bump

tl;dr

still awake

>>8236197

The Council delegation consisted of representatives from the Asari, Turian, Salarian, Elcor, Volus, Hanar, and Batarian races. Once in orbit around one of Shanxi's moons, and with both ships drifting in formation, the Transhuman delegation transferred over to the Council vessel by way of EVA.

Using the translators based on the Turian language, the Transhuman and Citadel species will introduce each other, and the Transhumans will insist on starting with the matter at hand - the release of the Turian prisoners, and making sure that they will not be attacked again. Largely mediated by the Asari ambassador, it was agreed that the Turian prisoners would be released, and it was assured that transhumanity would not be attacked by another preemptive strike.

During the discussions, the Transhuman delegation will be transmitting, in real time, all sensory data back to the System's Alliance by means of a QE communicator aboard the ship, which is within sufficient range of their wireless ecto's that lag is a non-issue. This also allows quick approval of decisions by Alliance leadership, making negotiations that much more efficient.

>>8236401

tl;dr version:

Prothean ruins are discovered on mars by hypercorps, and when the outer system found out, hacked into hypercorp networks to get the information. They make a mutual co-operation pact in regards to mass effect research and mutual defense, and start colonizing.

Fast forward to first contact war: space combat goes well for Turians, but ground combat goes horrible for them. They panis, start bombarding the planet, but the fleet is hacked into self destruction by Firewall agents helped by the Promethean seed AIs.

Diplomacy ensues.

>>8236401

Replying tl;dr to a writefag thread is FUCKING GENIUS.

>>8236492

After the prisoner release and ceasefire negotiations end, the Transhumans then explain the situation from their point of view - the attack on the ships scouting out the mass relay, the destruction of their spacecraft, the aborted ground campaign, and finally the take-over and destruction of the Turian fleet by way of a few very skilled and resourceful hackers on the surface of the planet.

Talks continued aboard the Council vessel, with the Council races giving the Transhuman delegation (and transhumanity as a whole) a brief history of the Galaxy, and the major conflicts therein, to help give perspective to the transhuman ambassadors. It was at this point that they agreed to part, and reconvene after the Turian prisoners were returned.

Council vessels would arrive to return the prisoners to their homes, but the System's Alliance would be in a dilemma: what should Transhumanity say when it's own history is questioned?

>>8236768

The System's Alliance debated furiously over following weeks over what to reveal about Transhumanity to the Citadel races. It had been made very clear that artificial intelligences were, with few exceptions, outlawed in Council space.

This presented a difficult problem regarding Transhumanity, considering that a significant minority of it's population consisted of designed artificial intelligences of varying capability. In addition, there was still a large portion of transhumanity that existed as infomorphs - sentient beings that exist outside of a body and within the ubiquitous mesh networks of Transhuman space. Though they were originally organic, they now exist as disembodied intelligences little different manufactured AIs.

And most distressing, only two decades had passed since the TITANS, the recursively self improving artificial intelligences developed by the most powerful military on Earth, activated and went on a rampage that left Transhumanity's homeworld an uninhabitable wasteland, forcibly uploaded the consciousnesses of uncountable millions, and then left the Sol system into the greater galaxy for unknown reasons that can only be conjectured as insane.

Is anyone still interested if I continue?

I am but I'm going to bed

Yes

>>8237099

This is an very good read, do continue good sir.

>>8237099

I want to know how it ends, but I need to sleep.

>>8237099
Fuck yes. If needs be, I'll catch up with it in the archives later, but that can't happen if it dies here.

As the meetings between the Transhuman and Citadel Council ambassadors continued, and more and more information regarding galactic society, economics, and law were established, the more Transhumanity realized that it was still in a dangerous predicament.

It had seemed that every law regarding the regulation and control of scientific and technological development had been unwittingly (but very willingly) broken by Transhumanity. Widespread and radical genetic engineering, the use of biological, nanotechnological, and digital weapons of mass destruction, rampant use of artificial intelligences (and the inability to contain the most dangerous of them all, the TITANS) would guarantee Transhumanity's ostracization.

As the Council ambassadors continued to educate the Transhuman delegation about galactic society and history, the pressure to divulge their own history and society grew to uncomfortable levels.

This is great. You're awesome OP.

do want more op

Epic story is epic

>>8237310
...yeah, the Citadel races would kind of see transhumanity as an abomination. Except maybe the asari, who would see the possibility of some major sexual experimentation.

>>8237478
Not necessarily.

The council races, besides being deathly afraid of AI's, are also pussies who wouldn't dream of outright genocide.

The closest they've come was the genophage.

[And before the Rachni are mentioned, I'd like to point out that the Krogan were basically out of control at that point and pretty much committed genocide on behalf of the other council races.]

>>8237310

The System's Alliance called for an indefinite recess, and the Council ambassadors returned to Citadel space for the duration.

As the debate continued on how to handle the Citadel Council, the TITANS became an increasingly important factor to consider in determining Transhumanity's next actions. It had unwittingly unleashed the TITANS on the galaxy, and after learning how quickly the most militarily powerful Citadel race fell to Transhuman battlefield tactics, came to dread the inevitability of a Citadel species encountering the TITANS, and the results of such an encounter.

While the TITANS are a technological singularity, making any predictions regarding technology and thought process an almost entirely futile endeavor, Transhumanity learned much from the TITANS and The Fall.

Transhuman combat doctrines have quickly come to mirror those of the TITANS - an overwhelming assault on operational infrastructure, utilizing every vector of attack simultaneously.

This fact, combined with the reality that with the exception of technology involving the mass relays, Transhumanity is the most technologically advanced species in council space, would make any encounter with the TITANS look like a human assault on Citadel space.

http://www.mediafire.com/?kmiy2todznv

Eclipse Phase .pdf in case anyone wants to read it or something.

Eventually, the System's Alliance would come to a decision that would affect the future of not only Transhumanity, but also galactic society as a whole.

They could,
1: Divulge all relevant Transhuman history, involving the creation and loss of control over the TITANS and risk a damning judgment by the Citadel Council and the Galaxy at large for unleashing a threat that would make the Rachni Wars and Krogan Rebellions look like a pest infestation and rude exterminator, or

2: Isolate themselves from the galaxy and build up their military forces while researching even more damning technologies to stand a chance for when the TITANS resurface, risking their actions being interpreted as the beginning actions of a invasion of conquest.

Oh, the suspense!

>>8237558

No, it was insisted, by all races, that the extinction of the Rachni was the only way. The Slariens did not think it was needed for the Krogen, and thus the genphage was used.

Also, AI's are not counted as people, so, that would not be killing. Just a thought.

I wonder if the exsurgent virus could end up having been a Reaper invention...

With the TITAN AI's having left to return to their masters... the Reapers.

Transhumanity shows amazing promise compared to every single other race in the galaxy, which makes the Reapers want to make a human Reaper or whatever the fuck it was they were doing in Mass Effect 2.

Actually, when you think about it, the Reapers are very similar to Transhumanity, the technological gap between the two is tiny compared to the gap between Reapers and the other citadel races.

>>8237735
Why not do both, at least in limited amounts? I mean, the Asari and Salarian ambassadors in ME seemed reasonable (the Turian can go hang though), and it does seem like Transhumanity would be a tough nut to crack; wouldn't it behoove the Council to allow Transhumanity its AIs (especially if there's no line between them and organic transhuman intelligences) and transhumans to share a few tidbits of tech to fight the TITANs?

>>8237785
Or maybe the TITANs learned of the Reapers, and went off to fight them themselves? Perhaps they kinda see it from the Council's POV- that the masses should be kept from seeing how fragile shit can get. Except in the TITANs' case, instead of burying their heads in the sand and fingerquoting, they decided to get shit done themselves?

Perhaps they are far closer to their human creators than they thought...

>>8237808

That is assuming they allow the Council to know about the TITANs in the first place instead of Plan B.

>>8237808

Geth, mainly. They have seen nothing but bad come from AI.

>>8237834
Good point, and I don't suppose pulling the 'but they aren't any different' card would work on the Council either- they definitely don't have any qualms about Exterminatus, to be sure.

I felt let commenting this.

" And so Skynet looked into the combined Universe of Mass Effect and Eclipse Phase, shat itself, and never looked again."

