Forbidden Science of the Second Imperium

[flykiller]

The Ziru Sirka was just like Old China - very centralized, and VERY conservative. The Terrans had many competing states, so they adopted ideas much more readily. The Third Imperium is centralized, but less so than the First, so there is innovation, but slow innovation.

that sounds like a great explanation as to "slow" progress by the 3i. it's not "slow", it's "deliberate".

another great adventure idea - a branch of the scouts whose job is to find and stop those who have "gone too far too fast". no telling what they'd be up against ....

 

[Ulsyus]

They are there...

in the dark, forgotten places...

waiting...

A facility in orbit around a brown dwarf, sitting unnoticed between star systems, enough of it's brigades still viable if revived to be a force to be reckoned with within the subsector. Then, the flash of a jump arrival awakens the dormant management system.

 

[nobby-w]

[ . . . ]
Anyrate, what I'm getting at is there could be tons of bad combinations of Solomani adventuresness and Vilani knowhow hidden throughout the Imperium. [ . . . ]

I've done a 'verse set during the slow collapse of the Second Imperium, as it's unravelling after the banking crisis. This setting would be great to introduce all sorts of obscenities into. Genetic supersoldiers, modified humans like Bujold's Quaddies, old, abandoned Leyland-Futanari corporate research facilities, slightly flaky A.I. with a history of blue-on-blue incidents ...

I felt that this 'verse would have a slightly post-apocalyptic feel. I think Hard Times does something similar but I haven't read it. The idea was that you could find all sorts of relics squirreled away in old Imperial facilities that the guards just walked off after 6 months of not getting paid. Maybe the crew was just left there and never picked up.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

one of the dirty little secrets of the Rule of Man was its biological warfare programs.

begun as weapons of last resort in the darkest days of the Interstellar Wars, and carried on thoughout the Confederation and the Rule of Man, shuffled form budget to budget, these programs reached a sophistication never seen before...or since.

one of the first offspring of this program were targeted viruses, that attacked only those of Vlani descent. these were then refined, first to where they could target specific castes or worlds, then to the point where individual families could be stuck with by a virus, released three weeks earlier in a crowded restaurant, that affected only them. it is rumoured that at least one battle in the interstellar wars was won because the vlani admiral was affected by a vague malaise that seemed to slow their thoughts and deaden their reactions.

Once the interstellar wars ended, the terrans had access to the produce of thousands of worlds, and this, coupled with the advanced bio-sciences that he Vlani had lacked, led to an explosion of chemical, pharmaceutical and genetic treatments that achieved feats that stagger the minds of modern science.

terran mastery of genetics was such that they were able to create virus that could overwrite a persons genetic codes, allowing them to re-make a person into whatever image they chose. they could alter a persons hair colour, height, skin colour, almost anything controlled by the genes. Stories say the terrans used this to create the ultimate infiltrators, who matched their targets perfectly, down to their very genes.

their is some evidence that these viruses were able to select for other, more emphical traits, like subservience, or loyalty.

what is certain that at least one of these plagues was released during the fratricidal conflicts of the Twilight, a highly vicious killer with an extended incubation period, that nearly depopulated parts of the Verge and Illelish sectors, and was only stopped due to a built in timer on the virus activating and mutating it into something similar to the common cold.

and those are just the stories which have some evidence to support them......

I felt that this 'verse would have a slightly post-apocalyptic feel. I think Hard Times does something similar but I haven't read it. The idea was that you could find all sorts of relics squirreled away in old Imperial facilities that the guards just walked off after 6 months of not getting paid. Maybe the crew was just left there and never picked up

or maybe they didn't leave, but, after seeing the government they worked for going down the toilet, have decided that the secrets that they guard are so bad, they must be contained at all costs, even if that means shooting any "outsiders" they see, in order to save the wider world form what they guard......

 

[Bromo33333]

secret bases hidden in jumpspace (crewed by you know what

I had not considered that. Ha! I'd love to use this. But maybe I wateched 'Event Horizon' too much.

 

[Timerover51]

You do not need to get so creative with the idea of biological warfare within the 2nd Imperium. Any pharmaceutical company doing research on new antibiotics is also going to be a biological weapons research lab, as they have to have viable samples of the bugs to test the antibiotics on. Given the large number of planets within the Imperium, you are going to have a large number of diseases localized to one planet (hopefully), with research being done to deal with the disease. Simply introducing that disease to a new planet, where the population has no natural immunity to it, gives the possibility of a massive plague developing, similar to the Spanish Flu outbreak at the end of World War One, the Black Death in Europe, or the havoc wrought on the American Indians tribes by European smallpox and measles.

