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

:::::::::Land-dwelling/amphibious Leviathans/Diluvians/Whoever can't be much larger than dinosaurs, unless they have adamantium grafts or are held up by blimps/antigravity/etc. Ocean-dwelling looks fine to me, and -- if I may -- you can actually make the ocean into the main tool of their strength. Each individual could be kaiju-sized -- large as f##k, but not so large as to dwarf a skyscraper --, but the aquasphere would connect all the individuals together and make them into a planet-sized hivemind, capable of mind control (like Lem's Solaris) or large-scale "waterbending" (tsunami and the like). So, something like whale-sized midichlorians. ^_^ --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::I only wanted the aliens to be as large as organisms could get through evolution (though certainly Daodan-boosted evolution might have something to say in this). Although I did want them to be kaiju-sized, I only imagined that there were one or two left. I didn't mention that anywhere, I suppose, so that's my bad. The idea is to provide a concrete enemy in the story, but also one that can be vanquished. An army of these things, in full command of the Daodan, would be unstoppable. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 21:01, 22 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Pushing that idea further, the "phase veil" can be seen as a side effect of the Diluvian hivemind, and the improbable emergence of Phase tech in human scope (around 2000 AD) may be directly linked to the Diluvians awaking from stasis. In that view, the "other worlds" (if any) and "transdimensional" phenomena are not created by the Diluvians, but their planet-sized hivemind is what makes it all apparent and "tangible" to us. Thus, if we were to kill all the Diluvians, phase phenomena all over the world would shut down and portals to other worlds (if any) would be closed permanently. In that case it wouldn't be as clear-cut as "destroy or be destroyed": the WCG placed its bets on Phase tech (and scrapped most of the old tech), so they wouldn't be too keen on going back to the Stone age. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::The malevolence of the Diluvians (i.e., how and why they would pollute the above-the-surface world) isn't entirely clear to me, but here are a few thoughts. If you are linking the "invasion" to the P-Tr extinctions, then it would look like the Diluvians would just need a world with much less acidity in the oceans, and much less CO2 in the air, and that's about it -- i.e., essentially, they'd try to reverse the massive emergence of oxygen-breathing lifeforms. Supposedly they could achieve this by seeding the surface with a super ecosystem (super-plants that would eat up CO2 very quicky -- and thus leave regular photosynthetic plants to die --, while producing not plain O2 but various organic compounds, some of them hazardous). --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::As a complement to that theory (and a deviation from yours), perhaps the Wilderness is not a planned xenoforming leading up to an "invasion", but rather a more or less regular process through which the Diluvians regulate the ocean's acidity? In other words, they do not intend to destroy the above-the-surface world so that they can "roam it once again", rather they are just "lending a hand" so that we can keep the CO2 levels in check. Perhaps they're quite content with their meditative semi-stasis on the ocean floor, and wouldn't have gone to the trouble of "waking up" and infecting the WPs if it hadn't been for the XX century surge in greenhouse gases? And perhaps they're not keen on killing us either, it's just that we're like bugs to them, and all they care about is the CO2. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::I haven't really thought of the surviving alien(s) as malevolent, just more interested in its/their own survival than humans'. If we survive the transition to a new biosphere, they're probably fine with that, since they don't fear us — at least, at first. The Daodan Chrysalis is a wildcard that they weren't expecting. They see us a bit like a bad guy would see a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebsvoRqPOMk crab with a knife]; not ''very'' concerned, but wary. To the degree that we might provide some resistance, they are increasingly inclined to squash us. They might also have something to do with the difficulty that humanity seems to be having in making Daodan symbiotes. Where did the knowledge go after Hasegawa and Kerr pulled it off? --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 21:01, 22 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::::Your overall conjecture about their purpose in shifting the climate makes sense to me. If ocean acidification was a big problem for them in the P-Tr days (which I imagined was accidentally caused by them at the time), they would definitely have something to say about it now. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 21:01, 22 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::Re: xenoforming, I definitely think that life (self-replicating machinery) is the best way to do this, rather than something as laborious as digging channels through the earth up into volcanoes, and pumping air produced by massive machinery. In real life, terraforming another planet via plant life would take many generations, but the Daodan's influence is my excuse for vastly speeding up the process. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 19:50, 17 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::Then again, upon rationalizing the "CO2-regulating" motivation of the Diluvians, and how the supposed super-plants would merely be optimized for eating up CO2 as fast as they can (with no regard for side effects), rather than for some elaborate xenoforming -- that's actually close enough to the Daodan concept of enhancement and hyperevolution, and perhaps even more straightforward than your initial xenoforming theory: the alienated plants just do what plants do, only better. And if it's only plants that are targeted (with CO2 control in mind), then WP containment is not as tricky as it would have been with insects and birds, and the "enhanced"/alienated (daodanized?) nature of the WPs may have eluded WCG scientists this far (with the possible exception of Hasegawa himself). In that view, the Daodan as discovered by Hasegawa is "just" an emanation from the Phase and, being immaterial, it is not readily identifiable as the "same" kind of aura that permeates WP plants. This would give some credibility to the "WP denial" displayed by Kerr and the other Chrysalis scientists. Finally, it may be revealed (later, post-Oni) that WP plants have the same "phase hooks" in each cell as in a Chrysalis, and that they're powered by the same kind of "aura", although not in the exact same way as for humans. The way I see it, the Diluvians are themselves Daodan-enhanced to a point where they can be seen (at least collectively, as a hivemind) as Earth-resident "phase gods", i.e., they are not a proxy/avatar of a Daodan presence that leaks in from the Phase, instead they ''are'' akin to Daodan entities themselves, and they ''are'' the origin (rather than a catalyst) of the "smart cancer" that alienates WP plants. For Konoko and Muro, it would seem that the "integration" is coordinated not by the Diluvian hivemind, but by "original" Daodan influence emanating from the phase, i.e., ''new'' instances of "phase gods" that pair up with human hosts. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:34, 20 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::In other words, in Permian times (or even before that?), some "extremely favorable conditions of germination" allowed a Daodan entity to come through and "exalt" the most evolved lifeform at the time, which hyperevolved into the Diluvians, and became so large (both individually and collectively) as to host the Daodan presence in its entirety, i.e., the Daodan(s) that "exalted" the Diluvians migrated through the "veil" and now reside in our world, permeating the bodies of the Diluvians and (to a lesser extent) the ocean water that binds them together. More Daodan entities remained in the Phase and were locked out after the "extremely favorable conditions" vanished and the Diluvians went into meditative stasis. The stirring/awakening of the Diluvians in the second half of the XX century (following a CO2 surge) caused the Phase to re-emerge. First it allowed the Diluvians to use their own Phase presence to exalt plants in the WPs, merely as a means to regulate CO2 levels (which, through Jamie's death, provided Hasegawa with enough motivation and insight for Daodan research), and eventually allowed "original" Daodan entities (from the Phase) to exalt Hasegawa's test subjects, up to human hosts. In the simplest terms, the Diluvians are the Earth's dormant Chrysalis (planet-sized), and the WPs are the metastases that it spawned upon awakening. Would that work? --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 13:34, 20 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)