>>8237823
I think it's more likely that the Exsurgent virus was Stage One of whatever it is the ETI does to species in the galaxy. The Reapers are Stage Two, activated and sent in if Stage One fails. The Reapers don't know that they were made as tools (relatively crude ones at that) by a species that was old 3 billion years ago.

The TITANs, after being corrupted by the Exsurgent virus, didn't actually have a single specific goal, as the virus drove them all insane. The only directive it programmed into them was to return information to the ETI.

Option 1 is likely once transhumanity realizes just how hard it would be for the Citadel races to wipe them out.

Of course, now would be an opportune time for the Factors to make their own appearance, just to complicate things further.

>>8237735

The System's Alliance, after heated discourse, decide that the TITANS are an inevitable galactic threat that Transhumanity unleashed on the galaxy, and that the Citadel Coucil deserved to know what it was up against, for good or ill.

The request for further discussions with the Citadel ambassadors was made. The Transhuman ambassadors made it clear that there was a significant possibility that they will not depart on amicable terms.

The Transhuman ambassadors detailed the relevant history of Transhumanity - the exponential rise in unhampered technological development, the rise and rebellion of the TITANS, the annihilated husk of a world that was Earth, and Transhumanity's continued ascent from the edge of extinction, only made possible by unhindered morphological and cognitive freedoms outlawed in Citadel space.

The Citadel ambassadors decided to return to the Council with their findings, while Transhumanity waited for the verdict.

>>8237903
Holy balls. Shit, meet fan. Here's to hoping Firewall and Ozma get their crap together.

Before I continue, I want to launch a preemptive counter-attack, because there a "FUCK YEAH HUMANS" thread on the board right now.

This is not a 'HUMANITY! FUCK YEAH!" thread. This is simply a logical extrapolation of what would happen to Transhumanity had it existed in the Mass Effect universe, with mostly the same history. It would be more accurate to call it a "HUMANITY OH FUCK OH FUCK" thread, as this is bad news for everything involved.

>>8237984

As a writefag from that thread, I accept your claim and grant you leave to continue...with all speed if possible...

I suspect the council wouldn't try to wipe out transhumanity as long as they aren't a direct threat to the Citadel races. The Rachni and later the Krogen were, that's why they got what they got.

They probably won't be treated like the Quarians as they aren't stuck on a bunch of ships with no land and have an actual technological base. Also Transhuman space may become a favorite tourist location by Quarians on pilgrimage for the technical knowledge they can gain in trade. Imagine a Quarian girl returning to the fleet with info-war knowledge. How might that effect civilization?

Along those lines however, the Citadel may just blockade Transhumanity or destroy their mass relay to keep them from spreading out of control, benign or not. That would probably be fine for transhumanity as well since it would mean no more sudden alien interruptions. Well, until the reapers show up. I wonder how well Sovereign can withstand an angry nano-cloud.

>>8238042
>destroy their mass relay to keep them from spreading out of control

Jokes on them, transhumanity still has the three pandora gates that the TITAN AI's left behind. It'd be effectively impossible to prevent the humans from spreading throughout the galaxy. Hell, even further than the galaxy, since it's been hinted that the pandora gates allow intergalactic travel, not just interstellar.

>>8238073
I thought we were operating on the basis that transhumanity doesn't have the Pandora Gates?

Be a bit hax if we did, though, especially if we managed to reverse-engineer that stuff.

>>8238087

We do, as it were.

>>8238119
Well shit, looks like the Council and the Reapers are FUCKED.

Wait, is there going to be more or another thread or what because despite not knowing anything about Eclipse Phase aside what others have mentioned I find this whole thing to be very entertaining.

When the Citadel and Transhuman delegations reconvene roughly a month later, the Citadel ambassadors will return with a plan.

To ensure the security of the galaxy at large, the small section of the galaxy that transhumanity currently inhabits will be slightly expanded to accommodate morphological population growth, and then for all intents and purposes quarantined.

This section of space will be known as the Transhuman Exclusion Zone. The additional space will include roughly thirty systems, four of which containing garden worlds.

Transhuman starships are forbidden from exiting this area, and the only humans allowed to exit the zone may do so only on Citadel species vessels, and can only be genetically baseline and possess only rudimentary cybernetics (Cortical stacks and ectos being the most advanced of them.) All AI's are forbidden, including 'muses'.

All traffic into and out of the TEZ will be regulated by Citadel Security. Transhumanity may exchange cultural artifacts, but may not otherwise interact with the galactic economy.

Transhumanity may keep a standing self-defense force, the size of which is determined by the Citadel Council.

Violation of these terms will involve the Citadel Council, and likely involve tighter restrictions on the TEZ.

For Transhumanity, things were better than they feared, and worse than they hoped.

>>8238177
Well the citadel just basically told the galactic blackmarket "hey guys, here's a massive goldmine!"

>>8238204

They pretty much always do when they say " x is forbidden technology."

>>8238227
Though this reminds me of an idea from a fuck yeah humanity thread some time back about where due to humanity being very good at killing most of humanity is used as mercs by the rest of the galaxy.

Since apparently Humanity is VERY good at killing (each human is basically a walking tank some poster said I think) then I would imagine that once word gets out about what transhumanity is capable of I'd imagine there would be a very strong demand for transhumans in the black market.

Orion's Arm is the only good post-singularity setting. All others are utter trash.

>>8238268
Jim Profit is the only good troll. All others are utter trash.

>>8238320
Remember Red machine D?

>>8238177

In return, Citadel Security and the Turian Hierarchy will be required to respond to threats facing Alliance planets should the Transhuman Defense Fleet prove insufficient in dealing with the threats they face.

Understanding that this is the best situation that Transhumanity can hope for, it agrees to the conditions, and the Transhuman Exclusion Zone is established.

While genetics are an established field of science in the Citadel space, genetic modification has become a cornerstone of Transhuman survival. Worlds regarded as uninhabitable by Citadel Space can rather quickly develop Transhuman populations, making the limited number of Garden Worlds given to the Alliance a minor issue.

In addition, while Transhumanity was limited in the quantity of ships it could produce, it was not limited in the quality of ships it could produce. Military vessels that are essentially mass-accelerators with attack drones and engines, crewed entirely by informorphs are designed. While the System's Alliance may not have a true 'Dreadnought' class vessel, it can easily design one with the durability and firepower of one at a fraction of the size.

Through the negotiations, Transhumanity will not reveal information regarding the existence of the Pandora gates, and quickly move to determine the strategic value of the ones they have already found. With expanded maps of the galaxy, and better control of the gates by the time the TEZ is established, Transhumanity will learn that the Pandora Gates lead to worlds throughout the galaxy - some even near de-activated mass relays.

>>8238382

This presents a vital opportunity, and a dire conclusion.

Opportunity in that, through the Pandora Gates, Transhumanity can further explore the galaxy themselves, behind the back of the Citadel Council.

It also brings to light the fact that, if the Titans did indeed construct and use the Pandora Gates, they are spread throughout the galaxy.

It is here and now that Firewall and Ozma begin to make their opening moves on the galactic stage. Both conclude that they can not operate as Transhumans in the galaxy, and would either have to create morphs of Citadel Races or invent new ones that can infiltrate the other regions of the galaxy.

Project Ozma's backers immediately fund the development of 'Citadel Morphs' that agents can use to explore and enumerate Citadel space, and begin preparations for a covert invasion intended to gather as much information about the other species and governments in the galaxy as possible, so more informed decisions can be made regarding Transhumanity's future in the galaxy.

Meanwhile, Firewall begins development of specialized Informorphs that can stealthily exist within the galaxy-wide extra-net and act as an early warning detection system if any of the Citadel Races encounter the TITANS or their artifacts.

Oh dead gods I have been thinking and writing for eight hours now.

Woah, must have clicked /v/ by mistake.

No, no, wait... this is /tg/.

>>8238557 Oh dead gods I have been thinking and writing for eight hours now.

And it has been awesome.

>>8238557
You know what? take a break. You deserve it.

Alright, I'm going to detail about how the numerous races of the galaxy might view Transhumanity, then I am going to take a shower and go to bed.

A ground battle between transhumanity and any of the council races would be so hilariously one-sided...

Turian with an eezo powered sniper rifle is flinging bullets at hypervelocities, while his kinetic barrier flares up as it repels the much lower-velocity projectiles fired by the transhumans.