Currently, the malaria parasite is developing resistant strains to the current range of malarial drugs. The is a potential biological agent readily available, and some of the antimalarial drugs have some fairly nasty sides effects. There are men at the local VA hospital that are still getting treated for malaria picked up in World War 2 in the Southwest Pacific area and the Philippines.

Another real world example. When I was first hospitalized at Walter Reed back in the Spring of 1977, I had for a few days a roommate who was an Army doctor researching tropical diseases in the Amazon region. In the course of his research, he naturally picked one up. It was a parasite similar to malaria, but was a new one, and not contagious. The French, it turned out, has just run into the same thing as well, and were starting to work on drugs for it. The doctor went from being a researcher to being the subject of a research study. I never did find out what the result was.

Then there is the Ebola virus in Africa. There is clearly a pool of resistant carriers in the wild, and once transmitted to humans, it is highly contagious and highly fatal.

 

[Grav_Moped]

one of the dirty little secrets of the Rule of Man was its biological warfare programs....

And it got used to genocidal effect way out past the Spinward Marches, after the fall of the Second Imperium, by the Sindalian Empire.

They also had psionics, since the Psionic Suppressions were a Third Imperium event, long after the Sindalians were gone.

 

[Selandia]

now that i retired from my day job, I could work on an old idea, thanks to you:

TL 18 Darrian: Darian pose as TL 16 frozen-decaying to avoid a TI "anti-cybernetic" crusade, or a pre-emptive strike against an enemy gathering an technological advantage that you do not wish to race because of a social doctrine of deliberate slow tech advancement.

Their war fleet is built and kept n deep space, largely by robots. Parts and whatever tl 15-14 convenient sub assemblies are made and brought from planets where shipyards explain their presence.

a) you are TI scouts posing as traders to investigate Darian technologies
b) you are Darian counter-intelligence with a lot of maximum tl-15 cool stuff. However, you cannot fall in TI hands… expect your boss to hold your self destroy switch in his hand, in case the automated SD system fails or the AI is found wanting.

have fun

Selandia

 

[Vargr Breath]

Just a bump for a great thread! It's been a long time since anyone posted on this thread, and we have a lot of new members who might not have seen this and can add some new ideas.

 

[Enoki]

Here's one I came up with for a truly vicious AI on a large scale. It makes The Virus look tame by comparison.

A drone producing factory ship comes to life around some forgotten star system. It immediately sends out all the extant drones aboard to collect ALL refined materials in the system. That is, they look for refined metals, plastics, chemicals, you-name-it, that any level of technological society might produce. These drones are designed to then remove these materials a bit at a time and bring them to the factory ship where they are turned into more drones that go and get more materials. That is, it is an AI programmed to devour all technology it encounters however basic and use it to continue its mission.

They are programmed such that they initially do this at a speed and level that evades detection, particularly as TL goes lower. Once they reach a critical mass, they then simply start disassembling whole factories, power plants, everything in a matter of days to weeks. They take the fillings out of your teeth, the nails out of wood, the rebar in concrete. It's a refined material, it's going to the factory ship.

Once they've consumed everything in the system that is the result of technology, the ship moves with the drones to a new system. It could be sub-light speed for all that it matters as this thing goes on forever.

If the factory or drones are attacked, they immediately focus their breakdown and removal of technology on the threat. That is, they swarm the attacking ship in the billions or trillions of tiny to large drones (a variety necessary to get every last bit of stuff) and disassemble your ship.

They don't go after organic life whatsoever. They just leave it with nothing more advanced than a pointy stick or a rock for a hammer.

From time to time, the factory ship will produce another factory ship and the two will then split and go off to consume different systems.

Originally a long-forgotten weapon invented for some long forgotten war somewhere outside of known space. Now the threat is these things are showing up in known space, and the players just stumbled on one in some moderately low-tech system where every bit of technology is well on its way to being devoured...

(Yes, it's a variant of the "Santa Claus machine" crossed with something like the Star Trek TOS doomsday carrot).

 

[Baroun Tardis]

All the more reason for the IISS to let the Navy keep tracking down "the Ancients", while the Scouts go after the real truth...

