Techno Characters:

The 4 Trouble Makers :D

Hero: Beautiful, typical blonde hair blues eyes, but rather with spiked blonde hair and a half metal plated skull, along with metal and andriod type computer parts from his left collar bone across his left breast and down to to rib cage as well as a mechanical left arm all the way down to the middle of his forearm. The perky and smiling type. Very affectionate a constrast from his cold metal exterrior. His lower half is built and well toned.

Blanche: Bulky for a Techno and more masculine looking. Usually dressing in loose black jeans with something akin to the bondage straps and having little to nothing covering his upper body which is built. His legs are almost all mechanical while his upper body except for this neck and head are devoid of metal and mechanical parts. His favorite hair color is Brownlish grey dreadlocks and he has a metal spike over his head with holes in it for the dreadlocks to grow. It looks like a rounded off table saw was stuck in his head. He enjoys being the big bad wolf and has an inferiority complex which makes him become extremely aggressive. Does not outwardly show his belighted opinion of himself.

Versalis: More feminine of the gang and would be called a she by most unlike the others. She is as very agreesive and attempts not to get to involved with any perticular lover. Her heart is almost non-existant to any on-looker. She is less formal that the others and is very spontaneous and unpredictable. Having a type of ego trip she usually is not intimidated by anyone and leads many mischievous activity.

M4boy: Sort of the forgotten genius type, very artsy and art savy. Has mechanical wings designed in a reptilian pattern much like fantasy dragons but all metal. The wings change color and also depict whatever image M4boy wants to portray. Has a very feminine side and at times can be very romantic like. But also has the curiousity and love of a hardcore mechanic. Also has a tail for steering with the mechanical wings the metal parts are intregrated into his bones and are visible grey metal down his neck and some of his back. But the rest of his body is covered with skin he has a metal plated head that can extend over his flesh covered face forming protective mask for flying in rough weather.


Blanked: Older and bodily feminine wearing nothing but the metal plating that shows like strips down her body. Very opinionated and a top political figure and artisan for the Technos. very talented singer and I guess actress as long as Technos still have some form of singing and acting. Very happy with life as is and is against fast change as its bad for businesses predictablility.

Ok, tell me who you like I can come up with as many more as needed.
[Edit: All temporary names by the way]

5MG - I like the ideas for the appearances. :) But if they're techno hermaphrodites you'd better use the pronouns sie and hir rather than he/she and him/her. So, what types of love do they illustrate? How do they change in responseto the PC?



Idea for the human RNPC (remember, the one who's the opposite gender from the PC?) - the human RNPC should be the one who wants to found the human settlement and be its leader. Let's call this character... oh, Leslie is a good name that can be male or female. Leslie should ask the PC to go find the other humans and acquire stuff from the other cultures with whch to help construct more of the human settlement. So that will give the PC a reason to go explore the world rather than just staying in the suman settlement to court this RNPC. And the stuff the PC brings back will be sort of like courtship presents. :)

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Original post by sunandshadow Is Mana supposed to be an RNPC or just a minor NPC? If she's supposed to be a RNPC then you need to describe how her personality, the type of love she ilustrates, and the way in which she is attractive to players are all distinctly different from Frequency's.

Mana is an RNPC, and this description by 5M is not exactly what she is about:

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Mana - As a little sister goes she's looking for the effection from her older sibling attempting to get her older sister to notive her and to be in a loving relationship with that sibling or any sibling. Probably the youngest, instead of being the sweet and spoiled young one she is the forgotten type. She finds it very difficult to express her feelings and thus is shy and fearful of others.

If I use a similar style to describe Mana, it would be:

Mana - A caged bird trying to be free. Torn between her own ideals and the need to fulfill her inherited role.

Mana is sweet but not spoiled, shy, nor fearful. She does not know that Frequency exists so she is not attempting to get her older sister to notice her. She is in many ways superb on the role she has inherited to be, however, her personality and philosophy conflict with that role. She does not have difficulty expressing herself, rather, she consciously forbid herself to express her feelings.

