T4 Only: Selean Federation Background

[daryen]

A few random follow-ups:
- I intentionally made the assumption that no one in the Spinward Marches takes the Empress Wave seriously until it hits in 1202. This is probably NOT the case, but it is the worst case scenario and gives a basis for talking through things. They likely would have more advanced notice, particularly since the Regency is on decent standing with the Zhodani.
- I am on board for robot nannies. Actually having them build into these freezers probably makes decanting much easier. Program them to scan the occupants for being affected and let them out of they are clean. That would dramatically speed up the decanting.
- I am assuming reasonable cooperation of the citizenry for the most part. For the Darrians, anyway. Outside Zamine. I would expect a much, much wider range of reactions within the Regency.
- You probably can't ship 10 billion freezers to Entrope. My point is just that the production is not all on that single world. There would be a lot of imports. I am also assuming large, high efficiency emergency style low berths, not individual tubes.
- I am ignoring embryos, eggs, and sperm, as I am trying to do a very quick reconstruction with the affected. Not trying to rebuild from virtually zero. That is a completely valid back-up plan, though. I imagine that would happen in a lot of places. I also imagine that many places would NOT do it, intentionally putting all bets on the freezing strategy. Also, I imagine that embryos, eggs, and sperm would definitely apply to animals and plants, though. In a major, major way.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Spinward Marches has basically half of what's necessary moving traffic as is to just move 1B low berth freezers in one year.

Now realize that all of that capacity isn't "concentrated" in one place (where it's needed for the kind of interstellar lift capacity we're talking about) and that if it were, basically ALL interstellar commerce throughout the Spinward Marches would need to come to a grinding halt for decades.

When the transport capacity is scattered like that, you can't (easily) redirect all of it towards a single dedicated purpose like hauling low berth freezers without having massive knock on effects elsewhere.

- I intentionally made the assumption that no one in the Spinward Marches takes the Empress Wave seriously until it hits in 1202. This is probably NOT the case, but it is the worst case scenario and gives a basis for talking through things. They likely would have more advanced notice, particularly since the Regency is on decent standing with the Zhodani.

It certainly makes the case for a Worst Case Scenario.
However, there would almost certainly be more advance notice than you were postulating.
The Zhodani Exodus is not something that could be kept a state secret for long ... and it would have taken more than a century for the Empress Wave to roll over the Zhodani Consulate and reach the Spinward Marches.

The Regency would have known about the Empress Wave LONG before it arrived in the Spinward Marches. The flood of refugees due to the Zhodani Exodus would have absolutely guaranteed that.

- I am on board for robot nannies. Actually having them build into these freezers probably makes decanting much easier. Program them to scan the occupants for being affected and let them out of they are clean. That would dramatically speed up the decanting.

You (and I) would find such notions eminently practical and reasonable (not to mention advantageous, under the circumstances) ... but not everyone will. Like I said, there are going to be cultures for which Robot Prejudice is simply too strong or morally/theologically verboten for any of a number of reasons. So even if it's a "great idea" there are still going to be places/cultures/worlds that resist the option ... and some of that resistance is going to be forceful (possibly even violent).

People can get really "weird" about it when they think their "purity" is at stake.

- I am assuming reasonable cooperation of the citizenry for the most part. For the Darrians, anyway. Outside Zamine. I would expect a much, much wider range of reactions within the Regency.

It's going to run the gamut.
The real problem is going to be the Go Darwin Go factor being demonstrated by the various responses (from none to overly zealous) to the impending disaster.

- You probably can't ship 10 billion freezers to Entrope. My point is just that the production is not all on that single world. There would be a lot of imports. I am also assuming large, high efficiency emergency style low berths, not individual tubes.

The hazard with Emergency Berths is that everyone in them shares the resuscitation roll. It's an all or nothing proposition.
With "standard" Low Berths it's 1 roll for 1 occupant.
With Emergency Low Berths it's 1 roll for up to 4 occupants.

With a large enough population, the statistical variation between the two blurs into background noise ... but on the individual citizen level, people might not want to "tie their survival fate" together with 3 other people. The thinking would be that if any of them die, they all die together, and for some that kind of shared risk will be intolerable.

Still, this does bring up an interesting HAVES vs HAVE NOTS point.
You could easily wind up with a situation of "public" facilities being Emergency Low Berths for everyone who "can't afford" to buy their own "personal" Low Berth to ride out the disaster individually. The motivation behind such a distinction would be sheer expense and cost.
1 Low Berth = Cr 50,000 per person
1 Emergency Low Berth = Cr 25,000 per person (4 person capacity)
Those are the 100% price numbers, and in the emergency production would no doubt be ramped up to 80% cost volume production levels (so Cr 40k and Cr 20k respectively).