But that's okay. Look at what he's up against:

>The reaper is a common combat bot, used in place of biomorph soldiers and typically operated via teleop-eration or by autonomous AI. The reaper’s core form is an armored disc, so that it can turn and present a thin profile le to an enemy. It uses vector thrust nozzles to maneuver in microgravity, and also takes advan-tage of an ionic drive for fast movement over distance. Four legs/manipulating arms and four weapon pods are folded inside its frame. The reaper’s shell is made of smart materials, allowing these limbs and weapon mounts to extrude in any direction desired and even to change shape and length. In gravity environments, the reaper walks or hops on two or four of these limbs. Reapers are infamous due to numerous war XPs, and bringing one into most habitats will undoubtedly raise eyebrows, if not get you arrested.

>Enhancements: 360-Degree Vision, Access Jacks, Anti-Glare, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Cyberbrain, Cyber Claws, Extra Limbs (4), Heavy Combat Armor, Magnetic System, Pneumatic Limbs, Puppet Sock, Radar, Re ex Booster, Shape Adjusting, Structural Enhancement, T-Ray Emitter, Weapon Mount (Articulated, 4)

>Mobility System: Walker, Hopper, Ionic, Vectored Thrust

>>8238606

That, and transhuman sensory experience is nigh-permanent and transferable.

Say someone in a Fury morph is killed by a booby trap laid down by a Turain squad that is withdrawing from a position. The corpse is recovered, cortical stack popped out, resleeved, and the Transhuman can remember the details that he consciously missed from the sensory data, and passes the information to every other soldier on the planet.

Politically and militarily, the Turians would view Transhumanity as a timebomb. They had already fought and lost against them in ground combat, and within days succumbed to their capacity for electronic warfare. They are a grave threat to the galaxy, and this is little alleviated by the TEZ agreement. Modern human history, as explained to them, is interpreted as a series of increasingly drastic political and technological revolutions, with permanent societies practically nonexistent. They are viewed as much too unstable to be left to their own devices.

>>8238665
Basically, Transhumanity are awesome Borg.

>>8238711

awesome-face borg :p

>>8238708

Sociologically, Turians would view them as something of a paradox. Despite the existence of the System's Alliance, there are still numerous different power blocs and ideologies at work in Transhumanity, sometimes antagonistically towards each other.

And on the individual level - despite the fractured and tenuous loyalties Transhumans have with higher authorities, they still manage to form a sufficient level of solidarity to overcome challenges set before them.

>>8238711

They would be if they were a collective, and not a hodge-podge of individuals given potentially free reign over the construction of their own selves.

>>8238745
sounds like transhumanity is /b/

>>8238745

so... they're IRL second life?

no, transhumanity, you are the Reapers
and then ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL

Hmm, if Shepard was born in this timeline, how will he/she turn out. What roll does he/she end up playing?

When Sarin goes after the Beacon on Eden Prime, how do things play out?

...and what happens when Quarians and Transhumans meat?

>>8238801
>...and what happens when Quarians and Transhumans meat?

Tali becomes romancable from the start.

>>8238801
>role
>Saren
>meet

FTFY

>>8238734

The Instability of Transhumanity's government will also be a large concern for the Asari and the Salarians.

I conjecture that the Asari will view Transhumanity as a wild and brilliant species that, tragically, almost destroyed itself in its own genius, and should be coaxed and guided into assuming a more responsible stance regarding technological and scientific development.

I suspect that the Autonomist Alliance's habitats specializing in social experimentation would be a source of much curiosity for the Asari, as would how the separation between the mind and the body so exemplified in Transhuman society would affect a people.

>>8238801
Backgrounds for Shepard:

Spacer: Both of your parents were in the Alliance military. Your childhood was spent on ships and stations as they transferred from posting to posting, never staying in one location for more than a few years. Following in your parent's footsteps, you enlisted at the age of eighteen.

Earth-born: As an Earth-born, you had a rough childhood in the slums of Earth, and have a gritty edge to your personality. You enlisted at the age of eighteen, in order to avoid falling into the trap of gang culture and poverty.

Colonist: You were born and raised on Mindoir, a small border colony in the Attican Traverse. When you were sixteen, slavers raided Mindoir, slaughtering your family and friends. You were saved by a passing Alliance patrol, and you enlisted with the military a few years later.

Wouldn't be too hard to alter these for transhumanity setting. For starters, since Earth is nothing but a dead planet, if Shephard was born on it, he'd have survived The Fall, managing to avoid losing his/her head or getting dissolved by nanoswarms or infected by the exsurgent virus or one of the other horrors that befell people on Earth.

>>8238870
Sole Survivor: During your service, a mission you were on went horribly wrong. Trapped in an extreme survival situation, you had to overcome physical torments and psychological stresses that would have broken most people. You survived while all those around you fell, and now you alone are left to tell the tale. The Sole Survivor's unit was slaughtered in a thresher maw attack on Akuze.

War Hero: Early in your military career you found yourself facing an overwhelming enemy force. You risked your own life to save your fellow soldiers and defeat the enemy despite the impossible odds. Your bravery and heroism have earned you medals and recognition from the Alliance fleet. The War Hero almost single-handedly repelled an attack by batarian slavers on Elysium.

Ruthless: Throughout your military career, you have held fast to one basic rule: get the job done. You've been called cold, calculating, and brutal. Your reputation for ruthless efficiency makes your fellow soldiers wary of you. But when failure is not an option, the military always goes to you first. The Ruthless character sent 3/4ths of his/her unit to its death and murdered surrendering batarians on Torfan.

>>8238858

The Salarians would be the most fearful of having anything to do with Transhumanity. It had already learned the consequence for intervening with the development of a species when it uplifted the Krogan, and I would conjecture, was the primary proponent of the Transhuman Exclusion Zone plan, knowing that any amount of tampering could send the whole situation out of control.

They fear that this has already happened, since Transhumanity admitted that they do not know where the TITANS went when they disappeared, and the fact that they reverse engineered and exploited Turian technology at a rate that could only be described as impossible.

Their fears are further magnified by how quickly Transhumanity agreed to the conditions of the TEZ, the implications of which being that either these are the least of Transhumanity's concerns, or they have a means of bypassing the restrictions placed on them.

>>8238801
>...and what happens when Quarians and Transhumans meat?

You made a spelling misteak.

And now, the long awaited Quarian and, by extension, Geth part of my thought experiment.

>>8238952

The Quarians would see both the past and the future of their race in Transhumanity.

The past in how close the Fall mirrored their Exodus. and their future in that, through Transhumanity's comparative mastery of genetic engineering, they could completely rebuild the Immune-systems of the Quarian people, making life without the environment suits possible within their current generation.

If they can look past the continued use of Artificial intelligences, I think that it is a foregone conclusion that the Quarians would establish themselves as advocates for the freedom of Transhumanity.

>>8238532

>>8238957
The result is still obvious.

Tali becomes romanceable from the start.

And you can have delicious xenosex withouth worrying too much about her. (I asume creating a fully clean biomorph should be easy or at least cure them from their inmune problem)

>>8239024
>advocates for the freedom of Transhumanity
That's about as useful as NAMBLA lobbying for more gay rights.

>>8239028
Can you air quote?

>>8236194
Please stop spamming www. anon removeThisTextBecauseMootIsAfraidOfTheSuperiorBoard talk .com with your stupid bots already. We do not want you or your memes there.

>>8239030
>And you can have delicious xenosex withouth worrying too much about her.

>>8239024

The Geth would maintain their presence behind the Perseus Veil, silently observing events unfolding in the Galaxy and around Transhumanity. Any thoughts regarding Transhumanity would revolve around the threat of the TITANS, which becomes a pressing concern for the Geth because they are synthetic intelligances and possibly more susceptible to them, and Transhumanity's response to the Fall.

While the Quarians, and by extension, Citadel Space halted AI research and development following the Geth's rise to sentience, Transhumanity further embraced Artificial Intelligences after the fall (though, not universally).

AI's and AGI's had, eventually, come to be considered as Transhumans in the System's Alliance. I am sure that the Geth would be very curious about this fact.

>>8239044

I agree completely - the Quarians have very little political clout in the galaxy.

And this writefag is spent. I hope you enjoyed the conjecture train and accompanying image dump.

>>8239141
I certainly did. very good work.

>>8239141
You are awesome, and you should feel awesome.

I hope this can be picked up at a later point. to see how it develops.

One question.

Should I be writing books?

