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Original post by Lysander I think you could find a better name. The first thing I thought of was Cetacea, the order that whales and dolphins belong to.

Hey, thanks for the great feedback. Story-wise the name Cetician actually is related to whales and comes from a mistake. Terrans first encountered the Ceticians near Kappa and Tau Ceti, about 29 and 11 light years from Earth (respectively). Because of the long time it took to break the language barrier, the name the news media bestowed upon them, "Ceticians" stuck.

Their true name is a complex mixture of pheremone compounds.

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Original post by Wavinator I think this is a big problem. Pheromone communication would be very ineffective.

Okay, I hear what you're saying but consider this: Effective by what measure? Surely there is no absolute measure other than physics.

Consider that until the greater part of the last two centuries the vast majority of human beings lived very slow, sedate and inefficient lives. We were mostly hunters and gathers, then became farmers. In geologic time our notions of effectiveness pale.

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It wouldn't carry far

Not sure I agree here. In fact, when you look at pollution studies its clear that factory outputs can carry downwind as much as 200 miles or more. No human voice can carry that far.

If anything, they'd be subject to the kind of electromagnetic smog we're experiencing as we ramp up our telecommunications infrastructure. There could even be a time in Cetician history when they might have had a global "voice," depending on the natural decay rate of the compounds, of course.

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wouldn't transmit through surfaces.

To an extent, yes, if the surface is non-porous. But this would simply have been a problem for primitive Ceticians to overcome. I imagine they would have used water to carry pheremone messages throughout structures. In fact, early city-states could have been connected by wind relay stations and rivers.

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It would make electronic communication impossible.

Why do you say that? The human voice is very poor for electronic communication, but we handled that first with a manually entered code that encoded messages (telegraph); then we switched to a membrane that did the same (phone).

I'm thinking that Ceticians would have actually developed a network of communication similar to the nerve cells in the human body, which are electrochemical. This would require a good understanding of ions and the ability to create some sort of ion pump, which nerve cells are, but they're naturals at chemistry by din of their makeup.

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Pheromone libraries would be incredibly impractical.

Actually, it would depend on how complex the language is at what materials they have that can absorb and hold pheremones, wouldn't it?

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It would probably also make them very, very hard to understand and communicate with for species that speak.

Now let me challenge you strongly here: What in your world view says that the universe MUST make species able to communicate? I'm keenly interested in your thoughts here because I strongly suspect that a generation of Star Trek/Star Wars/Farscape etc. have numbed us to the idea of what alien means. I suspect we now thing alien means "human with funny nose" or "slimy bug-like thing to shoot."

If that's the case, I'd like to offer a few alternatives to tweak people's very conservative view of what alien is.

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Quote: Original post by Wavinator Have a limited amount of regenerating energy that they can use to slow or accelerate time within a bubble I don't follow here. What kind of energy is this? Where does it come from? I have a hard time believing something like that could evolve.

Yes, I would to. It didn't, the Ceticians were modified by a very technologically advanced species called the Fading Immortals. While the Ceticians did not have advanced technology beyond a pre-industrial level, they did have amazing minds and perception capabilities. The Fading Immortals used quantum mechanics to radically reengineer the Ceticians eons ago.

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"Highly sought after" makes it sound like they're being enslaved--is that the case?

They once were, but now because they've lived long enough to see empires crumble to dust, they're one of the wise elders of the cosmos.

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How do they create exotic materials? What are the materials?

Their sense cluster, now heavily modified, allows them to see possibilities in the quantum foam intuitively. Like a master billiards player that can anticipate trajectories of various balls on the table, Ceticians can "see" and hold configurations of matter and inject time-space distortions down at the quantum level. They're able to anticipate and use virtual particles as well as enforce shifts between particles and waves when it suits the structure they're trying to build. Not only does this allow them to preserve atomic configurations that should exist for only very short periods of time, they can rapidly speed up the half-life of undersirable compounds that are often toxic byproducts of such high energy manufacture.

(Eh, sorry, very geeky, but you asked for it! [grin])

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Original post by Wavinator If they're flying brains, why do they need the stalks? Can they re-attach to any body?

The flying brain part is another result of heavy modification, and they can't live without their own bodies for more than a few weeks. (This acts as a gameplay device as well as story point because it conveniently allows them to enter human sized spaces).

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That would lead to a huge population problem.

Yes, if the birthrate were incredibly high. Imagine if only a handful were born every few centuries.

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Quote: Original post by Wavinator Asexual reproduction Two things wrong with this: 1. You say above that the floating allows them to mate.