Mana's type of love is mainly caring, attentive, and considerate. On the outside it seems that she is living in harmony, loving and nourishing everything around her (caring for little animals and pets, helping others, curing trees while she was waiting for you). It is very hard. The player can get attracted by her devotion to the others, and her selfless acts to help the others. However, her other identity suggests that her behavior is based on something similar to obsessive and compulsive disorder. Mana hates herself. She always see the blood on her hands (not literally), and that is why she keeps on washing them. Due to the nature of her inherited role (a morbid one), she feels a need to do nourish to pay the debt of destruction she caused. While she is a source of love, she is void of love in herself, and she is reluctant to receive love because she cannot accept what she is, she cannot forgive what she has done.

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Something I was thinking about - many of the RNPCs seem to be involved in some sort of transition between two races like Frequency posibly becoming a spiritual, or actively resisting such a transition like Lion the isolationist magical. This is an interesting pattern, maybe we should reinforce it by using our characters to illustrate all the possible transitions. That would mean we would need a techno RNPC who either was in love with a magical or was in love with magic itself, and a spiritual RNPC who could be corrupted back into a mortal to fall in love with the PC, etc. What do you think.

Yes to the part about how the character can illustrate all the transitions. For the Techno RNPC that is in love with a magical there is the engineer (Case) who designs for the wings. He is subconsciously in love with Freque, but he would have to struggle to discover that. Again, he does not believe in intrinsic values. When he had an argument with Frequency, he said that if Frequency leave he could just get another person to fly for him. Frequency left. And he found a replacement (the PC). However, even though the replacement is able to have everything that Frequency had, it just wasn't the same. He realized that, stripping away the techno and magical parts of her, there is something more important about Frequency that he loved. It was the life that they had shared, the meaning of life and hope that she gave him, that made Frequency irreplacible.

The description for Frequency by 5M is acceptable:

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Frequency - Is struggling with a way of self expression and being singled out in a community attempting to change the way she was brought up and has lived possibly having a desire for a romantic way of life i.e. The princess to be and waiting on her knight in shining armor.

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Versalis: More feminine of the gang and would be called a she by most unlike the others. She is as very agreesive and attempts not to get to involved with any perticular lover. Her heart is almost non-existant to any on-looker. She is less formal that the others and is very spontaneous and unpredictable. Having a type of ego trip she usually is not intimidated by anyone and leads many mischievous activity.

This actually describes an earlier version of Frequency. However I decided to mix this with a lightened personality. For example, Frequency is spontaneous and unpredictable, but not in the sense that she simply ignores you and do her own things. She involves you, and insist that you do the same. She is also mischievous but I don't know whether I would get to there. She is the type that would make the following situation possible (if she is a human in 2004): Frequency and you are walking down the street chatting happily together. You say that you are thirsty and she fetches you a soda. You don't recall her bringing any soda. "Have you just stolen this soda?" you asked. And she smiles at you, taking it as a compliment.

Oops I didn't see this post before. o.O

Original post by 5MinuteGaming
Hmm well sunandshadow I don't see that in the OPRL or in any of the other documentation perhaps I missed it and didn't vote on it :/

It wasn't voted on, just put up for discussion.

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The umm...'signpost' 's as you call them are good for the plot although they don't encompass everything and are a bit presumptuous about the PC.

Well we do have to set tasks for the PC and direct his/her path to create mystery, suspense, drama, and have tings happen in a logical and satisfying order. We have to know enough about what the PC is thinking and doing at any give point to be able to write appropriate internal monologue and possibly dreams.

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I was looking more toward making a list of options the PC will have or are we going to get to that later. I'm still confused on what we're working on right now. I mean your laying out characters and traits and asking if I agree when I don't even have a complete idea of the setting cause we keep disagreing on that.

I don't see how we could list all the PC's options before knowing all the RNPCs and their subplots. I was also hoping that we would have confirmed the worldbuilding by now, but since we are disagreeng on it I thought focusing our efforts on characters for a while might result in more progress.

