Eber Space

[Anders]

Might be worth making this a separate thread from the "escape from the NSM" thread.

What can we deduce/invent about the Eber civilisation, the Decimation and what is in Eber space these days?

Here are some facts:

• Eber technology was at least on human 2300 level, with a 9.4 ly drive and advanced biotechnology.
  
• Ebers are more radiation resistant than humans.
  
• Eber societies tend to be ceremonial and ponderous (but not necessarily slow-moving once they have decided what to do - and then they can get stuck doing it). Ebers may be more territorial and clannish than humans.
  
• If Ebers originally came from Zeta Reticuli, they had to expand far in order to reach Kormoran (implying an extensive colonized/explored sphere) or there is an undiscovered brown dwarf somewhere nearby they used.
  
• Ebers likely did not go much further than the Eber finger, since then they would have met the humans (who would presumbaly have remembered the musical space gods?) The known Eber colonies might have been sparsely settled outposts at the edge of space.

We can also make some guesses:

• The nightmares were not the primary bioweapon in the Decimation. Given that they have not wiped out the Ebers of Kormoran they are not that good weapons. Nasty Alien-like insectoids may be deadly, but have a relatively long reproduction time compared to bacteria or smaller creatures. If you want to wipe out your enemy you spread a virus instead. The nightmares are perhaps something more akin to guard-dogs, keyed to obey/avoid certain eber clans or identification objects.
  
• Interstellar nuclear war is quite possible. One could use stutterwarp capable missile ships that get as close to the target world as possible, then launch missiles. Orbital defense installations are also possible. Even after 4000 years I would expect some interesting wreckage in orbit around the Eber worlds, and worlds that had an extensive orbital infrastructure could have suffered an ablation cascade, forming a quite deadly ring of debris.
  
• Wiping out a civilization using nuclear war requires that it either is centralized in major cities or that the nuclear winter is strong enough to crash agriculture longer than supplies last. It is not clear which option happened where. Add in bioweapons (especially persistent ones, perhaps keyed to particular Eber groups) and the chanses go up.
  
• The Texan-American experiences with going to the Zetas via DM-68 47 suggest that something dangerous is still active in Eber space (Why did Manchuria allow the expedition? Because they were curious, and like letting others do the dirty work. Now they quietly support the blockade in the Joint Fleets Strategic Commission) This dangerous thing is of the kind that it does not suit governments to tell the public about its existence, and they take steps as if some people in the know would try very seriously to visit it. The obvious hint is that it is something like the nightmares (remaining microscopic bioweapons are unlikely to be a threat to human biochemistry). But it could just as well be violent Ebers, autonomous Eber technology like the Aquilan installations - or some third alternative.
  
• Of course, it could have been the Pentapods who did it. Imagine something very similar to what they did to the Kafers, locking Ebers into a maladaptive brain mode as society collapsed. Send in the nightmares to finish them off. Then parsley ectoderm the Klein-bottle! Imagine the horror of discovering an un-gentled Pentapod civilization dominating Eber space, curious about these new aliens that seem to use non-biological starships like the Ebers.
  
• Perhaps the Kormoran nightmares are not the complete version. If the real nightmare weapon was equipped with intelligence and adaptability it would be far more fearsome. Imagine nightmares that could think and use technology - of course designed to not harm the "right" Ebers. What could possibly go wrong?
  
• The general assumption people have is that the Ebers were wiped out except for Kormoran. But if one colony can survive, several can. The time it would take to regain spacefilight is likely variable (going from "stone age" to early renaissance in 4000 years suggests that a 10% faster advance might bring them to space age), so some might be expanding again. There might even have been winners in the war. If a sizeable chunk of Eber space was devastated and either quarantined or regarded as culturally taboo the by now very advanced Ebers may exist beyond the destroyed core, in the Alpha Fornacis or Nu Phoenicis region. Less advanced Ebers might be starfaring using mere 7.7 ly drives, unable to reach human space on their own ("Tug-ships? What an affront! Ships were never meant to carry ships! Now I must do the Ritual of Startravel Cleansing.")