Eh, you're right, I'm using the wrong word. Here's how I saw this developing: Naturally, a Cetician fragments to give birth, a type of asexual reproduction common in creatures like flatworms. This would suggest an evolutionary environment where disease was relatively mild--a thin low pressure atmosphere might do it, as we find with plants and animals on earth that live in similar environments (high altitude, low heat). In competition, sexual reproduction would have lost out to asexual reproduction due to speed in a low-virulency environment.

After modification the process became one more like pollination, with floating clusters docking with different stalks and "downloading" changes. The cluster creates intense quantum level modifications to the material it is to pass, so it rises, does this safely away from its own body, then docks at a receptor stalk and deposits the changed genetic material before returning home. I'm assuming that while this process can be artificially duplicated, it did not yeild the results the Fading Immortals wanted.

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2. Sexual reproduction is essential for evolutionarily viable species.

I don't think this is proven, either in mathematical models or in considerations of entirely alien ecospheres. Asexual reproduction in the right environment is superior to sexual reproduction because all genetic material is passed on and you don't need to find a mate. But on our planet sex may have the upper hand in higher species due to its ability to pass on useful mutations which help to fight disease.

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Original post by Wavinator Why does this species need archaeologists?

You probably asked this question because they're immortal? If so the answer correlates with the fact that they were slaves for eons in a relatively confined space. In their freedom they are naturally curious about other species and how they live. Their galaxy is littered with the ruins of other cultures, other unique perspectives that went extinct while they were in captivity. So they find themselves naturally curious, and the fact that they're pokey about the process means that although they've been around a long time, they've by no means exhausted the trillions of potential dig sites throughout the galaxy.

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Original post by Wavinator This is problematic. Democracy probably wouldn't mix well with that type of culture.

Funny, I'd think the exact opposite only because as democracy grows it actually becomes inefficient and slow to reach a consensus. But these beings have a high tolerance for such a process.

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Quote: Original post by Wavinator Because they control time, they may have many inefficient methods: For instance, they might not think twice about taking a 3 or 4 century trip if they're skilled enough to place themselves in a bubble; What's 3 or 4 centuries when you're immortal?

Exactly. Or were you disagreeing with me here?

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Are you assuming they experience time at the same rate that we do?

For playability's sake, yes.

First off, I just wanna say WOW. This just totally blows me away, and I always thought I was good at coming up with ideas heh.

1. If each child is an exact replica of the parent, is the whole species genetically identical, with only memory-imprints differentiating them? How would other species tell them apart? (I assume they each emit different pheromone "identifcation scents" so they can tell each other apart.) Maybe they could selectively genetically modify their offspring or something? This process could change the color of some individuals...they wouldn't be able to see it, but humans would. A pink alien would be a bit less threatening. :P

2. What is their notion of family? How many offspring does one typically have in oh, say, 1000 years? You mentioned offspring being imprinted with memories from elders...how do they decide which elders it gets imprinted by? There's probably a big batch of social customs dealing with this. I'd imagine there'd be a relatively small amount of elders/memories involved, at least at the "newborn" stage, to avoid overloading the offspring's mind and making it go crazy. (Is it possible for them to go crazy? How does their society deal with this, if so?) I'd imagine that being imprinted with memories would make the kids more mature than most adult humans, but discipline problems would probably still arise. How is discipline carried out, both in relation to one's offspring, and with their version of criminals? (Can you imagine what'd happen if the elders all got together to decide how to punish a criminal, and it took them 500 years to figure out what to do, by which time he'd committed yet more crimes? They have to be able to make quick decisions *sometimes*.)

3. Back to the family thing. Does each one live alone, or do they have big communal "forest" type homes? Do they have permanent attatchment arrangements similar to marriage (except without the sex), or does their long life/ability to predict the future make this unfeasable? With such long lives, I'd imagine their relationships with each other would get very deep, whether they're best friends or worst enemies. I don't see them doing big flashy emotional stuff, but when you've known someone for 10,000 years, every word can have a thousand meanings.

4. If they can't see, how do they sense their environment? If one was on Earth, could it tell it was fall by the chemicals in the tree leaves? Another useful ability would be if they could detect impurities in water, metals, etc. that could be harmful to other life forms or operation of machinery and such. Rulers could hire them to tell if there was poison in their food, heh. Also note that without sight, there'd be no difference between day and night to them, in terms of "seeing where they're going". Bad weather could severely disrupt their communications/sense of where things are, though.