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Ok Characters lets see if I'm getting all this: Skew - is broken type of lonely bachelor who desire recognition by his peers and attempts to do so through power and vengance. He has an unstable emotional state where he could turn to a loving caring person but is rather bottled up in envy and self pitty.

Yep, that's a pretty good description.

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Lion - Desires power and seeks immortality, is cloudy by pride and the lust for control.

What? o.O No, not at all. Lion is the masculine magical male who is Kitten (previously Angel's) big brother. He is intolerant, prejudiced, and a macho ladies' man, but kind to and protective of his litle sister. He does not desire power or immortality, he desires fame and popularity.

The one seeking spiritual power and immortality is the techno major villain, but sie is not particularly proud or lusting for control.

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Angel - Older woman, not quiet a lady, left to be alone by her many lovers. Moves from one man to another taking pleasure as she goes, but attempts to become the facade that she puts on. Acting and portraying a cute innocent girl who inside is confused and hiding from her true feelings burrying the possiblility of true love deep inside. Depending on the age of the PC she would be a challange for the PC to attempt to get her love.

Huh? Where did that idea come from? I haven't described any character like that. And there isn't going to be a character named angel any more.

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Kitten - Playfully bright, always energetic and not really having much of a conflict in emotion. She is satisfied with herself and comfortably in love with a man whom she is in the process of marrying. Her skill as a librarian or a type of scribe or teacher is a passion that she has and her love for it and her openness allows her to be used easily for information and even expert knowledge. She is exploited but doesn't seems to mind. She will tell you anything you ask of her.

Kitten is not energetic, but rather eager to be helpful and ver loyal. She is not in love with anybody - she is a total innocent, sheltered by the magicals' idea that girls should be kept innocent and her brother's good-intentioned protection of her. Her internal conflict comes as she discovers injustices, moral gray areas, and the fact that her brother can be really cruel to those he is prejudiced against, and finally whether to accept the PC as her leader rather than her brother. She is not very educated, she greatly prefers people to books. Her strengths are empathy and perhaps healing or 'recharging' others.

It seems that more than one of my posts has gone unnoticed over the course of this discussion.

Well, I was right on a few of them and that is the way I saw them. Angel I just kind of made up from the name. Lion, well sorry if I got that one wrong.

So Lion "...is intolerant, [and] prejudiced" hmmmm and "...he desires fame and popularity" how can a person reject the views and ideas of others yet seek their approval and praise. Do you mean to say that he holds grudges rather than being 'prejudiced' and that he is short tempered rather than 'intolerant'. If he has a prejudice against people 'in general' and is intolerant of their ideas, beliefs, and persons then; why would he have a desire for their approval or for fame in their midst? Why would he care about popularity? So I think it is too much to say that he desires them perhaps you mean that he already is popular and famous?

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Well we do have to set tasks for the PC and direct his/her path to create mystery, suspense, drama, and have tings happen in a logical and satisfying order. We have to know enough about what the PC is thinking and doing at any give point to be able to write appropriate internal monologue and possibly dreams.

Well then how do you propose we create the mystery, suspense, and drama? And what exactly would be a logical and satisfying order for this game? What is the 'logic' you speak of? Where does the satisfaction come from?

Forgive me my confusion but I don't think the same way as you.

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Kitten is not energetic, but rather eager to be helpful and ver loyal. She is not in love with anybody - she is a total innocent, sheltered by the magicals' idea that girls should be kept innocent and her brother's good-intentioned protection of her. Her internal conflict comes as she discovers injustices, moral gray areas, and the fact that her brother can be really cruel to those he is prejudiced against, and finally whether to accept the PC as her leader rather than her brother. She is not very educated, she greatly prefers people to books. Her strengths are empathy and perhaps healing or 'recharging' others.