Thoughts?

The biggest problem is that the whole mystery is so juicy that it can never be resolved in canon - any official explanation beyond "there is something bad there" risks being a flop. But played right it could be an interesting campaign: PCs discovering that senior military types and Trilon representatives refuse to discuss Eber space, evidence for cover-up of tugship missions and a US military base on the Chinese Arm, Provolution and Pioneer Society allying with rouge elements of the Fondation Fermi-Bostrom to find out what is actually going on, a trip into the unknown and then discovering the horror...

 

[rfmcdpei]

[*]If Ebers originally came from Zeta Reticuli, they had to expand far in order to reach Kormoran (implying an extensive colonized/explored sphere) or there is an undiscovered brown dwarf somewhere nearby they used.

The idea of an Eber-settled sphere that was not a pocket empire but rather the size of human space circa 2320 worries me given the end of their civilization and the minor horrors we know about.

This makes the absence of Eber ruins at Zeta Tucanae/Syuhlahm a bit surprising.

[*]Ebers likely did not go much further than the Eber finger, since then they would have met the humans (who would presumbaly have remembered the musical space gods?)

The Sung (and Xiang) would likewise remember.

This dangerous thing is of the kind that it does not suit governments to tell the public about its existence, and they take steps as if some people in the know would try very seriously to visit it. The obvious hint is that it is something like the nightmares (remaining microscopic bioweapons are unlikely to be a threat to human biochemistry). But it could just as well be violent Ebers, autonomous Eber technology like the Aquilan installations - or some third alternative.

If there is a brown dwarf between 82 Eridani and Zeta Reticuli, I'd suggest that this would indicate that what's at Zeta Reticuli isn't very mobile. At least, it's not likely to be very mobile. ("Manchuria sees no reason not to position a live-fire training area in the outer 82 Eridani planetary system. And to answer the NARL representative, yes, the Eber of Komoran have enthusiastically given their consent.")

The same would be true, if to a lesser extent, if Zeta Reticulans had to take a long way around. The only exception might be if whatever's there is interstellar-capable but not very advanced and either isn't able to support a long-range expedition or doesn't have the technology necessary to go up against a superior human technology.

The biggest problem is that the whole mystery is so juicy that it can never be resolved in canon - any official explanation beyond "there is something bad there" risks being a flop. But played right it could be an interesting campaign: PCs discovering that senior military types and Trilon representatives refuse to discuss Eber space, evidence for cover-up of tugship missions and a US military base on the Chinese Arm, Provolution and Pioneer Society allying with rouge elements of the Fondation Fermi-Bostrom to find out what is actually going on, a trip into the unknown and then discovering the horror...

Hmm. "Ia ia Chtulhu fhtagn" or the like everywhere?

 

[Colin]

It's not interstellar-capable.

I hadn't given much thought to "Eber Space" Could make a very interesting game.

 

[oletheros]

I think the real question (or, at least, one of the big ones) is "How long did the interstellar society of the Ebers last?" Yes, it was largely destroyed 4000 years ago, but was it destroyed as it became emergent or was it a fairly mature society when it collapsed?

In contrast, the interstellar society of the humans is ~200 years old by 2320. The Kafers have had spaceflight for roughly the same period of time.

Given that the Ebers have a longer lifespan, it makes sense that they were flying around for quite a while before they collapsed. A millenium would not be out of the range of possiblility (two and a half Eber lifetimes). But they tend to be a more cautious bunch on average, which makes their slow progression across their "sphere" sensical, even if it's ridiculous to us fast-moving humans.

Personally, I think that answering the question of "where the Ebers are at now?" starts with asking the question of "where were the Ebers at when they collapsed?"

 

[Colin]

About 800 years, give or take.

 

[BMonnery]

The Eber civil war was between Ebers and "Cyberebers" (they implanted a device in their brains to switch operating modes). The civil war was an extinction event on Zeta 2 Reticuli, which is now a tomb. The two factions are the remanants of these two groups. The "civilised" Ebers are the descendants of the cyberebers, who've lost the tech base.