>>8239141

Much obliged, good sir. I knew little about either setting going into this, but I am now fully enthralled by both. Also, is there any chance of you continuing this thought experiment at a later date? I don't want to be greedy, but I am curious to see your take on the events that happen after the point where you ended.

Favorite character types to play in Eclipse phase, anyone?

>>8239206

I just spent 3 hours following your threads. I think that counts for a vote of yes. I would be very interested to see some original IP material posted here, though I am not sure how much of /tg/ liking something is an indicator for later success... But reach for the stars, OP. You won't know unless you try.

>>8238801
one of the hinted non-insane people affected by the Exsurgent virus who can use Epsilon level slights and draw power from the environment.

>>8239206

I'd say gather all the stuff into a word file/text file/whatever, upload it to a file sharing site, and add stuff to it as you see fit.

Every once in a while, post a link to the most recent copy in a new thread that will be used for discussion.

>>8239315

Or you could put it on suptg or whatever.

>>8239206

Fuck yeah you should be writing books.

It's a shame that this could never be a book though.

>>8239356
I shit you not, I'd read this as an awesome fanfiction. Fuck, I want to set an EP game in this universe now.

>>8238952
>Their fears are further magnified by how quickly Transhumanity agreed to the conditions of the TEZ, the implications of which being that either these are the least of Transhumanity's concerns, or they have a means of bypassing the restrictions placed on them.

How much does the Council know of Transhuman capabilities? Especially with respect to resleeving? 'Cos I don't see that settling down well with the Council races, never mind just the Salarians. What's to stop one human from requesting a ship, whacking a few Turians and resleeving his buddies in them? For that matters, what's to stop said human from bringing a few infomorphs in him and passing them off as vital system functions or summat of the sort? ANYTHING on his person could be, well, HIS person.

>This thread.
Very fucking related to my interests. Contagonist for president, all years.

Oh God, with Transhumanity being able to resleeve at will (since I'm sure Prothean tech might allow for it)- does that mean aliens facing transhuman soldiers might witness ASSUMING CONTROL?

>>8239541
"Squad, this is squad leader. Movement ahead, looks like Transhumans. EM-ammunition on. Wait, I see--
AKSFJKAWHKAERHHAWKR--"

"Squad leader? This is Jelik, what's going on?!"

"I AM THE VANGUARD OF YOUR DESTRUCTION"

Cue a morph trollfacing at the rest of the turian squad, its body the turian leader.

>>8239732
Nah, a soldier'd need a cortical wossname to be susceptible to ASSUMING CONTROL- unless said squad leader was a transhuman agent...

Shit, there'll be nowhere safe for a xeno to go, everyone might be a transhuman- and conversely, transhuman space might be one of the most tolerant places in the galaxy, considering that transhumans, as a rule, can't give a fuck about how you look like. A Hanar and a Batarian can walk down the streets of any transhuman world and not look out of place.

>>8239206
Contagonist

I will say one thing, when I read your story I had elevated heartbeat. That's how exciting was your writing and I know almost nothing about Eclipse Phase setting save for some explanations from the older thread.
I am quite sad this writing session is over and I hope you will write much more about this hybrid setting. It's far more interesting than original Mass Effect.
Also, I love FUCK YEAR humans kicking ass as they should :D

I have to say, this is the best HUMANITY FUCK YEAH! ever.

because it isn't even Humanity, its TRANSHUMANITY FUCK YEAH!

Something's just occured to me- assuming DIRECT CON-okay, okay, I'll stop- assuming that Transhumanity somehow finds its way to the Collector Base, doing the Shepard and taking it over, what's to stop it from simply amassing biomass from unused sleeves and whatnot to make a new Transhuman Reaper? After which they download a heaping mass of pre-approved consciousnesses into it?

If anything pushes home the theme of 'no transhumanity, you are the Reapers' so literally, it's this scenario.

Awesome thread OP.


Made all the better by the fact that I ended up listening to this through the parts about the contact war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKM9YaVEFus

>>8240066
With all the bodyless reinstates the hypercorps got lying around this is just begging to happen.

>>8240066
Of course, transhumanity is still not over the Morality as a whole.

Judging how we acted against them, we are technically Paragon. with a little Renegade on the side.

We don't really want to annihilate them, but we are taking responsibility for our mistakes and are willing to fix it. Its just that the current limitations doesn't allow us to do much good.

And like in Mass Effect. if you didn't go Rebel a couple of times in ME you would have never discovered the fate of the Keepers.
They are still going to shit their collective pants once they find out about the Pandora Gates. we MAY be the reapers. but the TITANS is far worse. if anything we are going to help them to defend themselves the same way an Inmune system works.

>>8240183
Or they'll pull their greatest statesmen, generals, soldiers and Shepard from their sleeves to put in the TransReaper, while giving the bodiless masses the old sleeves (with complimentary memory inputs, of course).

>>8240137
I suggested that soundtrack yesterday. Glad someone enjoyed it. :D

>>8240199
If I were using this EP setting in a game (and by God, I plan to), I'd actually view the TITANs as the first 'transhumans'/'Terrans' to find out about the Reapers (say, secret military projects on Mars uncover Prothean stuff). They freaked out, but instead of trying to fight the Reapers, decided to do a runner to another galaxy via the Pandora Gates, bringing along a whole bucketload of humans to begin repopulation on Earth 2 (how, I dunno; maybe they brought their own biomass?).

Now it's up to the remnants of transhumanity to finish the job the TITANs failed to start.

>>8240200
Ok... I don't like Mass Effect but this is starting to get interesting.

Creating a TransReaper fits with transhumanist philosophy because it is another step up from humans and closer to posthumans and ze end of evolution, beginning of intelligent design, etc., etc.

>>8240207

Really?
Thats slightly creepy as Ive not read yesterdays thread.

Still, music fits perfectly. Good suggestion anon, regardless!

>>8238177
>genetically baseline
what would they define this as?

>>8240282
Awesome.

now try reading it all again but with Brain Freeze.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V__L0R1yhs0

ITS LIKE I'M TOTALLY READING IT FROM THE TURIAN POINT OF VIEW! D:

Sovereign is so doomed in this. Mankind will dissect him as he screams.

>>8240377
With minimal modifications, I suppose; there's a 'flat' sleeve in the EP book, which is basically a purely human body with a cortical sleeve.

This might lead to the hilarious (for us, anyway) appoinment of a Jovian as a human ambassador, since practically everyone else has a high-tech sleeve.

>>8240405
And although I choose it there's a lot of Frank Klepacki stuff that fits with the mood of this setting.

Here are some examples

Power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_j-u5fg6_Y&feature=related

Grinder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOkA_Pn9HVk&feature=related

Destroy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBW7fb8R9a0&feature=related

Blow it up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE36tkU9br0&feature=related

Motorized
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXcdoTssZmo&feature=related

200 Meters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cs_3MjDOE4&feature=related

Ready the Army
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3ClZEHq6Es&feature=related

Drok
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tw64RxLx78&feature=related

>>8240464
A Jovian Ambassador would cause a war in five minutes. This is if they pick the most reasonable Jovians out there.

>>8240518
I KNOW. And that's what makes it so hilarious. Imagine the poor Jovian surrounded by FUKKEN XENOS, and he'll have to play nice to them.

And you damned well know the xenos will try to be nice to us.

>>8240545
Only if they have some credible threat for what they will do to them if the Jovian does start a war. But yes, it would be hilarious.

>>8240405
>"Your feeling of helplessness is your best friend, savage."

HAHA OH WOW

>>8240518
Only once though, later every other race will be too terrified of the laser wielding technosquids mounted on floating armour plated lobsters outfited with guided liquid thermite missile launchers and nano dissembler swarm shielding.

Question: Why does everyone assume Reapers are less dangerous than TITANS? I mean... there's nothing saying the reapers ARENT the product of their own technological singularity and self improving AI.

And let's face it. Reapers arent really detailed upon. We dont know the extent of their abilities.

>>8240736
Because just one Titan wouldn't need Saren or the Citadel to exterminate all organic life. It would just Von Neuman the galaxy to death.

We don't know much except that they are atleast 37 million years old.

will Contagonist write more of this ?

>>8240788
Using replicating machines to nom nom everything would be rather self hindering when the reapers USE organic life.

If they wanted to exterminate all organic life in the galaxy, they would have. They've had plenty of time.

>>8240788
What is "Von Neuman" ?