She is 'eager', 'empathic','healing', and 'recharging'. Now I think that works with energetic. I mean you need to have energy in order to pitty someone or even see outside yourself to be able to show pitty. And furthermore, I think playfully bright would be accurate since to recharge and heal people emotionally you need a good bedside manor and pretty smile. So whats her conflict though does she love her brother but yet doesn't like his attitude toward people so her heart is in conflict and she doesn't want to follow her brother but yet feels attached and obligated to him. That is until the PC is able to come along and give her another choice. If the PC wants of course if he does what she does which is pitty, heal, and recharge.

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Original post by 5MinuteGaming So Lion "...is intolerant, [and] prejudiced" hmmmm and "...he desires fame and popularity" how can a person reject the views and ideas of others yet seek their approval and praise. Do you mean to say that he holds grudges rather than being 'prejudiced' and that he is short tempered rather than 'intolerant'. If he has a prejudice against people 'in general' and is intolerant of their ideas, beliefs, and persons then; why would he have a desire for their approval or for fame in their midst? Why would he care about popularity? So I think it is too much to say that he desires them perhaps you mean that he already is popular and famous?

You're right, it would be more accurate to say he already is popular and famous. Think of a macho high school football player, a hometown hero who is worshipped by the cheerleaders, comrades with all the other football players, patted on the back by all parents and administrators who have school spirit, and amuses himself by insulting and beating up anyone who is on the bottom of the social hierarchy. So Lion is prejudiced against anyone who isn't 'normal' or too far from his culture's ideas.

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Quote: Well we do have to set tasks for the PC and direct his/her path to create mystery, suspense, drama, and have things happen in a logical and satisfying order. We have to know enough about what the PC is thinking and doing at any give point to be able to write appropriate internal monologue and possibly dreams. Well then how do you propose we create the mystery, suspense, and drama? And what exactly would be a logical and satisfying order for this game? What is the 'logic' you speak of? Where does the satisfaction come from? Forgive me my confusion but I don't think the same way as you.

I would never blame anyone for being confused - we've all had different educations and we all have different styles of using english that confuse each other. 'Logic', in this case, is the logic of plot - the technical term for this is 'teleology' - Teleology is kind of like destiny, the feeling that ending and the rest of the story fit each other with no extra unresolved bits. The satisfaction has several parts: the feeling that the causes and events in the story make sense, the feeling that all the angles of a problem have been considered, the feeling that by the end of the story all the loose ends have been tied up, the mysterous questions have been answered, the moral judgement at the end of the story fits the events of the story, etc.

Basically, when you play an RPG or read a novel, if you are satisfied when you get to the end they must have done everything right. I have spent almost 10 years studying how to create all these things in a story, I can't explain it to you in one post, lol.

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Quote: Kitten is not energetic, but rather eager to be helpful and ver loyal. She is not in love with anybody - she is a total innocent, sheltered by the magicals' idea that girls should be kept innocent and her brother's good-intentioned protection of her. Her internal conflict comes as she discovers injustices, moral gray areas, and the fact that her brother can be really cruel to those he is prejudiced against, and finally whether to accept the PC as her leader rather than her brother. She is not very educated, she greatly prefers people to books. Her strengths are empathy and perhaps healing or 'recharging' others. She is 'eager', 'empathic','healing', and 'recharging'. Now I think that works with energetic. I mean you need to have energy in order to pitty someone or even see outside yourself to be able to show pitty. And furthermore, I think playfully bright would be accurate since to recharge and heal people emotionally you need a good bedside manor and pretty smile. So whats her conflict though does she love her brother but yet doesn't like his attitude toward people so her heart is in conflict and she doesn't want to follow her brother but yet feels attached and obligated to him. That is until the PC is able to come along and give her another choice. If the PC wants of course if he does what she does which is pity, heal, and recharge.

Well, she's cheerfully energetic, but not bouncing-off-the-walls energetic, which is what I thought you meantat first. She also has some more conflicts - that admitting there are moral grey areas goes against her cultural and religious upbringing, and getting romantically involved with the PC would mean giving up her virgin innocence to learn about sexuality.

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Well, she's cheerfully energetic, but not bouncing-off-the-walls energetic, which is what I thought you meantat first. She also has some more conflicts - that admitting there are moral grey areas goes against her cultural and religious upbringing, and getting romantically involved with the PC would mean giving up her virgin innocence to learn about sexuality.