David Neilsen was going to write a sequel to Ranger, with the PCs as the first explorers to reach Z2R, but the line was cancelled before it was written :-(

 

[Colin]

That was his take, and it's quite interesting. I have my own, though, with a different take on what happened on Zeta 2 Reticuli.

 

[oletheros]

I love competing canonical views.

To be honest, I find the Cybereber concept to be... simplistic. It's an entire alien race! There has to be some nuance and depth of culture to fall back on. Sure, you could boil the Cold War down to US vs USSR, but that doesn't take into account the causes (WW 2), the allies or the surrogates.

Still, 800 years of exploration is a lot of time for the Ebers to get up to some shenanigans in their neck of the woods before they shut themselves down. What makes the most sense is that the (theoretical) Eber remnants no longer have interstellar travel; if they did, one or more ships would have probably been seen in the Chinese Arm by this point. (An interesting corollary is the idea of an Eber colony finally getting out of their solar system and beginning the exploration process from scratch and then running into these small, pale, hasty beings.)

Now I really wonder what was going on 4000-5000 years ago.

 

[Anders]

It doesn't even have to be two neat sides. Imagine a situation with Zeta Reticuli dominated by a few superpowers and half a dozen smaller powers. Everybody has colonies out there, there are complex territorial and formal disputes and the technology level is pretty high. The political situation escalates into a cold war, with different powers tied by bonds of obligation to support each other. A small spark and the warships, bombs and nightmares start to fly. It is directly deadly in their core. The real disaster is that after the main decimation the remaining powers continue the fighting in the colonies, a bit like the Twilight war aftermath - but still with weapons of genocide. Imagine CivGov, MilGov and New America equipped with ICBMs and an attitude of "we will prevail, or our honor demands that nobody wins!"

 

[oletheros]

Exactly. Given the Eber personality and love of tradition, bureaucracy and formalized rules, I imagine that the situation was extremely complex and took centuries to come to a boil.

Of course, it may have been over something as simple as the right of a planet's population to be self-determining from the mother nation. The back-to-nature contingent on Kormoran, for example, is a perfect example of a group that wanted to "get away" from the predominant culture of the time. Where better to do it than in a colony cluster that is only accessible by stutterwarp tug?

How crowded does the Eber homeworld (and colony sphere) have to be that the "back to nature" crowd has to use a tug route to escape? Maybe the extreme longevity of the Ebers really puts a strain on populations - a problem that is solved on Kormoran but the relative paucity of resources and general challenging climate.

 

[Anders]

A completely different answer might be that there was no war. It just looks that way. Maybe, for reasons only an Eber could truly understand, the species tried to commit suicide. Or the disaster was actually a technological or economic breakdown.

And then there is the truly odd possibilities. In Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear (spoilers) a civilization that has released replicating planet-killers not only built decoy solar systems intended as traps for civilizations pursuing them, but apparently constructed decoy and/or successor species to hide among. Maybe the Ebers are actually decoys, creations just like the Nightmares by an older civilization that has done something really bad.

 

[Colin]

Perhaps the Ebers of old were free-wheeling anarchists, and the current overly-ceremonial society was a reaction to that, a way of controlling the dangerous impulses. Or not.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Of course, it may have been over something as simple as the right of a planet's population to be self-determining from the mother nation. The back-to-nature contingent on Kormoran, for example, is a perfect example of a group that wanted to "get away" from the predominant culture of the time. Where better to do it than in a colony cluster that is only accessible by stutterwarp tug?

I rather like that idea.

How crowded does the Eber homeworld (and colony sphere) have to be that the "back to nature" crowd has to use a tug route to escape? Maybe the extreme longevity of the Ebers really puts a strain on populations - a problem that is solved on Kormoran but the relative paucity of resources and general challenging climate.

The back-to-nature Ebers still live for--I think--two centuries, versus three centuries among the Ebers of the various coastal states.

While applying principles of human demographics to a completely different species is quite possibly dubious, I don't think that the principles of the demographic transition wouldn't apply to the Eber. A brief summary is below, happily cribbed from Wikipedia.

