Oni2 talk:Truth Number Zero/Course Of Events: Difference between revisions

::::::::To be clear, my idea of the phase veil is that it's a dislocation, not a place. It either transports through time or space or dimensions (in the colloquial "from another dimension" sense of the word). So in the case where it's a time dislocation, it won't be one-way time-travel because anything that comes through the phase veil is being removed from the past. Hence you have a two-way cause-effect where (from the point of view of the past) the future is changing the present, meaning that the usual causality paradox is introduced. Creating a concept of a "Phase" that is a place, like the Phantom Zone of Superman comics, would indeed clear up that problem, or at least give the ''appearance'' of avoiding paradoxes, which is the more important thing. But as I said, my most recent idea was to reveal at the end that it's really just a space dislocation taking place after all — a sort of "the calls are coming from inside the house" twist that, done right, will be much creepier than the alternative takes on the Phase/phase veil. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:11, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::I am not a specialist, but I'd say there are no causality paradoxes for one-way (forward) time travel ''as long as the initiative remains in the past'' (i.e., you can't "peek" into the future destination and then change your mind and go back). Under those conditions, you can choose to launch things ''into'' the future without any contradictions. Sending things to the past or pulling things from there is a no-no (because of how it would affect your present). Pulling things ''from'' the future is not as clear-cut, because such a pull is affecting the future's past, making the result of the pull indeterminate (and could lead to some paradoxes in combination with "forward launches"). In the situation that you describe as a problem, i.e., a single "forward launch", things are removed from the past not as a "retroactive consequence" of how they're popping from the phase in the future, but as a ''direct'' consequence of them being pushed in (on the side where the initiative is). Causality-wise, the "past push" and the "future pop" are the same event (one doesn't happen without the other; it either succeeds or fails on both sides "simultaneously"), and the disappearance of the "past thing" does not introduce any ambiguity -- at any future date, up to the moment when it pops back into existence, the past thing is just registered as having disappeared at the moment of the "push" and that's it. For a series of "forward launches", as long as each launch is initiated on the past side and can't be canceled on the future side, the world that you "pop" in is fully determined by the series of past events, including all the "forward launches" (pushes) and "landings" (pops). So your distant-past "Diluvians" can send entities forward in time, or even follow-up with one-way commands to those entities. (Future civilizations, however, can't push things into our present (their past), and can't "pull" from our time either.) Finally, the Diluvians can attempt to "pull" stuff from our time into theirs (Wilderness samples, I dunno), but with every such pull they're messing up the whole meantime history, even if a little, so they're doing destructive measurement, not unlike in quantum physics. If they stick to forward launches only, then everything is stable and predictable and nice (except that they have no way of knowing that the launch worked, other than by living through to the "target" time). Which is precisely what happens in your case, so you're good. Hope this helped. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 23:32, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::(My ramblings above might make it look like I'm a big fan of time travel. I already said that in general I'm against it in the usual sense of "same place, different time", because the "same place" is ''moving'', dammit. However, if the Phase is Earth-centered in a "Gaia" kind of way, then it can act like a "guide" for time travel, and that would make the idea more comfortable to me). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 00:09, 11 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Point of convergence here -- for me, too, the Phase is something like a "limbo" region of spacetime, and we may never get to see the world(s) that lie "beyond" it (if any). (I'm not keen on having it called "veil", though, except as part of in-universe characterization. It's personal preference of course, but using a recurrent word from actual canon feels tidier somehow.) --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 00:09, 11 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::If it were up to me, I wouldn't keep much of those "[https://3dbrute.com/homunculus-loxodontus/ Waiters]" or their human/Daodan proxies, except for the notion that the Phase is tied to "Gaia", i.e., that you can't do phase tech in outer space. It would explain why Oni's sci-fi-powered civilization isn't actively colonizing Mars or the Moon, and it would keep the plot "Earth-centered" in a [[wp:Ring Around the Sun (novel)|Ring Around the Sun]] kind of way. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:06, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::To me, it would be much more surprising if the world of Oni ''was'' doing anything advanced in space. Where do you think ''we'll'' be in 12 years? Even colonizing the moon? Doubtful (sadly). Oni's world doesn't feel a lot more advanced than ours except for their phase tech, and there's nothing in the canonical depiction of that technology which would aid in settling another world. I would expect Oni's world to be ''less'' advanced in matters of space than ours, seeing as they have some very time-consuming and expensive issues to deal with here on Earth. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:11, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::Strange that suddenly you are using the "dream photos" as a visual reference for what the bush looked like :-) Usually you're the first to point out that we didn't see what actually happened in the Preserve (and surely you're not going to say that you're trusting the newspaper account instead :->). I see no reason, though, why all the plants and bugs in the Preserve have to be crazy-looking mutants in order to be Daodan-powered. Keep in mind that Hardy also believed that life there was incredibly mutated (Cf. the giant man-eating fish), so why doesn't the game depict the Wilderness as full of crazy killer plants 30 feet high? You're running to an over-dramatized extreme depiction of the Wilderness that is neither necessary nor practical from a game design perspective. There's no reason to assume that the Daodan Chrysalis in a human behaves like the life that has been evolving under Daodan power for generations. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:11, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Sorry, I wasn't being clear. When I said the bush "looks" tame, I wasn't referring to the blurry dream-a-roid, but to my comparative perception of the two kinds of symbiosis: Konoko is as much of a "troublemaker unleashed", if not more, than the Jamie-killing bush, so I don't see one as a tamed version of the other, rather they look like two very different concepts. To be more precise, on one side we have a clear-cut and canon-ready concept -- the Daodan-powered Chrysalis -- and on the other we have a whole zoo of nondescript poisonous entities, widely varied but somehow all "Daodan-powered" as well. I haven't read the forum chat with Hardy yet, so I don't know what monsters he would have added to canon but didn't. All I know is, in the scope of Vanilla 2001 canon, we have no mention of Wilderness Preserves being roamed by [https://nausicaa.fandom.com/wiki/Ohmu ohmu], having crystal caves at the bottom and expanding through spores carried by insects -- and that's fine because we don't need another Nausicaä. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:25, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::Not sure what you mean with the role of "game design" (2D/3D themes/assets? or gameplay choices?), but I'm trying very hard to keep additions and "departures" to a minimum. Biopunk, as far as I can tell, is already in Oni (it doesn't matter that it started as a GITS clone -- by 2001 it already had an identity of its own, with the original SLD and Daodan/Chrysalis concepts at its core). And the balance with cyberpunk is achieved quite naturally, because you still have those huge machines for growing/monitoring all the biotech, the man-machine interface, sub-dermal chips and cables, cyborg parts, etc. As for the rest, I tend to list alternative takes intermixed with my preferences, so you may not always realize how little I'm actually adding. For one thing, I haven't had any need for Forerunners or Protheans so far. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:05, 10 June 2020 (CEST)   