So, for the magicals there are somewhat of christian values in place for the development of family and a persons sexuality. So you see their culture as having these values because of gender roles perhaps and the forming and nuturing of individuals to function in society.

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Basically, when you play an RPG or read a novel, if you are satisfied when you get to the end they must have done everything right. I have spent almost 10 years studying how to create all these things in a story, I can't explain it to you in one post, lol.

I understand what you talking about although I probably have a very different way of looking at it.

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Original post by 5MinuteGaming Alright, Finally I'm caught up from what I missed. And I have a lot to say and a lot of new ideas to get across so bare with me here. First I will present a view of the Magical culture and their philosophy since I have not liked any of the ones suggested. Magicals: The magicals should have the philosphy of overlapping patterns in nature for example you have all proceeded to name magicals whether by choice or accident by common words that also portray in a meaningfull way the magicals personality. For instance Skew his emotional and physical personlalities are skewed from the rest of magical society he takes a different approach on things and goes in a different direction. So at birth his parents recognized that he was skewed(different) from the other children. And in a Magical soceity it would be completely 'logical' (rational, intuitive, common place) to give a child a meaningfull name from common words or any word. This could actually be made into a ceremony that is conducted a lot of cultures have naming ceremonies but its not new ideas that makes something unique its how it is portrayed. In a Magicals philosphical mind the world is all intertwined for instance a tree is rooted in the ground and the ground is held together by the mass of the earth. A person is tied to ever other person they come in contact with. Buildings must reflect both nature and engineering common sense. A craft such as producing food through magic or taperstries with your hand is an art and to magicals art is something that takes forever to master. You could spend your whole life attempting to master an art form and complete the overlap between your creation and the world attempting to form a symbiosis between the human being and nature. Their use of animal parts with their bodies has evolved and nutured this belief that they are their whole lives attempting to move closer to a union with nature or as much as possible before they die and are buried to return to part of nature. I would also expect them to believe that when the person dies depending on how close they were to oneness with the universe and nature is whether they become part of its force, magic, or simply an inanimate object so basically this encoporates a few different philosphies which makes it unique and thus original. Sociologist have broken down cultures into catagorized pieces to better understand and predict the future however each culture in its own way is completely unique. And that is because it is whole. A culture is not broken down into pieces of other cultures no it is its own. Take the United States for example it has blended the cultures of from all over the world but as time moves on many people abandon those cultures and add to the new American culture. And with every culture there are subcultures, groups, and these groups and subcultures have their own system of norms, laws, mores, and so on. If you've every taken a sociology course and remember what was taught you would know what I'm talking about. Spirituals: As far as the spirituals I disagree with ONYX's proposal for their religion and system of beliefs. Like I had stated before in this thread Darkness is simply the absence of light. Cold is simply the absence of heat. Such as good is the absence of evil. For instance, in science you can not actually achieved 0 degrees calvin it is termed impossible because you will always have heat somewhere and really when you are hot and sweat you sweat to release heat not to gain cold. Or when your cold your body absorbs heat and not gives off cold. Thus is the way of the spirituals. The belief that everything is existant to one side. A single way, one true meaning to life. There is the meaning of life and then there is the thing that tries to cloud you from that meaning. The good and evil if you will. The good is the truth and the evil is that which attempts to falsify that truth. The spirituals believe that if you are able to become whole in the sense that you are no longer affected by the evil then you can transcend into an immortal body because all of life and nature is part of truth. Because nature does not know evil or doing evil it is man who made the distinction between evil and good. A spiritual would attempt to ascend his human weaknesses for instance lust, hatred, pride, negligence...etc. So to a Spiritual bodily afliction would mean nothing their society would be based on the aspect of loving ones neighbor to the point that all the people in the soceity would do no evil toward another. They would continually attempt to put themselves in the shoes of someone else. Something completely devoid in todays society the ability to understand the needs wants and desires of others. So the Spirituals society would be 'sort of' utopia. Technos: The Technos I view them as not having the computer system that we have today where we sit down and type and play on our computers. But I still think as I have stated before that the Technos incorporate technology into their bodies. Implanted chips that are much more sophisticated than the ones we have now. Instead of using a binary system of Digital data they are based on a higher computational system so for instance they have 255 different values for one bit. So the equivalent of a circuit board where we have logic gates they have something that is able to have 255 outputs. Or if you want to make it simpler 16 would do. These systems would make them able to digest say anything and need to eat a certain amount of metal. They would be able to burn off their waste instead of excreting it so they would have no bladder but rather use all of what they eat. They would be androgenous and not form families but rather concieve and then remove the fetis and put it into a incubator capable of developing the tehcnological and biological characteristics needed. They would be able to rapidly change their facial appearance say within a couple of days or grow and release their hair at will. So they could change their hair color. They would also be able to comunicate with each other through transimtters within their brain that they are able to control and also something embedded into their eyes so they can recieve images and store new ones. They can do high end calculations in their heads and also any machinery they create with their tehcnology they would be able to control through the transmitters inside their brains. So there would be no AI or need for humanoid machines but simply lights, hovercars, ships, they wouldn't need any kitchen ustensils or machines they would use building machines heavily and also super computer processor to be able to expand their ablility to process data. Their houses would be quite unique and different. They would have many unique forms of art not like painting or music or even games. (hmmm, I'm going to have to think of the forms of art) Well those are some ideas to consider.