So as a matter of sheer economy (and credit pinching), you could easily have a situation in which people who can afford to buy their own Low Berths can get individual accommodation (helping to defray the cost to the planetary government of acquiring the necessary capacity) while the "public" who can't afford their own individual Low Berths are given slots in Emergency Low Berth capacity as a public works project service.

And then, just to make things particularly grim ... there's always the possibility that a government may have "dithered" too long on their planning and preparation, such that use of Emergency Low Berths becomes a necessity to reaching sufficient capacity in time, because the rate of production for individual Low Berths won't be fast enough to accommodate everyone due to economic/supply chain/production rate constraints. At that point, the only way to make up for lost time on capacity is to resort to Emergency Low Berths for some 50-90% of the population.

Money talks.
Merit walks.

- I am ignoring embryos, eggs, and sperm, as I am trying to do a very quick reconstruction with the affected. Not trying to rebuild from virtually zero. That is a completely valid back-up plan, though. I imagine that would happen in a lot of places. I also imagine that many places would NOT do it, intentionally putting all bets on the freezing strategy. Also, I imagine that embryos, eggs, and sperm would definitely apply to animals and plants, though. In a major, major way.

And then you've got the theocrats/cultists who double down on The Rapture angle of it all and decide that the best solution amounts to intentional mass suicide of the current generation of inhabitants ... while planting the seeds for (eventual) revival of their world through precisely this kind of "seeding" strategy so that their world recovers in a more "pure" form than it existed in previously before the Empress Wave.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- Upton Sinclair

 

[whartung]

Now realize that all of that capacity isn't "concentrated" in one place (where it's needed for the kind of interstellar lift capacity we're talking about) and that if it were, basically ALL interstellar commerce throughout the Spinward Marches would need to come to a grinding halt for decades.

Well, that's why I did the exercise.

I mean, of course, its all made up numbers, but FT is the "best" Trade "simulation" we have handy, so why not try and answer the question "Gee, how many dTons are flying about in the SM anyway?"

Is 250M dTons "a lot" or "no big deal".

On a personal level the idea of running ahead of it a few decades, then learning which system survived and recovered the best as a target destination to "run back to" is the best strategy.

It just doesn't scale.

It simply all points to that the EW is a silly idea to wipe out established civilizations.

 

[Spinward Flow]

It simply all points to that the EW is a silly idea to wipe out established civilizations.

Bingo.

 

[mike wightman]

Which was never its original intent.

What exactly happens when and if the retconned wave makes contact with the T5/AotI OTU or the MgT ATU is up to the current authors.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Which was never its original intent.

What exactly happens when and if the retconned wave makes contact with the T5/AotI OTU or the MgT ATU is up to the current authors.

In which case ... someone ought to do something about that then, ne?

 

[aramis]

2) It completely invalidates 1248. Hopefully 1248 can still be considered an ATU.

AFAIK, it's still on TNE disk 2...


In Re Virus... [SPOILER="Signal GK spoilers"]the chips are a derivative of a sentient silicon life form.
It accidentally bred to a terran chip...

And then was enslaved.
[/SPOILER]
IMTU, the virus is a psionic life form. It uses a form of telekinesis to alter the target chips via a radio focus.

It solves a lot of the issues .... not all, but a lot.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Barring further retcons: I think in the short term, Charted Space is doomed. Life is still going on with more immediate problems at hand. There is no ability for the Regency to prepare for the Wave in the first place.

In the Mongoose Zhodani book, in 1105 the Consulate full well knows of the Wave and effects. It has been studying it for 350 years now. They have no solutions and turned knowledge of it into a state secret so as not to panic the proles. This provides another reason why the Zhos did not expand during Virus Era. They were "busy with more important things".

Virus's release is not impacted by changing the Wave. It still escapes in 1130 and goes on its merry way. Virus is faster than the Wave (1-6 parsecs per week vs 1 parsec per year). Wipes out the Vargr Extents as before. The Rape of Trin still happens. Quarantine Service is still created. Closing the border to all ships still happens in the Regency. The Regency does not have access to Project Longbow, not after Rebellion, Arrival Vengeance and once the Quarantine begins. On the off chance a Zhodani or Vargr ship makes it to the Regency, It will be destroyed ("Wave of Craziness? Must be a Virus trick. Ready batteries....FIRE!")

 

[Spinward Flow]

In the Mongoose Zhodani book, in 1105 the Consulate full well knows of the Wave and effects. It has been studying it for 350 years now. They have no solutions and turned knowledge of it into a state secret so as not to panic the proles.

