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Original post by Wavinator Well, the help I got from you guys on the last worldbuilding post was so invaluable that I thought I'd try again. The Ceticians are a playable alien race whose main ability is the control of time. They are very alien, which is probably going to freak people out (concept sketch, concept render). Here are there main concepts for this species: Elephant sized Oxygen breathers Communicate with pheromones Constantly vent gas at the top of their three ambulatory stalks Color and texture of gas reveals their mood Lovers of knowledge, books and culture Prefer to entangle and stymie rather than fight Have a limited amount of regenerating energy that they can use to slow or accelerate time within a bubble Highly sought after for their ability to create exotic materials Respected elders that younger races look up to Sense cluster in the middle of the body can detach and float (using biological gravity machinery): This supports mating, personality transfer and exploration Immortal except for illness, accident or injury Asexual reproduction Newborn personalities are imprinted from the pheromonal input of elders I see this species as being organized around Academia, so that perhaps their leaders are Chancellors or Provosts. Status in society is gained either by joining a Peacekeeper force which is dedicated to serving other cultures, or becoming a Time Sifter (archaeologist). They are probably a socialist democratic society that places a heavy emphasis on the group over the individual (like Japanese culture?). 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; or they might not have adequate hospitals on a world because they could just as easily suspend a patient and ship them offworld. Most friends have commented that the species is extremely disgusting. One said that he'd shoot it on site. I would like to take on this xenophobia head on, but I'm not sure how you overcome a human's natural revulsion. How do you think a society that can control time and has been around for millions of generations would be organized? Can you think of any cool aspects to add to them that would make humans less afraid of them?

Well, because of the significant evolutionary period, organization would be almost automated, because if a species is around for that long a period of time, so then must their principles and values, as well as troubles and challenges, be well hashed out and solidified in an internal civilization sense.

Also, it is not likely they would have a heirarchal system such as marshalls and provosts, but more likely a collective inhibitor AI or collective consciousness self organizaing principle. To make such an evolved society so structured would be logically redundant. These people are highly self reliant and individualized, and, because they are all over space and also time, they are not likely to be predisposed to having a large homeworld or collective location of origin that is highly populated, since they are time farers, who would want to be showing up in real time at once place as this is contrary to both the time vagabond status and is really an earmark of an underevolved species. Rather then, this species is likely to be each it's own nation state, which in dramatic senses, is much more viable, as you can apply the human principle of power corrupts, and as time travelers and almost certainly incredibly technically advanced, they pretty much have absolute power, so if the human principle of absolute power corrupting absolutely applies universally, so it is true for this species. This gives you more dramatic choice in terms of characterization in the sense that each can be quite uniquely designed, offering huge contrast opportunities between each archetype of species you choose to portray.

Addy

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Original post by Wavinator 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.

I don't understand. How is it related to whales? While did they not call them "Cetians?"

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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.

You seem to have misunderstood (or perhaps I'm not completely clear on the mechanisms of what you're describing).

Human speech travels at the speed of sound, about 700mph. That is fast enough for ancestral applications, like "Hey, there's a tiger behind you!"

In order for pheromone communication to be useful in a situation like that, it would have to travel pretty fast as well. It would require tremendous energy expenditure to repeatedly expel a gas at 50mph, let alone 700mph.

Furthermore, speech is omnidirectional (though stronger in the middle 45 degrees than the rest). A jet of pheromones would be in only one direction. This means that a general alarm, eg "Tigers are coming!" would be very hard to pull off, unless there are multiple emitters, which would greatly increase the cost, or the organism spins, which Ceticians don't seem capable of.

Additionally, it would be biochemically taxing to produce the quantities of pheromones required for a language at least as complex as English. And they would require huge storage bladders.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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.

It's true that human voices don't carry that far. However, my point is, how useful would that be?

If there is another individual 100 yards away from you and you send a jet of pheromones at it on even a moderately windy day, the wind would have blown it off course--and that's assuming there are no solid objects interdicting. If the message was, to continue the example, "There's a tiger behind you!" how useful is it if the person with the tiger behind them never gets the message, but someone 200 miles away does?

And are the pheromones more or less dense than the planet's air?

