with his own, and there is no one to stop him from ordering Known space to his whim. His hiding and acting in secret hints that either the final war is not yet finished (Mongoose Traveller explores this idea), or there is something (or somethings) else in the galaxy that have the power to resist his will and world destroying, universe altering power, and actively either does so, or will do so if they discover him.

With the new rules for tech levels beyond 15 and the Galaxiad map in T5, I can't wait to see what truly advanced cultures exist in the universe of the 3rd Imperium. What little I have seen revealed about it to date has me more than a little curious.

 

[Cryton]

I should also probably point out, that the reverence that 'modern" Droyne hold for the Grandfather, combined with the culture he gave them, means that should he ever re-emerge, he has an entire species that will serve him to the death of the entire species if needed.

That being said, if the local Chirpers on your world suddenly start casting and "uplifting" into Droyne, your world has probably been visited by the Grandfather, or his agents. If this begins to "spontaneously" happen to Chirpers all around know space, I would suggest you become very nervous about whats to follow at that time. Because a godlike, and very rational, amoral being has become active in your section of space.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

The MgT Campaign 1: Secrets of the Ancients may provide more fuel for the fire. It is OTU and does have chapters taking place in -300,000, but THOSE chapters could all be a self-serving lies...

 

[Blue Ghost]

"Grandfather" always struck me as a lot of kids I knew growing up who got into science, but who had no moral center as such, and were more pragmatists with a kind of base line "I would never do that ... unless I really needed to ..." kind of ethic.

He's the kind of scientists who indulges in research to see where things will go, like a Leonardi DaVinci, doesn't really care too much what other people are doing until it becomes bothersome to him in some form or another.

Just my take.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

"Grandfather" always struck me as a lot of kids I knew growing up who got into science, but who had no moral center as such, and were more pragmatists with a kind of base line "I would never do that ... unless I really needed to ..." kind of ethic.

He's the kind of scientists who indulges in research to see where things will go, like a Leonardi DaVinci, doesn't really care too much what other people are doing until it becomes bothersome to him in some form or another.

Just my take.

Similar to my own take on Grandfather.

Which begs the question, what would it take to become bothersome to Grandfather?

 

[Blue Ghost]

My guess is that you, as a Droyne of his lineage, would have to be making some severe trouble somewhere. Maybe you're uplifting some ravenous carnivores and unleashing them on low TL worlds or something. But that probably wouldn't bother him too much because it doesn't involve him.

I think it would have to be a faction of Droyne making a power play for "his throne", so to speak. That's just my rough guess.

 

[aramis]

My take is that he's got a VERY strong moral code. It just happens to not match our various ones. Nor, probably, that of the pre-ancients Droyne.

And, when his children and grandchildren weren't fully inculcated into it, he felt an obligation to prevent them from doing further harm.

I would expect that he is not personally responsible for the uplifts and the dispersal of humans; I think that the variety of dubious projects are exactly what he was trying to stop.

And, like so many species, an individual turning against the good of the troop is to be removed from the group.

 

[Blue Ghost]

For the longest time I almost considered him as the arch-driving force for what I thought was the mega-story-arc that comprised the CT adventures and double adventures. It was almost as if once you completed the entire set of adventures you come face to face with this guy who says he's been pulling your strings the entire time.

 

[WistfulD]

I highly suspect that Grandfather has a moral code that he is fanatical about, and he's not yet found a being whose own moral opinion he wishes to defer to. After all, once you become as powerful as he is, what is the point of continued involvement in the universe if you aren't protecting or enforcing some grandeous point?

Given Droyne tendency (in their current society, which he highly shaped, if not creaed out of whole cloth) to commit suicide if they cannot contribute to their society, it is likely that his ethical framework is expressed as a utilitarian one. It also seems that he worked to "save" his people--whether that's saving them from extinction, drifting into a society he disagrees with, or saving them from ever challenging him, we don't know.