1. In pre-industrial society, death rates and birth rates are high and roughly in balance.
2. In developing countries, death rates drop rapidly due to improvements in food supply and sanitation, increasing life spans and reducing disease. Without a corresponding fall in birth rates, this creates an imbalance as expressed in rapid population growth.
3. In early developed countries, birth rates fall for a variety of social reasons (women's emancipation, the declining value of child labour) and economic reasons (wage increases, declining subsistence agriculture), producing slower rates of growth.
4. In more developed countries, birth rates and death rates are low and either in roughly equal balance or with birth rates slightly lower than death rates.
5. In some countries, birth rates drop below death rates and remain substantially lower.

The Eber civilization on Komoran is described as being roughly equivalent to Renaissance Europe, but with many of the scientific, hygenic and other health-improving skills of the previous interstellar civilization. I don't know for certain where this and species' apparent trend towards strong gender egalitarianism would put the Komoran Ebers. If I had to guess, I'd say that it would fit into a version of stage 2, with relatively low birth and death rates compared to what humans experienced at a similar technological level.

I also suspect that the Ebers' long life span would correspond to a proportionately lowered annual birth rate in individuals of that species. As a highly social species, the Eber wouldn't be the type of species that would produce large nunmbers of offspring in any case. The Ebers aren't the Kafer by any means.

Perhaps the Ebers of old were free-wheeling anarchists, and the current overly-ceremonial society was a reaction to that, a way of controlling the dangerous impulses. Or not.

Mwa-ha-ha?

 

[shanksow]

I think the real question (or, at least, one of the big ones) is "How long did the interstellar society of the Ebers last?" Yes, it was largely destroyed 4000 years ago, but was it destroyed as it became emergent or was it a fairly mature society when it collapsed?

In contrast, the interstellar society of the humans is ~200 years old by 2320. The Kafers have had spaceflight for roughly the same period of time.

Given that the Ebers have a longer lifespan, it makes sense that they were flying around for quite a while before they collapsed. A millenium would not be out of the range of possiblility (two and a half Eber lifetimes). But they tend to be a more cautious bunch on average, which makes their slow progression across their "sphere" sensical, even if it's ridiculous to us fast-moving humans.

Personally, I think that answering the question of "where the Ebers are at now?" starts with asking the question of "where were the Ebers at when they collapsed?"

This is an interesting thread here. I was playing around with a novel based on the secret of the Ebers and their relationship to Z2R. While the story was 95% on Texas and how they manged to get around a embargo put in place by the UAR and with a nudge and wink from Manchuria.

This makes me want to dig that story out and work on it again.

 

[epicenter00]

This Eber lifespan thing has reminded me of something that's always sort of bugged me.

I've always wondered about long-lived species - especially species that live longer than humans even though their technology is inferior. The study of lifespans of different fictional races could probably make an interesting psych paper about the state of mind of the writer(s). While it's much older than Tolkien, I almost always identify it with him - the idea that "good" species are longer-lived than humans. Alternatively, "evil" species don't live as long as humans. There's also a parallel thread that species that achieved sentience first have longer natural lifespans than us, while those who achieve sentience after us have shorter lifespans - like life is a finite natural resource and there simply isn't enough life to go around in the later eons. Because of these factors long-lived sci-fi races always bug me as a sort of cheesy dodge to differentiate a species without much thought, really no different to me than making aliens as humans with funny foreheads or green skin.

Now, to get back onto the subject of Ebers themselves from my little tangent, a species that only has technology equal to Renaissance Europe should not be living 200 years in my opinion. Longer lived species tend not to be very energetic - I could see the Klaxun naturally living 200 years, but Ebers? No. Why? The "slowness" of the Eber culture is said in 2300 to be a result of the war that nearly destroyed them - the stately bureaucracy is there to smooth over differences and eliminate misunderstandings. One would think that creatures as naturally long-lived as Ebers would be that way naturally. If you examine the lifespans of the other known sentients 2300, Ebers are unnaturally long-lived. Even assuming that the Eber colonyworld was deliberately cleansed of pathogens and similar things, Ebers I don't think would live 200 years - even if you eliminate dying of "flu" or "tiger" you'd still die of "cancer."