I postponed replying to this because I don't really see what you disagreed strongly with what we already have based on the above. There are many things that I would oppose, especially the part about AI and computers. You might find that having implants and an altered digital system is new enough. It was a nice try but those are only at the computer science 101 level of imaginations. Every student that knows about the binary system would think that 'won't it be better if it uses more digits?' I would be ashamed to present this as an original idea.

In general I agree with what you have. We already have many ideas that you have posted. I can't tell whether you are trying to propose something new or putting different existing ideas in your own words.

The most significant idea in your post is how the Technos can eat metals. There is a philosophical question behind this idea. Do you think that the Techno would be more like to change the environment to fit themselves, or to change themselves to fit the environment, or a balance of the two? If I ask this question explicitly and say that there are two races, the Magical and Techno, most reply would be: "The Magicals change themselves to fit the environment, while the Technos change the environment to fit them." Do we want to keep this philosophical distinction, reverse it, or ignore it as a significant distiction between the two races?


Where I stand right now:

I prefer a blend of the two cultures instead of a contrast of them. In other words, I prefer that the two races have been merged for a long time. Instead of depicting two contrastingly different racial towns, it would be more fascinating to depict a mixed city, like San Francisco. There can still be areas with predominantly Techno or Magical, but in terms of efforts of our
development, the mixed city should receive the most attention.

If I am a common player, I would tell you again and again that our ideas of magicals and technos are pretty old school. Doing it again just won't cut it for me. I would prefer to see the technos and magicals be just the building blocks for the player to enjoy the blended city, which allows the player to answer all the 'what if i mix these two' fascinations (such as a magical DJ jamming in a disco). I would set the goal to implement 80% of gameplay, and game story to depict the blended culture and the mixed magicotechnology.

A blended world is going to be very fun and it can preserve the light tone very well. I can totally see the PC who tries to impress a magical go to the bookstore to get a copy of 'Magics for Dummies'.

Rather than the technos changing their environment and the magicals changing themselves, I see it as the technos avoid the enironment, the magicals use the environment, and the spirituals blend into the environment.

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Original post by Estok I postponed replying to this because I don't really see what you disagreed strongly with what we already have based on the above. There are many things that I would oppose, especially the part about AI and computers. You might find that having implants and an altered digital system is new enough. It was a nice try but those are only at the computer science 101 level of imaginations. Every student that knows about the binary system would think that 'won't it be better if it uses more digits?' I would be ashamed to present this as an original idea. In general I agree with what you have. We already have many ideas that you have posted. I can't tell whether you are trying to propose something new or putting different existing ideas in your own words.

