Think Like a Pentapod

[Anders]

I have been in love with the pentapods since the first edition of 2300AD. They are so delightfully alien, possible to use for all sorts of plots and adventures - and real hard to GM. I'm interested in how other people run their pentapods. Here are some of the main approaches I use.

Overall, I have been tremendously inspired by "Having Seen The Sky” by Jim Long - the somewhat fragmentary form of the manuscript adds to the feeling of a grand unfinished masterpiece. For a very appealing implementation of that adventure, see Mike Montresa's version. Some other good sources of ideas are Andy Slack's Bioadversity and Rob Myer's hillarious Focus Group.


Pentapods do not use pronouns: there is no "I" in pentapod, and they do not get "you", "we" or "our" either. They might denote themselves as "Pentapod concerned with humans" or "Pentapod concerned with walls" depending on their purpose. Humans with uncertain purpose may be impossible to call anything. Pentapods are not very good with motivations and other inner states either (since they themselves are more like stimulus-response creatures). They don't "get" self-awareness, emotions or human goals. But diplomatic pentapods interacting with humans will try to use these terms, often with problematic results.

Pentapods tend to use taste and smell as the main modalities. “How salty is this delightful building? You have been pungent hosts, strewn with cinnamon.” Sometimes the effect is rather eerie: “We will savour your brain-smells and return after a full digestion.”

To pentapods eating and understanding might be the same thing: to understand something you have to become it, so either you eat it or you allow it to eat you. "Could the Pentapod Concerned With Appendage Structure eat your arm?"

Pentapods never act alone. They always form groups (schools, tangles, gaggles?) An isolated pentapod is either doing a job and will ignore everything irrelevant, or lost and trying to go home.

Pentapods either have something to do, and then they do it with all their heart(s?), or they do nothing in particular. Inactive are like living furniture, and will often be used for that purpose by other pentapods. Active pentapods in group are downright dangerous as they swarm to do their job and do not care much for personal safety.

Pentapod society is more like an ecosystem or a free market than a mammalian society. Pentapods prefer evolutionary trial and error: test numerous possibilities, reuse those that worked best, try variants of them. They seldom do exactly the same thing twice, unless it is a very well tested procedure (or rather, species).

Pentapods seldom care about efficiency. Instead they allow solutions to evolve once they are found. Over the years they become better and more efficient even if they started as an absurd kludge.

Shift between the cute, odd, disgusting and horrific randomly. Whenever the players start treating the pentapods in one way, add some opposing element. "Do humans want lives elegantly trimmed? Pentapods Concerned About Shore Debris could suck it up along the shores, excreting tasteful things."

Pentapods have no concept of personal space, and do not naturally understand the human horror of parasites or having creatures crawl on or in them. This easily causes problem with pentapod toolkits, who swarm anything. "It will only micturate for happy recording purposes."

PCs wanting to learn more from the pentapods better put up with all of this, and adopt some of the habits. One of the PCs in the current campaign has established rapport with pentapods fairly well, but he literally licks up pentapod slime from doormats once the sensor polyps have matured...


Overall, I think the great challenge is to come up with plots and plans for the Pentapods in the game. If they have a clear pre-determined purpose, everything is fine. But having a pentaplex somewhere nearby means that they will do all sorts of unexpected things. New kinds of pentapods will show up, different ecological phases will follow each other and various groups of pentapods will implement projects apparently haphazardly. The ecology needs surveying? Breed surveyor pentapods (several kinds, including edible ones that report about what ate them through their digestion-resistant kernels; oops, forgot to tell humans about that one, they thought they were native and delicious - great, new product to sell!) *and* get humans to do ecological survey by asking *and* spreading apparently threatening creatures in the borderland.

I think the inhabitants of Niebelungen are going to discover that they got some annoyingly active neighbours...

 

[Colin]

And this is why no government wants them on Earth. Even Mars feels too close sometimes.

Great write-up.

 

[epicenter00]

Pentapods in my universe aren't so alien they don't understand the communication problems they're having with humans. They're aware that communication and the lack thereof is actually hurting the symbiotic relationship with humanity they desire ("We desire a fruitful symbiosis for the mutual exchange of evolutionary advantages without the poverty of concept-memes from true hybridization and the inbreeding of concepts.").