Also, not related to anything, I'm getting a feeling of tripple deja-vu for the first time in my life ( I've had double deja-vu couple of times before)

>>8240853
Von Neuman is basically making machines that make more of themselves. Theoretically, they would multiply exponentially until all material was gone.

Realistically, there are lots of challenges to that, from random program corruption, to manufacturing and physics limitations.

>>8240853
Self replicating machinery. Exponential growth rate.

The fact is, Reapers can and have been defeated/destroyed. The Titan's cannot be destroyed, or at least not by any means that has thus far been tried.

>>8240898
Not familiar with the fluff... but if these titans were so strong, why did they leave?

DISREGARD EVERYTHING!

THIS IS THIS THREAD'S OFFICIAL SOUNDTRACK!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWRuka6I7Ng

the vocals kinda suck, but the spirit is there.

>>8239846
Eventually, everyone else in the Galaxy is a human pretending to be an alien. Nobody notices.

>>8240907
Nobody knows.

>>8240907
That's the thing, nobody knows why. They just went rogue, stole several million human uploads, then buggered off from a war that they were by all accounts winning.

>>8240801
Went to sleep several hours ago. Give the guy a break; he'd been writing for 8 hours when he left.

>>8240985
>Went to sleep several hours ago. Give the guy a break; he'd been writing for 8 hours when he left.

No, I mean will he write more in the future and how will I find out? I don't visit /tg/ much as I used to

>>8240907
The Reapers are Basically Ultimate universe Galactus.

A giant Counciousness so large that it requires a MASSIVE fleet of hundreds of millions of capital ships to hold.

And it HATES organic life. consume whole worlds in its wake just to recharge batteries. It took unleashing the Big Bang from another universe focused at him, to destroy 30% of the fleet. and he wasn't even defeated. he just left because spending more resources is a waste of time.


That's how I view the TITANS.

>>8241022
It'll probably get archived.

>>8240585


:D

One thing I didn't understand. What is seed AI and how does it differ from regular AI ?

>>8241202
An AI capable of self-improvement. This leads to self-recursive upgrade loops, with IQ getting higher and higher.
The Titans started off as seed AIs.

>>8241229
thanks

A new question arose while I was pondering about this whole thing: what are factors? Some kind of aliens? And how are they supposed to look like?
Also, someone mentioned Octopi, what are those?

>>8242266
Octopi are Human uplifted Octopus .

Basically Sentient squids that can FIRE LAZORZ

>>8242676
and Factors?

>>8242697
Factors are bizarre aliens that basically look like strange, amorphous fractal shapes. They usually merge with one another and work in tangent as a sort of hivemind.

>>8241229
So EP (which I know nothing about) AIs are just extremely detailed decision chains, without significant learning/self modification?

>>8242803
Thanks, though I can't really visualize them

>>8242854
Apparently they look slightly fungal. So maybe like moss on a rock?

>>8242854
Though I might be wrong about this. Try to visualize them as multiple intersected Snowflakes and ever changing.

>>8240498
>Frank Klepacki stuff

YES YOU HAVE AWESOME MUSIC TASTE!

>>8242803
Wait, so there's half a dozen non-human species as part of the Systems Alliance?

When the Turians land, they're going to think they've contact a new citadel-like amalgamation of different races. They'll call in the whole damn council. (unless they decide 'We're so Awesome, we'll take them all on by ourselves!' and get owned)

>>8242903
Well great, now my brain hurts. And these are the emmissaries to new species -_-

>>8242854
An example, then.

>>8242951
>>8242903
>>8242874

Thanks,
Now I can imagine them easier.
But besides that, can someone tell me what kind of 'people' they are, what is their relationship with humans, their technology compared to humans, etc... , please?

>>8242843
If I'm right they are capable of selfimprovement, just on a more limited scale, like that of a human. Seed AIs have no limitations and are capable of getting infinitely more intelligent so fast it's not even funny.

>>8242903
Hey.

You know what we need?

Some Turian PTSD dialog.

WRITEFAGS ASSEMBLE!

>>8242989
Enigmatic and almost impossible to comprehend. That describes them about perfectly.

Problem is, we're like that to them as well. While they're crazy hiveminders that are so used to existing as a single entity, we're all so individualistic and conflicting. We're totally alien to each other.

The relationship is basically just negotiations. Only a handful of people will ever see a Fractor and those people will only ever see clusters designed for diplomacy.

>>8242915
They are turians, you KNOW they will go the "we are so awesome" route.

>>8242912
I personally vote Act on Instinct(Renegade Version) for the Transhuman Alliance Hymn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3J8lV-u6O8

>>8243090
>Resleeve into Reaper morph
>Mechanical Man is a go

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-nNchLkej0

>>8243090
I like original more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVNubbPiZAU&feature=related


...Oh God... Nostalgia bomb ... ;_;

This one also seems to be rather fitting for transhumanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEWMOhns_b4

Wow. Pretty good.

Only thing that irks me is how the transhumans are suppossed to have won the ground fights on Hsanxi or hacked into the turian ships.

We're talking about completely differrent system architectures, programming languages etc. You ain't gonna hack shit without doing major studies beforehand. And even then, I'd expect it to be a closed network that simply doesn't give that level of access to any outside system.

Likewise, winning a ground fight when the enemy has a ship above you is basically not possible. They can narrow down orbital bombardements to taking out single buildings in the middle of a city and the Turians at Shanxi had already in the original canon no problem with flattening entire city blocks from orbit to kill a few squads of human soldiers.

>>8243408
It took several hours of time to figure out. Using a quantum entangled computer network.

>>8243408
The transhumans have a few post-singularity AI on their side.

That's more than enough to completely fuck over any technology out there. I mean, hell, EDI is small-time compared to the average Muse that standard citizens possess.

>>8243717
My muse would be Optimus Prime.

No, he isn't going to be an Holographic Image. I'm actually going to requisition a body of a 12 meters tall robot that can turn into a truck.

And he's going to have Cullen's voice (I'm talking about awesome cullen, not fag Edward cullen)

I'm actually going to make a clone of him so he can drive Optimus in Truck mode.

While I ride the truck....in the roof.

While striking a pose.

EVERY

SINGLE

TIME

(i think EP would make something like Bayformers optimus but i don't care as long as he has DATVOICE)

>>8243717
>That's more than enough to completely fuck over any technology out there. I mean, hell, EDI is small-time compared to the average Muse that standard citizens possess.

This begs a question, what the hell was council planning when they eventually would meet a race which do have highly developed artificial intelligence? Only 1% of Galaxy has been discovered, just because the council issued a ban on AI does not mean that some other race they never met is going to follow it. They must have considered this scenario (or not, they are notoriously incompetent)

I have no Idea.

But the Galactic Council has an almost Covenant like mindset when it comes to searching for newer technologies or further studying anything left by the protheans

>>8244211
Ask them to stop really nicely. Failing that, sending them a sternly written memo. If even that fails, they might have to resort to creating a comittee on the subject.

>>8244211
>They must have considered this scenario (or not, they are notoriously incompetent)

This is the Council. The people who wouldn't know a Reaper if it came by, almost killed them, and blew up half their shit.

>>8240985
You're off by an order of magnitude there; IIRC, the estimates in the book are that the TITANs probably took anywhere from 1 to 2 BILLION mind uploads with them when they left.

Also, remember that the TITANs are all horribly corrupted by an alien virus designed to infect and warp any technological or biological race advanced enough to find and release it. It's not really possible to draw logical conclusions about what they were doing because they're all INSANE. Although I do personally think that they weren't a monolithic bloc, insanity not being conducive to cooperative efforts. Some left, some stayed behind, some killed themselves with things like the failed attempt to convert Iapetus into computronium, and so forth.

Also, we have at least five Pandora Gates in the Solar System, and the technology used to build them is obviously quite different from the tech in the Mass Relays. Especially because the Mass Relays aren't black-boxed (the Reapers wanting to be sure their prey knew how to stick their heads into the trap), while the Pandora Gates are.

>>8244380
Then, if they're lucky, Shepard.

>>8244518
Except that the TITANS might NOT have been infected with the virus and NOT insane.

>>8243717
EDI is also purpose-built for electronic warfare and still not able to cause a ship to self-desctruct. Hell, hacking a ship into self-destruction isn't physically possible if there's even the slightest bit of competence involved in designing the systems. Why? Because there won't be any kind of connection to the critical systems from outside ports. And you'd have manual overrides as part of the hardware.