5. Random thought: pheromone communication would make it likely that there'd be lots of random comments floating around, and it'd be easy to "overhear" stuff you weren't intended to. How do they deal with this? Do they have "pheromone channels" that prevent speech from floating around randomly, or do they refuse to tell secrets/gossip, or are secrets and gossip totally alien to them to begin with? If so, this could be as big a barrier to them understanding humans as the speech-to-pheromone translation. Also, they'd probably have a heavy aversion to lying, since memory of the lie could be handed down for generations. They might not even be able to understand lying, which could make them easy prey for humans in some situations. Maybe we're more alien to them than they are to us...

Sorry for the long post, but I really love having meaty ideas to play with. :)

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Original post by serratemplar Hey Wavinator, and everyone else. I had wondered where this game of yours had gone and HOLY CRAP MAN it looks like you've kept at it in my absence. =)

Hey serratemplar, thanks for the input! Yup, it is progressing. Sometimes its like watching grass grow, though. [smile]

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The ability to control/traverse/modify/alter time is MEGA powerful.

Yes, you're right. But the Ceticians can only really move forward in time (although a Prince of Persia rewind time thingy would be cool, it doesn't fit with the fiction and would be way too unbalancing). A Cetician player would really be more like a mage found in most medieval cRPGs in that they would be able to stun, slow, or speed up other beings. They would be able to do things like rapidly deteriorate a lock or slow-mo an explosion, for instance, by casting timeflow bubbles.

We've actually seen gameplay like this in games like Max Payne, Matrix and Project Eden (which has a nice time slow bubble or ray weapon). It IS powerful, but when you consider that A) the race will likely be undesirable to play and B) there'll be some consequence to violent acts, especially for them, I think the ability might create interesting gameplay and sort of improve their attraction as a playable race.

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...which feels more and more like a Fable-depth type enviroment for Master of Orion...

[smile] Thanks for the Fable comment-- btw, this idea actually grew out of wanting to see Privateer mixed with Master of Orion a long time ago.

oohhhhhhh duuuude. Privateer. =)

Damn, this makes me want to load up MoO2 again. I put it on my uber laptop; it runs pretty well, but the combat's a little hard to follow cause, well...it was coded for a Pentium I MMX and my new laptop is a P4 monster with more cache than it really knows what to do with. What I *really* need man is for you to get us a demo of this game =)

I sooooo wish I could help you code it. Give me a few more semesters of calculus and I'll get on your case.

Sorry this post is so off-topic. Time travel is uber-powerful, but it seems that's not within the spectrum of their abilities, so that's good. When you say "cast time bubbles", do you literally mean they are incanting spells, is it an effect of their own biology, or do they have technology that allows it? I'd stick it to bio, if you haven't already...tech can be stolen/reverse-engineered, which would change the ENTIRE game and take away all desire to play this race. (I bet you've considered this already.) Slowing down time is one of my favorite things in action games these days, especially in Enter the Matrix (it was campy, but I *loved* that game).

I'm gonna check your other threads now, see what else is shakin with your design docs. =)

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Original post by onyxflame First off, I just wanna say WOW. This just totally blows me away...

Thanks for the great feedback! I'm glad to know this race has a bit of interest for some people.

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1. If each child is an exact replica of the parent, is the whole species genetically identical, with only memory-imprints differentiating them?

Yes, primitive Ceticians were clones broken into several distinct lines based on benign mutations. Children were raised communally in wandering tribes and developed skills and identity based on the chemical cross currents of the tribe.

When the Fading Immortals enslaved them they radically modified this process. They first tried raising the children in sterile, artificial environments, but found this created autism and dementia. While the Immortals could have actually corrected these defects continuously, Ceticians raised without tribes were found to have severely difficient sense clusters, useless for the purpose of controlling the timeflow organelles the Immortals needed for longevity. So despite the bizarre reproductive and sensory modifications they made, the Immortals left the Ceticians to raise their children in artificial swamp biomes for eons.

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How would other species tell them apart? (I assume they each emit different pheromone "identifcation scents" so they can tell each other apart.)

Great question. As a human you might not, without some sort of optical translator. (In game this is a glyph that identifies members of different races for players and should help reduce player confusion and eye strain.) They do identify each other by scent, but only because scent is a function of personality, otherwise it'd be impossible (they vent both mood and personality identifiers).

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Maybe they could selectively genetically modify their offspring or something?

I've been thinking about how this could happen. The Immortals would have faced problems with cellular rejection switching from an asexual to sexual means of reproduction. What I think would actually work is if the Immortals created reservoirs within a Cetician's body and a sort of placental shield around the splintering site. When a Cetician sense cluster docks with a mate the material is injected into the reservoirs which are connected to the splintering sites.