::::::::"Not sure what you mean with the role of "game design" (2D/3D themes/assets? or gameplay choices?)" — the former. The atmosphere of the game will be cyberpunk precisely to the degree that the levels are set in cyberpunk surroundings. If the focus, on the other hand, was on exploring the Wilderness, it would be a very different game indeed. I'm not suggesting we do that, if you look at my settings concepts on the SoW Settings page. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:11, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Ah, so for you "bio-punk" would be a Nausicaä kind of adventure, where we'd wander deep into the Sea of Corruption (poisonous forest) and unravel its mysteries. For me bio-punk is just cyberpunk but with SLD brains instead of positronic ones (grown in a life-like fashion, instead of engineered), and the protagonist being eaten alive by her own hyperevolved cancer clone. Even if there are computers all around, and the setting is a jungle of chainlink and concrete, that's still bio-punk to me --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:31, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::"For one thing, I haven't had any need for Forerunners or Protheans so far". No, just intelligent non-corporeal aliens that guide the development of the Daodan telepathically from across the phase veil ^_^ --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:11, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Nice try. In my view, the Daodan (aura) ''is'' the immaterial sentient(?) entity that's leaking in from the Phase and coordinating the growth of the Chrysalis, one per symbiote -- i.e., just what we have in Vanilla Oni, no new names or entities needed. Calling them "phase gods", giving them other names, praying to them, or implying that they're proxies left by ancient civilizations -- that will be up to specific characters and their perverted interpretations, but fundamentally it's something that's already in Oni. I thought that was clear. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:25, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::Mostly agree about the Wilderness Preserves being mostly overgrown -- not like a large dump can't be covered in greenery, mind you, or covered-up by limiting access to satellite imagery (Oni's space programs are not the same as NASA's and ESA's, so we don't know what satellites they had in orbit before the Uprising, and who was running them). At any rate, Hasegawa's tale is really telling us that "the world outside the ACCs is poisonous" so, at least in the one Zone that he and Jamie set foot into, the virus (or whatever) had apparently "gone to seed" in most of the Zone's lifeforms (that's if it wasn't in fact airborne, merely using Jamie's open wound as a way in). This is not telling us that the virus (or whatever) didn't spread from a man-made container discarded somewhere deep in the forest, or from a secret underground lab, or from an enigmatic phase portal (or xenoforming time capsule). Like I said earlier, Zones (Preserves) don't all have to look the same or kill their local Jamies in the same fashion. It's only your own Wilderness fixation that's giving you that idea. (For what it's worth, would Jamie's Zone cause "biological contamination" on a plane passing overhead, that would be immediately noticed and reported by pilots? I wouldn't be so sure.) --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 02:58, 9 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::"would Jamie's Zone cause 'biological contamination' on a plane passing overhead?" In my conception, the Wilderness is emitting all kinds of stuff all the time, and there's not just flora down there, but fauna too. So there's any number of things that could cause biological contamination, including bugs that attached themselves to the fuselage, or splattered on it. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 03:23, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::I somewhat agree about the dangers of depicting aliens. For how I planned to deal with that, see [[Oni2:Slaves_of_War/Story#Daomen|this section]], starting with the paragraph beginning "Whatever form". Short answer: barely show them, and use human agents as their proxy. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 03:23, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::Oh? (Muro's daughter, I see...) From my experience, "human proxies" of unfathomable aliens/invaders are even harder to swallow than the unfathomable aliens/invaders themselves -- as soon as the invaders (or their proxy) open their mouths and patiently explain their motives in English (or tell us how it's all "inevitable"), I feel cheated. But never say never, and I can't say for sure that I won't ever be guilty of something like that myself... Steering away from invasion tropes have served me well so far. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 01:50, 11 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::That said, I plead guilty myself -- I imagined an alien race a while back and had been thinking of ways of incorporating them into the Oni universe... as invaders. The Daodan, in that "story", would have been helping Mankind to prepare -- by hyperevolving -- so that they'd survive the encounter with the "actual" enemy all the way in Oni 3. From what I recall those "other aliens" were going to be powerful-but-stupid, kinda like furry zerglings. Good times... --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 02:58, 9 June 2020 (CEST)