The Navy handles the Ancients. We handle the 'Moderns' -
Anonymous member of IISS Covert Archeology Division

 

[willtron3030]

That factory ship drones remind me of the mechanical "ants" from Dennis E. Taylor's 'Bobiverse'.

 

[kilemall]

Just two more quick thoughts.

Maybe an offshoot/weird branch of the Imperial Scout Service would be a suitable patron for parties interested in this kind of adventuring. I'm thinking the scout service because: 1) this is exploration of a kind, 2) they probably do have access to all sorts of historical documents and have a killer archive, 3) It's a paramilitary force that reports to the Imperal governing apparatus. I could see an Emperor feel a bit more comfortable trusting the scout service than Naval intelligence. Oh, and 4) scouts can go anywhere without raising too much suspicion.

The X-boat Files (creepy mystery music plays..)

 

[Grav_Moped]

I went there first (or at least earlier), not that it matters :

She wasn't done yet. I sigh, then Tenya speaks up too -- sheesh!

"Oh, like the second-season arc of The XBoat Files, with the Outsiders and their Red Matter technology. Seemed a little over-the-top to me, but it was still a little eerie that they ended the series on a cliffhanger after they knew it wouldn't be renewed for a third season."

I glare at JT and Tenya; she figures it out -- but it doesn't look like JT did though... "Ooops. Sorry, Dame Irshinri. Please go on."

(From my PbP, October of last year.)

 

[Grav_Moped]

My headcanon says there's a hidden archive world, long ago removed from the charts, that contains all of the Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know. It's inhabited by the people who found those things, their personalities overlaid with loyalty to Humaniti as a whole rather than the Imperium. (And their descendants, of course.)

They can defend themselves if needed, that's all I'll say about that.

There is a protocol to contact them, and to deliver newly-discovered disruptive technologies to them.

They alone are the judges of the Godzilla Threshold (TVTropes).

The technologies, artifacts, and anomalies they guard are segregated into tranches based on their expected impact on Imperial society and civilization. They will be revealed and released only as absolutely necessary.

"Break Glass Only in Case of Apocalypse."

 

[kilemall]

Yes it was/is.
However, it is obvious that the Imperium controls the flow of technology for its own purposes and the purposes of the megacorp ( who are the real power in the Imperium; they are owned by Imperial nobility ).

Consider the following;

Most member worlds were not settled, but were re-contacted after the long night.
If the worlds were accepted as equals and not as subordinates to a central power which keeps them subordinate, then why aren't tech levels consistent across the realm? Because the "maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." prevents most member worlds from advancing.

and;


Max Weber* defines the state as a community successfully claiming authority on legitimate use of physical force over a given territory; territory was also deemed by Weber to be a prerequisite feature of a state. Such a monopoly, according to Weber, must occur via a process of legitimation.

The state is the source of legitimate physical force. The police and the military are its main instruments, but this does not mean that only public force can be used: private force (as in private security) can be used too, as long as it has legitimacy derived from the state.

The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their powers include the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with police services of a state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors.

By contrast, A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions, such as advancing a political agenda, supporting or promoting economic expansion through imperialism, and as a form of internal social control.

It seems obvious that either group is defined by what their purpose is, and not by who does it. Police can be civilian, armed forces or even mercenaries. The same for the military, and there are real world examples of each case and examples of each case within the OTU.
As far as PC's are concerned, there really wouldn't be any real differences because responses by police/military would continue to escalate until the required level of force or threat of force is reached. The differences would most likely be organizational as opposed to procedural.

Of course this brings up questions for me concerning the other side of the territory line, the Imperium.
What is the purpose of the Imperial Navy with regard to patrols in allied systems? Are they "supporting or promoting economic expansion through imperialism, and as a form of internal social control.", or are they "defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats."

Given that imperialism is defined as "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination", are the member worlds really as allied and pro-Imperium as we've been led to believe? Is the Imperial Navy performing "a form of internal social control" because of that?

Or is the navy simply enforcing Imperial law, thus making them a perfect example of the military performing law enforcement actions and that the Imperium is actually a police state, in which case the territory line is wherever the Imperium tells the member world it is, and that it doesn't apply to Imperial forces at all.
-----------------------------------------------------

Imperialism always involves the massive export of capital to foreign countries for the purpose of exploiting and dominating both their labor forces and their markets. Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, represents the stage at which a country's consumers cannot buy all the products that have been produced, and additional markets must be sought after. The dominant feature of imperialism is the repatriation of invested capital.
------------------------------------------------------

According to the Marxist historian, Walter Rodney, imperialism meant capitalist expansion. It meant that European (and American and Japanese) capitalists were forced by the internal logic of their competitive system to seek abroad in less developed countries opportunities to control raw material, to find markets, and to find profitable fields of investment.