>>8244429
I don't think they're disregarding it anywhere but in public. With the evidence that there is a good chance of indoctrinated sleepers out there and the panic revealing it would cause, it's more logical that the council simply decided to tell abolutely fucking noone while preparing in secret simply by having everyone slowly arm up and getting the infrastructure up.

>>8244536
Not likely, given the importance of the Exsurgent virus to the EP backstory. Removing it from the setting would be far more trouble than it's worth.

>>8244522
How many Shepards, though? Theoretically, with enough forking, you could make an entire army that's SHEPARDS ALL THE WAY DOWN.

>>8244569
Do recall that pretty much all Council tech is ultimately based on the stuff the Reapers left to control the path of technological development in the galaxy, and that the Reapers would probably have made sure to put back-doors into their tech designs.

>>8244569
>I don't think they're disregarding it anywhere but in public. With the evidence that there is a good chance of indoctrinated sleepers out there and the panic revealing it would cause, it's more logical that the council simply decided to tell abolutely fucking noone while preparing in secret simply by having everyone slowly arm up and getting the infrastructure up.


You are wrong.
In ME2 when you meet them they ridicule you by downright calling you a retarded moron who has been manipulated by Saren.
I can understand not telling stuff to public but there is no reason to conceal this from Shepard. Even Anderson tries his best to convince Council that the threat is real.

I think having both Pandora Gates AND Mass Relays kinda fucks up the setting. I mean, not one type of FTL jump drive, but two completely different ones? It'd be easier to swallow if it's just one or the other.

Also, would Humanity ever reach transhuman level in a universe where all sentient life is monitored by the Reapers, and where all technology is provided and allowed to exist only while the Reapers permit it?

>>8244643
And now trans-humanity hacked this tech to hell and back.
Reapers shouldn't stand a chance against trans-humans the real threat in this hybrid setting are the TITANs

As per the rules of the TEZ, Shepard would be a baseline, unmodded human in order to operate in Alliance space. So that would make him even more badass; he'd have to do all that superhuman shit that transhumans pull off on a regular basis, but in a regular puny sline morph.

>>8244569
http://gcn.com/articles/1998/07/13/software-glitches-leave-navy-smart-ship-dead-in-the-water.aspx
Navy tried using WindowsNT for it's databases on board a ship. Someone divided by 0, crashed the network, which caused the main engines to shut down. Ship towed back to port.

>>8244731
Too bad Paragon Shepard is also a Zenith Caste Solar.

>>8244700
It already happened.

For all intent and purposes the Reapers cause the TITANS incident and almost wiped us out.

We got lucky.

>>8244705
Actually, the real threat is the ETI that created both the Exsurgent virus and the Reapers.

The problem with the Reapers is that they have delusions of grandeur, not realizing that they were created as specimen collectors for a far greater power. They created the Mass Relays themselves when they decided on the plan of collecting civilizations through a cycle of xenocide, never knowing about the existence of the Pandora Gates (the ETI not feeling it necessary to mention them to relatively unimportant pawns).

Also, the Gates and Relays have at least one big difference; the Gates are all on planetary or sub-planetary bodies of some sort, while the Relays are free-floating in space.

>>8244792
We don't need those. Too many layers of Lovecraftian threats can diminish the setting.

>>8244731
Given the Citadel's track record at things like identifying Geth infiltrators, I bet that we could sneak in quite a bit if we wanted to. Including a multitasking unit, which is basically part of the cortical stack if you have one installed. Or pretty much any nanoware, since the Council has no good way to detect it. And there's no way in hell that anybody with medichines is going to agree to give them up. Especially once the Quarians get a sample of them.

Asynchs are likely to be in high demand, as they would be able to do most of their freaky shit without wetware/hardware upgrades, and given that the psi-chi and psi-gamma sleights do very different things from any of the biotic powers. Uplift morphs will also be popular; since they're actually separate species, they presumably would not be restricted from traveling outside the TEZ the same way that non-Splicer or Flat morphs are.

>>8244792

What is ETI now?

>>8244895

>Asynchs

BTW, are asynchs biotics in this setting or something different?

>>8244912
Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Basically a hyper-advanced alien race that is all mysterious and shit.

>>8244849

>>8244849
The difference between the ETI and the Reapers is that the Reapers are intended to be confronted and destroyed; we've already done it to one of them. They're powerful, but not that far beyond anything else in the ME universe that they become incomprehensible.

The ETI, however, are a truly Lovecraftian threat, in that they are literally impossible to defeat with any means available to galactic civilization. All you can do with them is hope that they get bored and leave instead of being the kid with the magnifying glass to your anthill. Kardashev IV civilizations, needless to say, are REALLY FUCKING SCARY.

>>8244961
Exactly. The ETI thing would diminish the threat of the Reapers.

>>8244961

Yeah, we destroyed one Reaper. One. It cost us a fleet's worth of ships.

And there's a shitload more of them floating outside our galaxy. You think the Reapers aren't scary?

>>8245012
They also do the equivalent of rape to entire species to reproduce.

>>8244921
Kind of, except that the psi abilities available to players (psi-chi and psi-gamma) relate to mental stuff. Psi-chi tends to enhance the asynch's mind, psi-gamma lets them fuck with other people's minds.

Psi-epsilon is the stuff where you do biotic-style tricks. Although it's probably still going to be much scarier in implications; biotics just involve using the weird properties of a particular element, while psi-epsilon sleights involve hacking the source code of the universe and changing some of the local parameters. In the EP core book, a recommended rule is that psi-epsilon sleights cause automatic mental stress (as in, the lead up to sanity loss) to anybody witnessing them as a result of the mind attempting to grasp something that fundamentally should not be.

>>8244923
What he said. Although the mysteriousness isn't because they're coy or reclusive or some shit; it's because they're billions of years old and are as far beyond transhumanity as transhumanity is beyond amoebae.

>>8244895
God, I have no idea what you are talking about. Was able to follow the thread before but you through too much of new stuff in one post.

Also, humans would be able to create hundreds of keepers and put them on Citadel and the Council would not know better.... Actually they have no idea what keepers are, how they work, and they are largely ignorant of Citadel basic functions. I always see the whole Council community as bunch of apes who found an assault rifle and use it as a club never trying to figure it out and replicate it.

Do you guys think that humanity in EP would use such magnificent thing as a Citadel without actually knowing how it works? Something tells me they would dissect it but I'm not sure ...

I don't really like crossovers where both settings are kind of superimposed on top of each other without attempting to mesh them together to form a coherent whole. For ME to work with EP, things should be merged. For instance:

The TITANS become infected by the Exsurgent Virus, a construct created by the Reapers, and leave Earth to join them.

Mass Relays and Pandora Gates are merged. No sense in having both. TITANS build the Charon Mass Relay after being infected, thus opening the way for humanity to leave the solar system.

Biotics and Asyncs should be derived from the same source, Element 0.

>>8245041
They do know how to make new things using the technology they find. That's why you've got Mass Effect fields used everywhere.

>Eclipse Phase
...Yeah. That was a stupid idea. Let's never talk about it again.

>>8244643
You can't exactly put back doors into a well-designed system. The critical systems simply won't have any kind of accessible link to the outside.

Processing power, AI etc. don't matter in that case, because they never even get the chance to get started.

>>8244681

Erm, no reason to hide it from Shepherd? At the end of ME1, that'd be the case, but not after he comes back to the Citadel on board of a Cerberus ship. I'd call them idiots if they actually continued to trust Shepherd under those circumstances.

>>8244744

And yet you can't do that from the outside, becuase there's no connection through which you could get into the system. An internal software bug doesn't mean that a hacker can suddenly ignore the laws of physics and access a system that is not able to receive any signal from the outside.

>>8244895

>Or pretty much any nanoware, since the Council has no good way to detect it.

Wut? ME already has nanobots. Omnigel and medigel and hell, omnitools work that way.

>>8245125
They're Reapers. They can play the Sufficiently Advanced Technology card.

>>8245093

But they don't know how to make a mass relay ... or maybe they do but refuse to make one for whatever reason.
But still, they are largely ignorant of Citadel and it's native inhabitants

>>8245012
Nope. Not compared to something like the Titans. Reapers are dangerous. They are menacing, in that they have a good chance of wrecking all of our shit. They are not frightening.