A new Cetician develops as a single stalk that splinters from one of the parent's three stalks (tradition still says that which one is a portent that determines the child's future).

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This process could change the color of some individuals...they wouldn't be able to see it, but humans would. A pink alien would be a bit less threatening. :P

Hah, you're right! Can you imagine standing in a huge crowd of pink, elephant-sized tripeds? :P

Genetically, I think coloration would make sense not for reasons of color but for temperature regulation. Light tufts of fur might even serve here as well, as radiation protection (I'm thinking about adding radiative fins around the stalks because their home environment was a high heat swamp). This certainly would create diversity, and might still be plausible if you reasoned that they all mutated from a single line.

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2. What is their notion of family? How many offspring does one typically have in oh, say, 1000 years?

Family is the pheremone-based tribe of hundreds. I'm basing this reasoning off the idea that an individual Cetician can remember hundreds of faces, unlike the human limit that keeps our tribes around a max of 200. This is partly based on the idea that they would have had highly sophistocated memorization and recall skills to develop a pheremonal language.

I imagine the number of offspring is on the order of 1 or 2 every 1000 years. It's reasonable to assume that children are very rare and precious as a result.

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You mentioned offspring being imprinted with memories from elders...how do they decide which elders it gets imprinted by? There's probably a big batch of social customs dealing with this. I'd imagine there'd be a relatively small amount of elders/memories involved, at least at the "newborn" stage, to avoid overloading the offspring's mind and making it go crazy.

Actually, I saw the children being raised in the center of the tribe with the young learning quickly as a result. Studies tell us that human babies exposed to lots of conversation may develop higher language functions faster than those exposed to "baby talk" or quieter environments. The adults can direct their pheremonal output, as well, either say generally emitting "smoke" (as with a speech or strong emotions) or using directed sprays. I'm thinking that personality would develop in the young in response to the triggers of the general, ambient clouds of pheremones because this is emotional as well as linguistic input. It would be like holding a baby or yelling at it.

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(Is it possible for them to go crazy? How does their society deal with this, if so?)

This is rare but does happen. Because they're the survivors of a great tragedy (the traumatic modifications done by the Immortals) they tend to rally around such cases. Incurable ones are placed in a kind of community stasis where individuals take turns interacting with and holding the time field around such victims. There is no concept of euthanasia in the species.

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I'd imagine that being imprinted with memories would make the kids more mature than most adult humans, but discipline problems would probably still arise. How is discipline carried out, both in relation to one's offspring, and with their version of criminals?

Though they're genetically similar, they're not emotionally or mentally identical, so deviation does occur. Their tribal methods involved shaming and banishment, but in the aftermath of their ordeal with the Immortals they've developed a kind of very uniform collective ideology which involves promoting life and doing no harm.

The ability to manipulate time, their plentiful resources and willingness to wander great distances in space make internal conflict very rare. However, since such a society in fictional terms is boring (we humans sadly thrive on conflict) I'm thinking that the Immortals might have created "sleeper" Ceticians as a last act of vengeance. (I have nothing for this so far, so I'll have appeal to the board again :P)

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(Can you imagine what'd happen if the elders all got together to decide how to punish a criminal, and it took them 500 years to figure out what to do, by which time he'd committed yet more crimes? They have to be able to make quick decisions *sometimes*.)

What if the accused were kept isolated but comfortable for the decades it might take for them to come to a decision? Or I wonder if stasis would be humane? What an interesting moral problem!!!

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Do they have permanent attatchment arrangements similar to marriage (except without the sex), or does their long life/ability to predict the future make this unfeasable? With such long lives, I'd imagine their relationships with each other would get very deep, whether they're best friends or worst enemies. I don't see them doing big flashy emotional stuff, but when you've known someone for 10,000 years, every word can have a thousand meanings.

I see the Ceticians as group / clan oriented, and I'd think their biology would make pair bonding a bit of an alien concept, even despite their modification. The question becomes what are the biological drivers for such things as loneliness and companionship, which are abated in humans through proximity, trust and emotional exchange? I do see them as being very "settled" in their relationships with their clan and slow to be swayed.

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4. If they can't see, how do they sense their environment? If one was on Earth, could it tell it was fall by the chemicals in the tree leaves? Another useful ability would be if they could detect impurities in water, metals, etc. that could be harmful to other life forms or operation of machinery and such. Rulers could hire them to tell if there was poison in their food, heh. Also note that without sight, there'd be no difference between day and night to them, in terms of "seeing where they're going". Bad weather could severely disrupt their communications/sense of where things are, though.