As the Imperium's main feature is that it controls the flow of trade and technology ..................

Fabulous post.

 

[Vargr Breath]

Here's one I came up with for a truly vicious AI on a large scale. It makes The Virus look tame by comparison.

A drone producing factory ship comes to life around some forgotten star system. It immediately sends out all the extant drones aboard to collect ALL refined materials in the system. That is, they look for refined metals, plastics, chemicals, you-name-it, that any level of technological society might produce. These drones are designed to then remove these materials a bit at a time and bring them to the factory ship where they are turned into more drones that go and get more materials. That is, it is an AI programmed to devour all technology it encounters however basic and use it to continue its mission.

They are programmed such that they initially do this at a speed and level that evades detection, particularly as TL goes lower. Once they reach a critical mass, they then simply start disassembling whole factories, power plants, everything in a matter of days to weeks. They take the fillings out of your teeth, the nails out of wood, the rebar in concrete. It's a refined material, it's going to the factory ship.

Once they've consumed everything in the system that is the result of technology, the ship moves with the drones to a new system. It could be sub-light speed for all that it matters as this thing goes on forever.

If the factory or drones are attacked, they immediately focus their breakdown and removal of technology on the threat. That is, they swarm the attacking ship in the billions or trillions of tiny to large drones (a variety necessary to get every last bit of stuff) and disassemble your ship.

They don't go after organic life whatsoever. They just leave it with nothing more advanced than a pointy stick or a rock for a hammer.

From time to time, the factory ship will produce another factory ship and the two will then split and go off to consume different systems.

Originally a long-forgotten weapon invented for some long forgotten war somewhere outside of known space. Now the threat is these things are showing up in known space, and the players just stumbled on one in some moderately low-tech system where every bit of technology is well on its way to being devoured...

(Yes, it's a variant of the "Santa Claus machine" crossed with something like the Star Trek TOS doomsday carrot).

Those drones exist they are called- Divorce Lawyers.

 

[Enoki]

Well, lawyers are always an issue and evil, but that aside, the best part of the drone scenario is for those that love designing ships and robots, etc., you need to make ones from nanoscale to the massive factory ship. TL 16 + is advisable as the scenario isn't tech limited.

 

[Condottiere]

Yet, who else can explain the rules to the dungeon master?

 

[mike wightman]

Going back and re-reading the entire thread...
some of my ideas have changed over time, for the better I think
I have a 4000 word essay on the secret history on my hard drive now
MWM published Agent of the Imperium and in addition revealed the secret history of the Annic Nova in an interview

My big take from AotI are the Vilani repositories for forbidden knowledge

There was, in those early years, another type of knowledge: the unconfirmed, the
incredible, the unbelievable. Stories of monsters and marvels, strangeness and strangers.
These reports were problematic: hard to believe, hard to prove, hard to understand. It was
easiest to laugh and then dismiss or ignore them. Who could possibly believe stories of
monsters that swarmed in the vacuum of deep space, of worlds where time stood still, of
sirens that called men to their dooms, of artificial planetoids in the depths of the outer
oort? What reasonable scientist would believe the weird, the occult, the unproven, or
the undocumented? More than one scientist was embarrassed to find that supposed fact
was really the writings of the deranged, or alien children’s morality tales, or startlingly
realistic entertainment fictions. This mass of nonsense had a name: the Niikiik Luur,
literally the words meant the False-Knowledge.
This false knowledge was a source of constant confusion, and to the First Empire
the obvious answer was to suppress it. It was systematically removed from the databases;
references were tagged unproven or fictional; more than that, they were often scrambled
or deliberately corrupted. Over time, over generations, over centuries, this forbidden
other knowledge was very thoroughly eradicated. The information networks were all the
better for it.
And yet, there are always the few who must be contrary, and some of those
contraries had great power and great resources.
The Karand’s Palace on Nivalia became one such contrary: a secret repository,
maintained by its hereditary staff even long after the First Empire fell. The estate was
self-sustaining: surrounded by agricultural lands; worked by serfs; managed by a
dedicated set of families. Of those, only a few actually knew about the collection, and
fewer still saw any real value. Of course, it had no value; its curators were weird mystics
with strange ideas and distorted concepts of importance and reality.