I guess it was more of a clarification to find out whether I am following all the things that we are proposing and to also expand on the level of detail. Putting it in my own words allows me to move to a greater level of detail in the way I see the races.

About the digital system. I was not presenting this as an original idea as far as to say that it is supose to be unique and different and striking to the PC. But rather I am saying that they would evolve the digital system to be more precise and in sync with the biological or analog system.

Oh and by the way the digital system which I propose is a completely original idea and no one has come up with it as an alternative to the binary logic gates or the digital realm. And when you say it is only at the computer science 101 level you are wrong. Digital systems is hardly a 101 computer science course. The system that I have proposed goes far beyond just the standard computer students knowledge but has entered the realm of computer and electrical engineering. So there is a lot more to it than you think just by my short explaination. And especially more since it interfaces with Biological living tissues and organs.

Now the idea of the interfacing is nothing new to sciencefiction. I simply added a more detailed element to it which very little sciencficiton novels tend to do. There are implications for physciological evaluations on the system which you could use to covered up a factual realistic representation. For instance, why would they change from binary, or how did it come about this integrated technology. Why would you ever want to destroy your own body by placing machinery in it instead of what was originally a symmetry. Although you are right there is little need for such a description but it is not something that has been proposed or thought of before unless I skipped that chapter in my Digital System class and you could kindly show me to it.

But all gauntlets down I think that you are inevitably right and there should be something more if we are to present something different but not too much more. "It isn't the way the people look or the way they act that makes them different but the way they think"

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The most significant idea in your post is how the Technos can eat metals. There is a philosophical question behind this idea. Do you think that the Techno would be more like[ly] to change the environment to fit themselves, or to change themselves to fit the environment, or a balance of the two? If I ask this question explicitly and say that there are two races, the Magical and Techno, most reply would be: "The Magicals change themselves to fit the environment, while the Technos change the environment to fit them." Do we want to keep this philosophical distinction, reverse it, or ignore it as a significant distiction between the two races?

Well, it is an interesting philisophical way of looking at them being able to eat matter in which they need to survive. I would agree with SnS's view that I see the Magicals more as using things from nature in their lives as well as occassionally or in some sense changing their own culture to fit the laws and acts of nature but then that is a tension we have within our own culture. The enviromentalist saying we need to plant more trees, clean up toxic wastes, and other issues and then those that think technology will solve all problems. The Technos perhaps are an attempt by us the Authors to portray one solution to the problem of nature versus technology.

Or perhaps the Technos see nature as harming them and thus are replacing it with tehcnology that they have created and where they can't yet duplicate nature and biology they leave it be and show that their creations can just as easily work with it rather than only destroy and corrupt it. Furthermore, The Technos view of Moksha/Nirvana/Enlightenment is to be completely a part of their own creation. To recreate their bodies and to become better than their natural beings not as a computer like we know them. No see this would be a different type of machine because it is built upon different principles than what we use (binary, digital systems) this is something else they have created something different close to analog type of system but instead of biological and fragil material they are metal. So this could also symbolize since their people look like punk and gothic groupes it could symbolize the rock'n roll era of this past century. How people immerse themselves in the new sound (the new technology)? Of course to make these machanical beings unique the ways in which their machinery acts and is used must be very different from ours. Many possible changes are powers source, memory, interfacing with other machines, communications, speed, etc...

As far as being original I think we have establish an orignal idea with our story and setting unless there is a common story that is out there that Philosophically relates the post apacolypse of three evolved races and that brings back humans using magic and/or time travel and cryostasis or even regeneration. And further what story has one race of Magical medieval druid like being with animal organs and apendages who have christian values, a Technological based society with an intergrated metal alien machinery and a punk rock artistic culture that formally like during the Romantic Era, and a race of enlightened shapeshifters who have transcended their original (asexual bodies) and gained angelic phosphorescent ones and are in constant comune with a being outside/ and apart of this reality.

I think we have crossed the barrier of Cliche versus Originality.