>>8244980
>>8245012
The Reapers are plenty scary, even with the ETI. It's just that the Reapers having created the Exsurgent virus themselves makes no sense, because their standard MO involves harvesting entire species to make new Reapers. You can't do that if the species obliterated itself in a Singularitan nightmare.

>>8245022
As I suggested: they were originally intended to be collection devices for any civilization that somehow made it past the first gauntlet. Each Reaper contains within it the biology and memories of an entire species, and while they sleep in the space between galaxies the ETI drops in now and again to skim off the latest and most interesting bits of data.

>>8245152
Maybe the Exsurgent virus keeps species from growing too powerful? Never know when some uppity organics (or synthetics *stares at Geth*) might start moving TOO QUICKLY for the 50K cycle to work out.

>>8245138
That's because they haven't been able to study the Keepers. They've tried many times, but they were kind of made to not be figured out.

>>8245125
>Erm, no reason to hide it from Shepherd? At the end of ME1, that'd be the case, but not after he comes back to the Citadel on board of a Cerberus ship. I'd call them idiots if they actually continued to trust Shepherd under those circumstances.

The only reason he works with them because the Council and the Alliance refuse to do anything

>>8245152

>harvesting entire species to make new Reapers

Or, maybe, waiting until said species develops true AI and turning that AI into a new Reaper?

>>8245244
Yet if you help the salarian in ME1 to scan the keepers he gets more results than in thousands of years that Council had existed. He sends you a message about that in ME2

>>8245189
Possibly. Although the 50K cycle isn't a hard and fast limit; the Reapers apparently come back every time galactic civilization reaches a certain level of sophistication, whether that's a thousand or a million years after the previous cull. And the level of sophistication they cull at is well below where the TITANs were when they came online and found the Exsurgent-filled traps in the Solar System.

>>8245125
In that case, their nanobots must just be less sophisticated, given the seeming lack of things like fabbers or medichines.

>>8245071
Asynchs and Biotics can't be merged so easily because IIRC biotic powers don't let you fuck with people's minds at all, whereas pretty much all asynch slights that aren't "I just got admin access to the laws of physics" either enhance the user's mind or screw with someone else's. Having the ETI be the Man Behind The Man for everything connects the Reapers and TITANs quite nicely. And the Pandora Gates are closer to Stargates than they are to Mass Relays in terms of how they work.

>>8245339
then lol i dunno.

>>8245299
If that was how they worked, they wouldn't have bothered with liquifying people to build the Human-Reaper.

>>8245435

Well maybe that's how they'd work in EPME? As I said, I personally don't like superimposing settings on each other, I prefer blending them. Sometimes it means modifying some parts of existing factions.

>>8245387
So the Reapers dropped the ball once or twice.

>>8245458
I agree with you on preferring blending to superimposing; I just think that in the case of Eclipse Phase and ME they can blend perfectly well without removing or massively altering stuff from either in the process.

>>8245511
We all know they aren't infallible.

>>8245273
He comes up, two years after he 'died', in a Cerberus ship and openly tells them that the's working with TIM aka the guy heading what's at the end of the day a terrorist organisation. What do you expect them to do?

And frankly, there's jack shit the Council or the Alliance can do. The attacked colonies are in the freakin Terminus Systems, which are not Citadel space. You try rolling in there in force and you'll get the Battle of Mogadishu on an interplanetary scale.

>>8245973
STOP DEFENDING THOSE ASSHOLES!

Anyway, they don't distrust you completely, you know? They give you your specter status back if you don't go full renegade on them. They just honestly do not believe that reapers even exist

>>8246115
They also don't WANT to believe Reapers exist, because if they admitted that then they'd also have to admit that everything they thought they knew about the Protheans and all of the Council's technological base was a lie, one that they couldn't figure out in two or three thousand years while Shepard found out in two or three months.

And it would hit the Turian councilman especially hard because it would mean a member of his species would have become an accessory to galactic xenocide if a human hadn't stopped him. Both things would be immensely humiliating to a species with such an enormous duty fixation.

Hmm. I wouldn't think that the Jovians would have to become the ambassadors for the System's Alliance. I doubt that the Citadel races would only allow non-modified humans, but rather only ban those humans whose genetic modifications break Council law by dramatically altering their form or adding new capabilities rather than just enhancing abilities they already have.

Somehow, I don't think that this System's Alliance will stick its head in the sand regarding the Reapers. I sort of wonder how the situation regarding the Rachni would wind up playing out, though.

They might well start recruiting Xenomorphs into Firewall, as well, assuming that said Xenomorphs can pass the rigorous background checks required.

>>8240199
I imagine the reapers turning up, Transhumanity just ignoring them - "Yes, yes, the adults are busy now,. Go wait over there until we have a minute, we'll destroy you then. We have the Titans to deal with."

>>8246403
Come to think of it, what are the Jovians doing in all of this? They can't be thrilled about contact with aliens, or the sudden massive expansion of the power of everybody in-system who isn't them. And they do have (or at least had prior to contact) the most powerful conventional military, plus the fact that they could screw with physical traffic between the inner system and the Charon Relay for years at a time.

On a different note, I would expect that there would quietly be a major effort mounted to look for signs of dormant Exsurgent virus traps in the home systems of the other ME species.

>>8246507
I doubt that. They'd probably take them extra-seriously for fear of what they might be capable of, and Reaper indoctrination bears a degree of similarity with the basilisk hacks and Exsurgent Virus strains the TITANs came up with.

>>8246476
Project Ozma and Firewall wouldn't, although not necessarily for all of the same reasons. But the rest of the Alliance might have some initial trouble accepting it, because the existence of the ETI and the true origin of the Exsurgent virus is emphatically not common knowledge. Even most of the people who are in charge of things in Eclipse Phase don't know about the ETI, and think that the TITANs just went nuts on their own and that the Exsurgent virus was one of their creations.

When Sovereign shows up, however, some people not previously in the know are probably going to put 2 and 2 together and come up with "OH FUCK".

>>8246569
Oh yeah, the Exsurgent virus is FUN.

You remember the threads we had a while back on Uzumaki? Well, one of the Exsurgent strains mentioned in the core book is a deliberate reference to it.

>>8244895
Don't forget the rumoured Level 3 using Epsilon grade slights! The non-insane exsurgent varieties, I mean.

>>8246567
They're prolly going to be this alt-verses equivalent to Cerberus. Heh, I can see them arming up even more once this bombshells drop.

I'm just waiting for the JNS (or whatever letters the jovian navy uses) Ayn Rand and the JNS Sarah Palin to pop up.

Hmm. A thought: the Geth are in some degree of contact with the Reapers (or, as they call them, the Old Machines). Odds that the Reapers knew about the Insurgent Virus, and told them about it? You wouldn't want your mechanical minions doing something stupid and getting themselves subverted and exterminated, after all.

>>8246684
It seems pretty heavily implied that anybody who uses psi-epsilon sleights is either insane or quickly becomes so as a result of raping physical law while using a brain that doesn't work properly in its absence.

And that the lack of stats for any of them cements their position as a GM tool and not a player option.

>>8246955
I just thought it was because the only way to get them was to be infected with the Exsurgent virus. You know, the ones that make you go batshit insane.

I'd imagine that the use of psychic powers would probably spread to the Citadel races relatively quickly, though. Even the lower-level psychic powers are darn useful.

>>8246897
Either that or the Reapers and Geth simply aren't quite smart enough to be at risk of activating it yet (although the Reapers would be safe by default, given their common manufacturer). Neither of them seems to be true Seed AI, which the TITANs were before they stumbled into the traps designed to lure out Seed AI for infection by the Exsurgent virus.

The Geth may be pretty close, though.

...though I just had a thought. Perhaps Reaper indoctrination is what would provide those they deem useful with immunity to the Exsurgent virus? The ETI would have built it in to make sure that they could get "pure" specimens from any species the Reapers collected as well as Exsurgent ones.

>>8247031
It's probably a bit from Column A, a bit from Column B. If the Exsurgent infection has only driven you partially batshit instead of completely batshit, the effects of using psi-epsilon sleights with transhuman wetware finish the job.

The strain of Exsurgent virus that produces usable asynchs is noted to be odd in that it stops being contagious and it doesn't (so far as anyone knows) do anything to physically or mentally change its infectees aside from giving them psi abilities.

>>8247031
>>8246955
It's mentioned that it is entirely possible that there might be a non-exsurgent out there with the ability, but watered down. No mental stress from witnessing it, for example. Or, at least it was by Catalyst - Adam, precisely. It's in an upcoming adventure book, I'll look it up.