Evolutionarily their sense cluster gave them infrared, pressure sense and echo location (picture heavily misted bogs and swamps as their planet of origin). The pheremonal ability is for communication more than for sense.

The sense cluster, after modification, now has a wide variety of scanners, biological radar, color sense, etc., etc.

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5. Random thought: pheromone communication would make it likely that there'd be lots of random comments floating around, and it'd be easy to "overhear" stuff you weren't intended to. How do they deal with this? Do they have "pheromone channels" that prevent speech from floating around randomly, or do they refuse to tell secrets/gossip, or are secrets and gossip totally alien to them to begin with? If so, this could be as big a barrier to them understanding humans as the speech-to-pheromone translation. Also, they'd probably have a heavy aversion to lying, since memory of the lie could be handed down for generations. They might not even be able to understand lying, which could make them easy prey for humans in some situations. Maybe we're more alien to them than they are to us...

I do see them understanding lies and also being able to lie (though morally uncomfortable with it). Your speculation for why this might be is perfect (echoes of old conversations).

I'd imagine they could be secretive by controlling the range of output. It might be plausible that they could add a chemical decay to their communications. Or maybe secret messages were once bottled and carried secretly?

btw, your questions really help me detail this species and give me gameplay ideas for making them more playable. Thanks!

Sorry for the long post, but I really love having meaty ideas to play with. :)






Again, excellent questions. The Cetician home planet didn't have a lot of genetic variety, both in terms of disease and predators. I see the swamps as being very plant heavy, sort of like the Devonian period in our history before dinosaurs, but one where for some reason animal life had a hard time taking hold.

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Original post by serratemplar oohhhhhhh duuuude. Privateer. =) Damn, this makes me want to load up MoO2 again.

[smile]
I'm hoping having the huge, galaxy sweeping scope of a 4X game blended with the personal feel of an RPG is something that will have a lot of appeal, especially if the levels are tightly bound together and you get the feel of shaping the universe with your actions.

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I sooooo wish I could help you code it. Give me a few more semesters of calculus and I'll get on your case.

Hey, if you're interested, I'm always looking for more immediate help in easier areas, like content, story vignettes, character ideas, ship names, planet names, ideas for items, etc. :P

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When you say "cast time bubbles", do you literally mean they are incanting spells, is it an effect of their own biology, or do they have technology that allows it? I'd stick it to bio, if you haven't already...tech can be stolen/reverse-engineered, which would change the ENTIRE game and take away all desire to play this race.

Their bodies contain time control devices at the cellular level, so it can't be stolen but by a MASSIVELY advanced society. I imagine, though, that they might be kidnapped and pressed into service!

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I'm gonna check your other threads now, see what else is shakin with your design docs. =)

:P Thanks for the inspiration!

Necroing this thread as per forum member's request. Note that anti-necro policy exists for all of gamedev EXCEPT the writing forum. ;)

Sorry, I haven't read all the posts, I reall yhave to get to sleep. I just had a suggestion as to how they get around environments:

Maybe the more advanced time controllers could selectively speed time around obstacles, so that the molecules of the obstacle would be moving quickly enough to pass through it. Beyind that, they could also speed the time for an obstacle to its destruction, like a tree. I don't know if the tree would revert to the correct time when the bubble was removed though, and that would destroy forests pretty fast >_<

I could see the creatures, changine the time around them, slightly, so that they become invisible (the light eminating from them would be in the hard gamma, or in the IR or radio end of the spectrum).

I could also see them, slowly walking through a solid wall, only to pass through without a scratch, or even falling asleep inside a solid block or rock, as a protection measure.

From,
Nice coder

If they use their time-manipulating powers often, even casually, then I think their speed would be variable. For instance, if a Cetician has to abondon his ambulatory form and "fly" from one place to another, he might get there, wrap himself in a time bubble, speed himself up by about a billion times (or whatever's practical) and metabolize minerals in the surrounding matter into a new body in just a few seconds. My mental picture of this process is pretty impressive. And when I think of them "walking", I envision the time-lapse footage of starfish traveling across the seafloor. Neat.

As immortals, they'd probably be vastly patient, and disinclined to manipulate time just to hasten themselves through a boring spaceflight. Or would they? Might a cetician "hibernate" for aeons by shrinking that span into a perceived moment? If so, humans that spend time with them might be seriously messed up, especially if the ceticians extended the courtesy of time manipulation to them. Accompany a cetician on a "short trip" and find yourself home a week later, in a world that's seen two hundred years pass in your absence. Or perhaps you'll spend a few months working with ceticians on a hybrid technology, and come home to find that it's later on the afternoon that you left, Narnia-style.