{ looks at low berths solution }

{ looks at Zhodani Consulate }

You people are just really THICK aren't you?
I came up with a possible solution that might work in a week that the ruling class of Zhodani Nobles couldn't figure out in 350 years.

Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.

 

[daryen]

Virus's release is not impacted by changing the Wave. It still escapes in 1130 and goes on its merry way. Virus is faster than the Wave (1-6 parsecs per week vs 1 parsec per year). Wipes out the Vargr Extents as before. The Rape of Trin still happens. Quarantine Service is still created. Closing the border to all ships still happens in the Regency. The Regency does not have access to Project Longbow, not after Rebellion, Arrival Vengeance and once the Quarantine begins. On the off chance a Zhodani or Vargr ship makes it to the Regency, It will be destroyed ("Wave of Craziness? Must be a Virus trick. Ready batteries....FIRE!")

Couple points here.

First, by the point of the Regency, the Zhodani and Regency got along fine. Back in the Domain of Deneb days, there was lots of tension and a great deal of fear about what the Zhodani might do. But, by the time of the Regency, the relationship was at least cordial, if not friendly. So, unknown Zhodani ships popping in would be given the benefit of the doubt and investigated, not outright destroyed. Similarly, Vargr corsairs would be ruthlessly crushed, but Vargr refugees would likewise be given at least some benefit of the doubt and (if not a ruse) similarly helped. Remember that once the Domain found out about the Virus, they tried to help their neighbors, not close them off. They aren't "shoot-first" with Zhodani and Vargr. They would find out about the Empress Wave from the refugees.

Now, it is an open question as to how much the Zhodani officials in Cronor would be willing to divulge, but I would expect they would be much more talkative as it gets closer to their doorstep.

Back to that Rape of Trin. One thing that 1248 Spinward States did was leverage that otherwise minimally detailed event. Skipping the story, the effect was that the Kishkii was the most premier infector ever encountered. It provided the Regency (and thus their neighbors) much more advanced anti-Viral capabilities than anyone else. (Having the worst infection also be the only major one gave them time to use that experience.) In effect, the Regency, and those neighbors who took advantage of the information, were effectively immune to Virus outside GM/author fiat. If that survives the retcon (and there is nothing in the retcon that would remove it), then the Regency would be able to focus very heavily on the Empress Wave. (Not saying they can ignore Virus. Just that it doesn't have to remain their sole focus.)

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Now, it is an open question as to how much the Zhodani officials in Cronor would be willing to divulge, but I would expect they would be much more talkative as it gets closer to their doorstep.

Back to that Rape of Trin. One thing that 1248 Spinward States did was leverage that otherwise minimally detailed event. Skipping the story, the effect was that the Kishkii was the most premier infector ever encountered. It provided the Regency (and thus their neighbors) much more advanced anti-Viral capabilities than anyone else. (Having the worst infection also be the only major one gave them time to use that experience.)

I disagree. I don't see the Zhodani changing their behavior one bit. The impact as far as the Zhodani people are concerned is the same old Wave or new. Many nobles (but not all) go insane. The proles become intensely unhappy. The effect on the Zhodani coreward province is written the same in the new Zho book as had been written in the past 1248 and TNE sources.

The effective difference for Zhodani is plants, animals and non-psions join the noble crazy train. I do not think this is enough to change the Consulate's behavior.

 

[daryen]

I disagree. I don't see the Zhodani changing their behavior one bit.

That's fine. If one of us doesn't write the story, we're both guaranteed to be wrong. Different takes are cool.

But regardless of what the Zhodani government does, the Regency still isn't shooting refugees out of the sky, so they're still gonna get most of the story. They still learn what is going on ahead of 1202. That is the main point I want to make.

 

[Spinward Flow]

You can't have a mass migration of a trillion+ people ... that no one ever finds out about ... especially if they are migrating rimward/trailing towards the Regency and the Spinward Marches.

That's simply NOT a secret that can be KEPT secret.
It simply isn't plausible to even postulate that it might be.
Refugee crises are not inherently concealable events, especially when they are large scale waves of refugees migrating in a panic to save their own lives (otherwise, why would they leave where they came from?).

One world evacuating ... okay, that can probably be kept a state secret.
A dozen worlds evacuating ... difficult, but with sufficient coordination the state can keep the lid on that from getting out (maybe).
An entire subsector of worlds evacuating ... credulity on the notion of being able to keep that a secret is starting to strain mightily.
An entire SECTOR of worlds evacuating ... there's just NO WAY to keep that a secret. NONE.