>>8247031
You have to be infected with a strain of the Exsurgent virus to become an asynch. Care to guess how much the Council races will like that idea, even given that the strain is relatively benign?

>>8247031

How would the citadel deal with the spread of exsurgent viruses? Reading the EP book, it seems to be some kind of super nightmare-fuel space aids/computer virus which can spread through pretty much any medium including audio and video.

>>8247219
The same way transhumanity tends to: quarantine the area and then sterilize everything with plasma weapons.

Basically, "kill it with fire".

People seem to be having (reasonable) problems with hacking the Turian fleet; cause self destruct.

Moderately better solution (I think. Anyway, I know nothing about EP): Hackers of the Trans-human Alliance hack Turian communications; ships are ordered to move here then there, Alliance squads call in enemy fire on enemy positions, etc, etc. They list civilian habitats as 'capture intact at all costs; do not bombard', to the ships, and 'avoid, wait for bombardment' for ground troops. Only when the orbital fleet realizes that the ground forces have been damn near annihilated, do they panic, and attempt to kill everything.

Meanwhile, TA combat groups reign supreme on the ground; after capturing the Turians, they capture the drop ships, and retreat under (faked) heavy fire. They dock with ships of the orbital fleet, and suddenly the Turians have been boarded and the TA ground-combat superiority enters play. One of the groups gets lucky, seizes a bridge of comm node, and suddenly ships are reporting boarders, compromised, self destruct impossible, requesting destruction from non-contaminated units.

Naturally, SOME of those are real, but some aren't. Nobody ever finally knows how many ships were killed that shouldn't have been, but the fleet is decimated, and cannot effectively resist the TA reinforcements relay-ing in.

Gah. I don't feel very eloquent. I hope I got my idea across. Thoughts?

>>8247352

True, but I was thinking more along the lines of how the citadel would deal with this on a larger scale considering that the exsurgent viruses are pretty much confined to human space. Would there be further restrictions on human travel outside citadel? Total quarantine? Etc.

>>8247480
No asyncs. Show us all your data on the Exsurgent virus. No media. No anything. At the first sign of infection you go boom - all of you.

>>8247480
Depends on how it got out of the quarantine zone in the first place.

Also, there's a decent chance that at least one system (and probably many more than one) in Citadel Space has a dormant Exsurgent strain waiting for a sufficiently advanced species to find and inadvertently awaken it.

So, how about the idea that the Jovians become basically the Cerberus equivalent for transhumnity?

>>8247716
Project Ozma already fills that role better.

As does Firewall, for that matter.

>>8247453
Asyncs can basically make the laws of physics their bitch. Transhumanity has more advanced computer warfare than anything the Turians have ever seen. Basically the System Alliance throws their most powerful computing hardware at the problem and an Async tells physics to fuck off so they essentially spend a subjective eternity trying to analyze and hack the Turian systems. Given that much hardware and the ability to basically stop time it doesn't matter how alien the Turian systems are, the Transhuman hackers will get through.

Then they override security protocols and vent all the atmosphere, open all the airlocks, shut down life support and gravity, tell two ships to use their mass effect fields to accelerate rapidly into one another such that they are both destroyed. They don't have to explode to destroy the ships, they only need to kill the crewman.


On the subject of why the Reapers haven't reaped the humans yet. The Reapers aren't all knowing. They monitor species based on the Citadel and the Mass Relays. If Humans advanced this far without activating the Relay then the Reapers wouldn't actually know they exist.

In fact the reason they were able to wipe out the Protheans so thoroughly is because they had the census records from the Citadel when they invaded. They knew where all the Prothean colonies were.

It's not like they actually went to every planet and solar system in the galaxy. They only went to the ones that had active mass relays and were connected to the Citadel.

>>8244700

The Reapers manipulated the Protheans' development by building the Citadel and the Mass Relays and leaving all sorts of Mass Effect technology laying around so they wouldn't NEED to invent technology that might threaten the Reapers. Towards the end, the Protheans came to realize this, and a few of their surviving scientists decided to leave a surprise for the Reapers, so they created the Exsurgent virus.

The virus was basically a genetic timebomb, fragments of which were spread throughout the human race 50,000 years ago. Every time two humans mated, the scrambled fragments would randomly recombine. Given enough time, and a large enough population size, the "right" combination would come together and activate the virus, but until then humans were just stupid apes with delusions of grandeur that weren't worth any attention from the Reapers.

To delay the Reaper's influence, the Protheans collected all the Element Zero and Mass Effect technology in the solar system, and buried it on Mars, then they hid the Mass Relay by disguising it as a moon. This insured that the humans would have to find their own way into space, and would be isolated from outside influences until they had developed their own unique technological base.

The Exsurgent virus was designed so that when it activated, it would infect a small fraction of the human race, drive them insane and/or boost their intelligence. This would (hopefully) create a period violent and rapid technological advancement that would catch the Reapers by surprise, and create a race that was smart enough, violent enough, and crazy enough to fight them.

But the TITANS found it first.

I dont like the whole 'Reapers come every 50k years.'

Its impossible to predict the evolution of a species, let alone their level of society over time. I could easily imagine that while the average time is 50k years to develop, once in a great while, a species will come along that's literally 10 times as advanced in half the time.

>>8247921
The teensy little problem with that is the tendency of the Exsurgent strains to warp everything they touch into monsters. And that they could also infect technological systems; in fact, technological systems are actually where they started when they hit the TITANs, jumping to biological ones once the Fall started.

>>8248001
They don't come every 50K years; that's just how long it's been since they killed the Protheans. Remember, they leave one of their own behind each time, set to wake up when the Citadel is reactivated and call in the other Reapers; if it wasn't for the Protheans, Sovereign would have done that well before the events of ME1.

>>8247921

Give a bored, powerful mind enough free time and a large enough sample population, and they'll find all sorts of interesting patterns. The first TITAN to take a close look at its genetic database for military personnel noticed the scattered fragments of the Exsurgent virus almost immediately, and out of curiosity, it decided to put them together in different combinations and simulate their effects on a human nervous system. The result was like a drug, the machine found new, interesting and sometimes more efficient ways to interpret data. Most of the results produced random, meaningless noise, but some gave hints of previously unimagined lines of reasoning. The TITAN theorized that with a large enough sample of human nervous systems to test against, it could compile of library of alternative logic pathways that would allow it to greatly improve its computational efficiency and capacity for innovation. So it set out to start collecting samples. Eventually, the humans started to complain, but by then the machine no longer cared what they thought, only how they thought.

Hacking Turian ships and causing them to explode isn't too far-fetched. Causing reactor overloads and venting atmosphere are things EDI specifically said she could do to enemy vessels in Mass Effect 2. Obviously, the Citadel Races are fucking incompetent when it comes to infowar.

Transhumanity still gets to introduce the concept of Force Projection and Awesome CARRIER HAVE ARRIVED right?

>>8249167
Yes. Except the carrier is the size of a horse, jumps in, and spews out informorphs into enemy systems and generates its own fleet.

>>8247921
>>8248228
I'm getting more of a "I hope you bastards choke" vibe from this; the idea was to introduce a virus into the inevitable Human-Reaper at the moment of its creation, which would then spread out to the rest of the Reapers in turn, functioning as a Reaper equivalent of crystal meth to destroy their minds.

Although I still do have a soft spot for the ETI being behind everything, because the most frightening enemies are those where comprehension is utterly impossible. The Reapers are fairly easy to understand; the TITANs much less so, but they still began as human-coded programs and took off towards Singularity while immersed in human civilization, and will therefore still have at least vaguely recognizable traits in there somewhere. But the ETI is literally older than our planet. They can be considered gods for all practical intents and purposes, but of the Lovecraftian type where they don't generally care about things on the human scale and when they do it's in the same way that a kid with a stick cares about an anthill or a scientist cares about a cell line.

>>8249377
You forgot to mention that it generates the fleet by disassembling the enemy fleet and then running the raw materials through industrial-scale fabbers.

>>8249377
But..But..But...
I want a Macross reference ;_;

and piloted by a GAR Jovian homosexual.

Well.. maybe we can skip that last part.

>>8249569
Transhumanity would consider Macross Galaxy as an example of why posthumans are assholes.

...on the other hand, the Rachni are already the Vajra, so we're off to a good start!