:Having the WCG instituted in 2012 also feels a bit weird, with Jamie dying in 2014 and Chrysalises already grown in 2016 -- it just doesn't leave much time for the TCTF's regulations to have kicked in, or for the Network to have already evolved into "The Syndicate" by the time Hasegawa and Kerr start working there. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 18:42, 7 June 2020 (CEST)

::::In my conception of the Wilderness, each species has its own defenses. The flowering shrub ''really'' doesn't mix well with human physiology. Other flora/fauna may be fairly non-reactive with humans. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 03:23, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::Sorry (again), but to me that kind of variety definitely sounds uncomfortably reminiscent of Nausicaä, and together with the apparent stability of "untamed" Daodan symbiosis (wildlife looking like regular wildlife) it's too much of a miracle. In {{C|12}}, at least, we would have seen at least some mention of the "raw Daodan" (Chrysalis-less), how stable and undetectable it is, how contagious it is (or not? one moment you say that a dandelion seed is enough to corrupt a whole area, and then you end up saying that it doesn't propagate between species?), and how it's actually at the heart of the "impending collapse of the Earth's biosphere" as perceived by Hasegawa -- we'd have seen at least some of that, unless Kerr himself was completely in the black about that whole part, and moreover Griffin's whole team of sci-goons was locked away from the truth somehow. If we turn to Oni material, then Daodan science (both on the TCTF side and the little we see of the Syndicate side at the Mountain Compound) seems to revolve around symbiosis and the Chrysalis. Mukade's creepy "torn apart to make way for what we will become" is Chrysalis-consistent and that's it. Muro, too, focuses on the Chrysalis as a source of power and opposes it only to "choking on dead air and foul water", seemingly considering the deadly pollution as generic and mostly man-made. The Directorate frowns down on Griffin's Damocles, seeing no justification for radical measures. So, at the end of the day, my question is: if there is, in Oni's world, a secret Daodan-powered biosphere competing with "ours", and if that secret never surfaces in canon Oni, then whose secret is it, really? --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 00:29, 12 June 2020 (CEST)

:::"As long as that plant contained the Daodan, it doesn't matter if anything else did." As I said above, the similarities between Jamie's cellular breakdown and Daodan symbiosis are actually minor, and even Hasegawa's notion of a "poisonous world" doesn't quite describe the Wilderness as you see it (in my opinion), as well as Muro's "dead air and foul water". But, even if the bush was Daodan-enhanced, Hasegawa would want to know if it was just that one bush that was "poisonous", or that particular bush species, or, as he actually puts it, the whole "world outside the Atmospheric Processors". --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 11:46, 9 June 2020 (CEST)

:::One thing that you're not making clear in your Wilderness theory is how it spread a lot at first, engulfing large areas, and then seemingly stopped. If Daodan symbiosis propagates upon contact, and each affected cell becomes a new source, then wouldn't the WCG need to build new rings of fences every week? Also, it it's so good at spreading-upon-contact, then wouldn't it have hit Hasegawa too? Airplanes flying over a Zone notice contamination in the air -- spores? pollen? -- and Hasegawa is down there breathing that stuff... And, for that matter, if it causes noticable contamination on aircraft then why hasn't airborne propagation caused generalized Daodanization yet? --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 11:46, 9 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::''I am not too keen on modern-day social commentary in sci-fi, but it fits in well with certain Russian realities, too: waste burial sites (including NBC) that are made "easy to ignore" for a while, and then resurface and result in serious health hazards; this is especially a problem because of how large Russia is, which makes it harder for activists to mobilize around a hazardous dump in the middle of nowhere -- although lately it's been happening in and around Moscow as well).''

:::::The Phase can give a sci-fi twist to WMD/NBC dumps -- experimental teleportation gone bad, or secret labs inside the Zones, rather than dumps --, but that's as far as I would go (at least that's how I feel right now). Dumps/leaks (Phase-enhanced or not) can be contained if the WCG really care about solving the issue, but if they don't then the Zones can just be fenced off, with airborne emanations contributing to the BioCrisis, but only steadily rather than exponentially, allowing the WCG to counter with ACC upgrades -- a perfect "pet threat". --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 23:25, 11 June 2020 (CEST)

===Daodan Genesis===

::::::You're going to have to be more specific. What search terms do *not* turn up those pages? What terms would you expect to work? To be clear, I don't actually care if the BGI pages "show up" anywhere. They're my own private plan and were not intended to be integrated into the wiki. They lived in personal Google Docs for years until I shut down my GDrive account. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 03:23, 10 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::Try searching for a sentence from those pages and you will see (I think it's just that "User:" and "User_talk:" are not search-indexed in general). It's totally OK if you don't care about the public visibility of those pages. It's just that I had the same semi-private attitude about this TNZ page in its current form -- my explanation thereof wasn't good enough to prevent a hasty cat from you, and that's fine too, I guess. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 00:46, 12 June 2020 (CEST)