:::::::::Erm, if it has the range of a bug zapper, then nothing's keeping bugs or birds from flying over the fence (or wind-carried spores/seeds, even), allowing the Wilderness to cross the fence just as if it wasn't there. Either the containment needs to be "germ-tight" somehow, of the Wilderness isn't as volatile as you've been suggesting. I think I'd prefer the latter. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 16:45, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::The idea was that the invasion has to happen in stages, and alien plants and fungi are the first trophic level to invade Earth. The WCG doesn't see any animals in those zones (that starts to happen in Oni 2), and is only a little aware of bugs. The bugs aren't spreading on their own; only where the alien flora goes in front of them. As far as how easily the plants can spread, that's up to us. Even being Daodan-powered doesn't mean they can do anything, at any speed. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 21:01, 22 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::It may seem naive of the WCG to think they can contain the Wilderness, but they might know full well that it's a losing battle. They also are taking steps to contain the growing Wilderness, but clearly they're losing since the toxins in the air are increasing, according to Oni. Also, to whatever degree they're wrong about how well they have it contained, that's our way of adding some drama to the story. Finding out that the trophic level of the Wilderness is advancing to herbivores, insectivores, and then carnivores will be an alarming development. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 21:01, 22 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::I'd actually like to back up to a higher level and address what I think is your largest single question, which is, "Why complicate things when it's clear that Hardy just intended the Preserves to be waste dumps?" I felt it was necessary to diverge from this approach precisely because of the derivative feeling of the "social commentary". Industrial pollution, large corporations, yada yada. Been there, done that dystopia. Likewise, if Oni's world was said to be warming dangerously, I would find some way to subvert that narrative into a more interesting, less "concern of the moment" type of problem. Star Trek IV was entertaining but nowadays nobody has any idea what it's going on about with all that whale stuff. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 16:27, 12 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::Well, alien-engineered global warming sure would come in handy if it made Earth more "waterworldy". I may be getting it wrong, but your Daomen/Diluvians would actually be at home in a world with no icecaps and a significantly higher ocean level. It's still be a reference to the modern-day issue of global warming, but with an alien-initiative twist that could possibly act as a redeeming factor (if done right of course). As for Hardy's take on pollution, I think that there's not a lot to diverge from, actually, because canon Oni is no longer hammering it home as "industrial pollution, large corporations, yada yada". Jamie was killed by an unidentified "virus", there are mad scientists doing ghastly stuff (Navarre), bioweapons are hinted at in the manual, and Phase tech can "enhance" man-made pestilence further, power-of-seven-fold if needed. So it's not like WPs are pure eco-activist cliché and can only be redeemed through alien ingerence. At least that's how I feel about it. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 19:18, 12 June 2020 (CEST)

:::::::::As you have seen above I am more or less ready to embrace the Diluvians as a possbility (my real-time brainstorming approach is flexible like that), however I still don't regard "alien ingerence" as a necessary plot device. Oni canon has enough potential for man-made (and phase-enhanced) pollution of the Contaminated Zones, and having them engineered by an alien race seems like a "last resort", storytelling-wise. From here on out, I will design TNZ so as to accommodate the xenoforming hypothesis, without favoring it. I will be calling the "maxi-chlorians" Diluvians, will pretend that they're merely stirring in their sleep in reaction to CO2 increase, and WPs are just their way of "scratching an itch". No connection between WP flora and the Daodan will be implied, but I'll try to leave a door open for that kind of interpretation. --[[User:Geyser|geyser]] ([[User talk:Geyser|talk]]) 17:05, 19 June 2020 (CEST)

::::::::::I appreciate the flexibility. You're correct that the Daodan doesn't *need* alien ingerence (whatever that is), but without it, there's no clear nemesis driving the plot. The antagonist was going to be who, the Old Man, just doing what he thinks is right? I wanted to have a struggle for survival that feels urgent, like a clash of two worlds. --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 21:01, 22 June 2020 (CEST)

===Daodan Genesis===