At first, of course, they were content with making humans reach across the gap, like in 2301 - people who met with Pentapods in the half-wet rooms and learning to think like a pentapod were the best. Eventually however, a new idea arose in Pentapod thought: What if they weren't getting the full sum of human knowledge and relation by only interfacing with the members who had self-adapted for communication with Pentapods?

In response, the Pentapods have been trying different methods to try and interface better with humans. Various pentapod hives/collectives/groupings have different solutions. Taking a page from David Brin's traeki, one of the more interesting solutions that the Pentapods have come up with is to combine multiple "thinking units" (brains) which share a common method of locomotion, vocalization, and sensors. In short, a bunch of brains in one body and assembled with brains (and memories) specializing in certain skills, while others simply handle things like locomotion, speaking, and so on.

Response to this version of the Pentapod have been mixed but generally favorable and is much better able to function with a more rounded set of skills and doesn't suffer from panic attacks from being alone (as the brains can always discuss amongst themselves what to do). The "collective" votes on a name for humans to call the group, the communication brain refers to itself as "i/we" which is pretty weird but still easier for humans to grasp than "This end" which is how communicative single Pentapods refer to themselves in my world ("this end unequipped with sensors purposed for visual differentiation of humans" - in response to "which way did he go?" - which is basically the view that pentapods are simply appendages of their species). When humans speak to the collective, the brains argue/discuss/locate the best specialist and hash it out from there - sometimes only a single brain need respond, but humans tend to diverge and go into "stream of consciousness speaking" without meaning to, which requires the brains to discuss amongst themselves what the hell the human just meant. A basic (and overused, admittedly) example would be the comparison of unalike things or processing slang which would cause an arguement amongst the brains as to what the human meant:

20th Century Corpsicle Survivor: "Man, this is the sh*t, I'm talking to an alien."

(internal) Brain 1 - Communications: "None of us are humans are we?"

(internal) Brain 4 - Locomotion: "What is a man?"

(internal) Brain 2 - Biology: "End refers to one end of their heterosexual pairings for genetic variety."

(internal) Brain 5 - Memory - English: "Man is antiquated term for the collective homo sapiens, disused when homo sapiens evolved to better utilize their species in response to changing environmental conditions."

(internal) Brain 2 - Biology: "This end certainly lacks gentalia, so this end is not a man."

(internal) Brain 1 - Communications: "hehehe ... penii. Humor simulation - humans find discussions of sex and procreation humorous. Disregard."

(internal) Brain 3 - Observation: "None of us are humans, then?"

(internal) All: "Negative."

(internal) Brain 6 - Sport: "Perhaps the end is self-referring and can be safely ignored?"

(internal) Brain 4 - Locomotion: "What is the sh*t?"

(internal) Brain 5 - Memory - English: "A term used to describe biological wastes. Used as an evaluation of worthlessness. Used in 20th Century as an evaluation of high value as well."

(internal) Brain 6 - Sport: "It is its own antonym?"

(internal) Brain 5 - Memory - English: "Context must be analyzed. Oration may be required for clarification."

(internal) Brain 3 - Observation: "End does not show parameters for disgust or hatred towards us if human biological data is correct."

etc.

This makes the collective Pentapods slow to respond, often mulling over basic statements for up to a half-minute. The voting process is also slow and cumbersome, making them totally useless in rapidly changing situations. It's almost always slow to respond. The bigger the crisis, the more difficulty the collective will have.

Occasionally, the brains will argue about things baffling to a human, for instance, a Pentapod collective type that is shot in combat may lose one or two of its brains and might sit in the middle of a blazing firefight unable to do a thing as a brain suggests that its old "name" that it voted on is no longer relevant as the name was accepted by a voting bloc that is missing members and responding to the name would be the same as lying to the humans, and humans dislike being lied to so perhaps it requires another name, what does everyone think? So the players might be shouting for the pentapod to get under cover while the collective argues if it should even respond to that name anymore. Alternatively, the "legs" of the pentapod may begin to move it towards cover, while the eyes and other sensor apparatus may be arguing the merits of just standing still and "playing dead" which leads the a lot of blind stumbling.