Oh and the Empress Wave had to cross multiple sectors of Zhodani Consulate space in order to reach the Spinward Marches and the Regency over a time span of centuries. So it's not like this all happened "one weekend at band camp" (or whatever).

A multi-sector "slow rolling disaster" that continues for CENTURIES ... that NO ONE ever learns of or talks about before it exits Zhodani controlled space and rolls over the Spinward Marches and the Regency ... because ...

RIIIIIIIGHT ...

 

[Nathan Brazil]

You can't have a mass migration of a trillion+ people ... that no one ever finds out about ... especially if they are migrating rimward/trailing towards the Regency and the Spinward Marches...

RIIIIIIIGHT ...

Excuse me. I agree that does not make sense, but can you point out the canon source(s) that state mass migrations of that scale are occurring AND they know the exact cause. In TNE Keepers of the Flame with the previous iteration of the Wave, this migration is stated but neither the proles nor their accompanying nobles know what is causing it. Avery does not leave for his mission until 1154 and does not return until 1240.

Similarly, my point is that Virus insulates the Regency and forces isolation upon them. I do suggest you reread Out of Darkness. The Quarantine Service sounds pretty thorough. Can you point to a canon element that points out behavior would be any different?

 

[Spinward Flow]

I agree that does not make sense, but can you point out the canon source(s) that state mass migrations of that scale are occurring AND they know the exact cause.

The Zhodani Exodus is not something that could be kept a state secret for long

Link provided and everything for you.

 

[whartung]

Also note that at the time, the EW was moving much slower, which gave the Zhodani more time to do their migration.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Link provided and everything for you.

Since Rob wrote the revision I will accept that. This is an important point then, thanks.

I analyze retcons in a manner similar to examining alternate history. The retcon itself is the point of departure. Ripples from the change propagate until it is all just becomes butterflies. As a rule I dislike ASBs unless that itself is the the point of departure. Turtledove's Worldwar series for example has the The Race showing up in the middle of WWII. Crazy but fine POD. Tailoring their species characteristics to force the specific story outcome of the last book was too much meddling and ASB. In retcons, it is even worse.

 

[mike wightman]

The wiki article is fanon - the canon is Keepers of the Flame. If the article is applied then the events of TNE never mind 1248 can not take place as the Regency is wrecked long before it can team up with the RC to defeat Lucan's resurgent Imperium.

Dave Nilsen mapped out the future events as they had them planned - see his Q&A - which is why many TNE supplements have anecdotes in side bars written from the point of view of the future of the setting, This setting can not happen with the retconned wave for two reasons
it is moving ftl (which in and of itself breaks one of MWM's holy rules - thou shalt not have ftl communication. Sorry to point it out but waves are used to transfer energy and information) which means it flattens the Regency, it is more destructive that the original

I will stick with TNE canon and move my setting forward based on the original intent - the MgT future history and the retconned OTU future history are unlikely to ever make it to resolving events in the 1200s anyway.

MgT still has to make it as far as the FFW, never mind the Rebellion era, Hard Times, then New Era

I'm still waiting for the Galaxiad - assuming novels are the way forward for MWM to advance the OTU setting then the next novel could cover another few hundred years of Imperial history

 

[Spinward Flow]

The wiki article is fanon - the canon is Keepers of the Flame.

The Regency Sourcebook (link)

And as if that weren't enough, their stable neighbors the Zhodani now seem to be coming completely apart, wracked by internal war and flooding the Regency with waves of refugees.

Quote ... "flooding the Regency with waves of refugees."

This setting can not happen with the retconned wave for two reasons
it is moving ftl (which in and of itself breaks one of MWM's holy rules - thou shalt not have ftl communication.

THIS is an incredibly important objection that simply must be given retcon crushing weight.
The retcon is flat out "disallowed" due to the "no FTL" rule.
Open and shut case.
I'm convinced!

I don't care about "higher dimensions" mumbo jumbo backporting justifications for an FTL retcon.
You lose the argument in favor of FTL on canon foundational grounds. Thank you for playing in an ATU.

Kind of like how having personal "Dune Shields" at TL=F in the Third Imperium is obviously (and egregiously) breaking yet more canon foundational rules.

 

[mike wightman]

I think you misunderstand my objection to the wiki - it takes part of what is written in Keepers of the Flame but then maps the retconned wave on top of it.

I do not accept the retconned wave and wish I had had the chance to talk Don and the rest from making it 'canon'.

MgT has an easy means to get rid of the wave - Grandfather and the dozens of his children and grandchildren that survived the Ancient era war can wish it out of existence. Marc can employ reality altering technology to change the wave.