This brings up to the interesting possibility (at least to me) - what if the Ebers weren't always as naturally long-lived as they are now? What if the Ebers today are benefiting from deep genetic engineering that they did to themselves (or if you really want to be sinister, was done to them) during the height of the "Ur-Eber" culture that no longer exists? Perhaps careful examination of Eber genetics shows all the hallmarks of extensive genetic tampering in the form of organelles and similar things in their cells that wouldn't have evolved naturally simply because nature doesn't really have much use for you beyond successfully reproducing?

I think it'd have all sorts of interesting game implications:

1) What if the Ebers don't know? It's entirely possible the Ebers don't know they weren't always so long-lived. If they were reduced to a Stone Age level of technology, they might not have any idea of the long-lasting genetic tampering they once did to themselves. Of course, if they didn't do to themselves, it begs the question of who did it to them, and why? And what else did they do?

2) What if the Ebers do know? It certainly sounds like the kind of thing that Ebers would lie to humans about. But how long could the Eber keep it a secret from humans? And once the truth gets out, what would people do? Perhaps various transhumanist types would try kidnapping Ebers to have a ready supply of genetic material to tinker with. After all, if the Ebers have engineered themselves to that level, they've probably engineered themselves in other interesting ways...ways that might be applied to humans. Of course, as an ironic twist, perhaps the modern Ebers are survivors of some "transeberist" group that say their own civilization destroyed due to power struggles between various "transeberist" factions on the direction of Eber evolution. Seeing that, the Eber survivors destroyed their advanced science and technology and turned their backs on all of that, and deliberately did a "return of innocence" to try again. They might or might not have myths or even detail records as to what really happened. Of course, visits to former Eber space could be pretty interesting then. While it appears the Eber physical form of the survivors is the "standard" Eber body (as Eber ruins elsewhere have been linked to them), there might be evolved (or devolved) things that live on other former Eber worlds, or weird and horrific hybrids and other "experiments" and "improvements" lurking around on Eber worlds or adapted to survive in orbit. Or perhaps mummies or fossilized remains in Eber graveyards on their survivor world. "This looks like an Eber, but it had four arms and look at these legs ... they must be at least four meters long with three knee joints...that wouldn't have evolved naturally would it? And look here, it has the same poison in its stomach as the others, no violence on the body. If I didn't know better, I'd say they all committed suicide..."

 

[Anders]

Lifespans are relatively flexible in evolutionary terms; depending on ecological niche species tend to evolve the "right" lifespan relatively quickly. Intelligent species need long enough lives to rear their offspring and teach them to survive. Large creatures live longer than smaller ones.

There can be some bonus group effects like the "grandmother hypothesis" that states that humans have lifespans that enable a few repositories of old information in the tribe that improves the survival of the tribal gene pool. The weird Eber brain may have led to something similar: if there is a tendency for Ebers to acquire occasionally survival-relevant knowledge that is hard to transfer, the grandmother hypothesis may have extra strength.

But I think old biotech is not unreasonable. If Ebers do not age very much, they will have a survival dependent on accidents, violence and illness - a good incentive to be careful if you are civilized.

In a previous campaign I had a renaissance level civilisation with some people with old longevity genes. It caused no end of complications in succession, marriage arrangements and inheritance. Not to mention certain noble families were genetically incompatible with most other humans. Maybe there are deep ritual complications in the Eber family rituals to deal with it.

 

[oletheros]

In a previous campaign I had a renaissance level civilisation with some people with old longevity genes. It caused no end of complications in succession, marriage arrangements and inheritance. ... Maybe there are deep ritual complications in the Eber family rituals to deal with it.

I think this goes back to my idea of self-determination in the Eber colonies of old. Sociological pressures brought on by bureaucrats ready and willing to occupy their position for a century (or more!) may have driven their colonization effort. I wouldn't doubt that the final confrontation was a flare-up between "core" and "frontier."