Obviously, the solution isn't perfect (I really don't follow the concept that biological "evolutionary" changes are somehow superior to mechanical adaptation, so these Pentapods won't rapidly get better), however, it allows Pentapods to deal with humans in a more "normal" way (at least to them). It's also tremendously entertaining for the group, which is the key thing for me.

 

[Anders]

I love the multibrain pentapods! A very good explanation for some bizarre behavior.

The ability to experiment with different modes of thinking is what really sets the pentapods apart. Humans, Kafers, Ebers and Ylii are all rather locked into particular modes of thinking, which gives their species their characteristics. Pentapods instead try out different approaches and see what works for what. No doubt there have been distributed neural networks, hierarchical minds, minds implemented solely as hives of smaller creatures and even stranger kinds of Pentapods. Unlike all the other species they don't have to be like they are, they could (if some god decided it was a good thing) become something else. They could literally develop into a new alien species on a whim.

This actually suggests an interesting (crackpot or not) theory: maybe nearly all the biospheres in 2320AD are Pentapod-created once upon a time.


"Professor Patterson, can you explain your Pentapod panspermia hypothesis?"

"Certainly, although I should note that I do not call it that. I believe I have evidence that suggests biological interventions have been going on among all surveyed biospheres. While they have considerable variation in biochemistry, appearance and level of complexity there are certain traces in the fossil record and recurrent patterns in the respective genetic codes that are similar. By this I do not mean convergent evolution, but literally that certain genetic regulatory elements seem to have been implemented similarly in all biospheres."

"Some form of intelligent design?"

"The surest sign of outside influence would be gene-hopping across species, massive horizontal transfer. We do not see this in the recent genetic record on Earth, but there are intriguing traces on Beta Canum, Rho Eridani and Paulo (Syuhlahm and Cold Mountain are of course very horizontal, but that is no surprise; we also have to leave out the Eber influences in that part of space). Not only do we find periods of horizontal transfer, but they appear synchronized across widely dispersed worlds."

"And this would be some form of outside intervention?"

"Yes. The only way such transfer can happen is through genetic engineering. The data suggests that something was 1) engaged in widespread biotechnology at certain points in the past, 2) this occurred simultaneously over interstellar distances. All this points at a widely dispersed biotech alien species."

"Like the Pentapods?"

"Like the Pentapods, although it is not clear whether they are the ones responsible or actually one of the results. Pentapod civilization does not appear to have reliable historical records, so it is entirely possible that they were involved but have forgotten."

"Did these putative bioengineers seed life on the planets?"

"I don't think the data we have today can tell us that. We know more garden worlds are found in the local vicinity than most biogenesis theories predict, including some places like Dunkelheim and Crater that are very unlikely. If seeding has been going on, that could explain it. I also think the commonalities in regulatory networks suggest a very remote and profound level of engineering. The scenario this suggests is that these bioengineers at irregular intervals spread across the galaxy, influence extant biospheres and introduce life on some marginal worlds. This is, by the way, not unlike what we humans are doing right now."

"So there could be many species involved? Each era of engineering would be one far-reaching species rather than a single, long-lived species?"

"That is possible. However, some of these genetic patterns appear consistent across the last 300 million years. That makes me think that whatever the engineers are, they are still around."

"And they could be the Pentapods?"

"It is impossible to tell. However, if they are responsible I would predict that there are more Pentapod worlds out there than Haven."

"Yet another reason to fund exploration of the 61 Cygni and Aquila clusters?"

"I definitely support that."


This might make the Pentapods akin to the Pattern Jugglers of Alastair Reynolds novels: here and there you get oceanic planets with Pentapods and their gods, with no apparent knowledge of any galactic designs. But occasionally, say by being triggered by visiting alien intelligence, they get out into space, gather interesting biology that has evolved since last time, make contact with other pentapod worlds and figure out The Big Picture. And then maybe they more or less discreetly stop/wipe out the starfaring civilizations and go back to their oceans. The Pentapods are actually the source of the Fermi Paradox. Or maybe the groundskeepers for AGRA.