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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.

I'm talking about the normal surface matter of an M-class planet rocks and plants and such. Sound waves can go around or through them, but gases cannot, except by diffusion.

Can you elaborate on the water distribution system? It seems implausible.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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).

Why do you say that the human voice is very poor for electronic communication?

Perhaps I overstated that a bit; what I meant was that it would be very difficult for a primitive society to get it working, and thus it would be unlikely that they progress past that point in that area.

It's relatively simple to convert sounds into electric signals and back again; as you say it basically just requires a membrane. It would require much more advanced technology to translate chemicals into electrical signals and even more advanced tech to translate it back and synthesize the required substances.

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Original post by Wavinator 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.

I don't follow...neurons are very, very close together.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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?

There are numerous problems. For example, after I read a book, others can read the same copy. But if it were pheromones, it would be used up, and would require "reprinting."

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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.

You've misunderstood me, I think, but I will address this and my original point below.

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Original post by Wavinator What in your world view says that the universe MUST make species able to communicate?

Any social species must be able to communicate in some way. It's axiomatic.

Now, then, what I was trying to get at:

We communicate with each other with words. But under the words is culture and common experience.

If I say, "I feel like I could fly," you know what I mean, right? You can translate each of those words into another system of communication, but to a species that could fly, it would be meaningless.

Now, a harder one. "I'm in love." Love is a psychobiochemical phenomenon that exists to make sure we reproduce and protect our offspring. It is a result of evolution.

How do you explain love to a species that has none?

There is a famous story told by Albert Einstein that should help us illuminate:

Without any hesitation Einstein rose to his feet and told a story. He said he was reminded of a walk he one day had with his blind friend. The day was hot and he turned to the blind friend and said, "I wish I had a glass of milk."

"Glass," replied the blind friend, "I know what that is. But what do you mean by milk?"

"Why, milk is a white fluid," explained Einstein.

"Fluid, I know what that is," said the blind man. "But what is white?"

"Oh, white is the color of a swan's feathers."

"I know what feathers are, but what is a swan?"

"A swan is a bird with a crooked neck."

"Neck, I know what that is, but what do you mean by crooked?"

At this point Einstein said he lost his patience. He seized his blind friend's arm and pulled it straight. "There, now your arm is straight," he said. Then he bent the blind friend's arm at the elbow. "Now it is crooked."

"Ah," said the blind friend. "Now I know what milk is."

We have a hard time communicating even with other humans from non-Western cultures, like the Japanese. Can you imagine trying to communicate with a species that has no emotions, no gender, can control time, communicates using chemicals, is capable of personality transfer, and is immortal?

You'd have better luck explaining baseball to broccoli. Our minds are 100% the products of evolution, just like our bodies. Our perceptions and ideas are tainted. Alien intelligences would be likewise, but in completely different ways.

You seem to be so concerned with making them physically different that you have neglected the consequential differences in their psychology. You're taking one aspect of the human psyche and exaggerating it--exactly what Gene Roddenbery did.

Also, it seems like you're saying that all individuals are similar--is this purposeful, since they are genetically identical?

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander Quote: Original post by WavinatorHave 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.

I advise against this. The "ancient, incredibly-advanced, now-fading or vanished race" is quickly becoming a sci-fi cliche.

And you didn't address my other questions.

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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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Original post by Wavinator 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.

Will this be in-game? I have a limited though above-average knowledge of quantum mechanics and this doesn't seem possible. That's not really a criticism; lots of good sci-fi uses shaky science. I just want to make sure you're aware. Apologies if the problem is mine.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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.

Yet if none are dying, on a very long timeline--as you seem to be dealing with--there will still be a very large population. Furthermore, such a species would not be evolutionarily viable; in the species' ancestral environment, there would be some type of predation or something with the same effect. Therefore they would have to reproduce fairly often, and would retain the instincts to do so, as we have, unless they are purposefully excised.

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Original post by Wavinator 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.

Virulency is not the only threat to species.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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.

It's not proven mathematically because we don't have the data required to do that.

Asexual reproduction is great in a highly stable environment, but does not allow for fast adaptation or speciation. Evolution is very, very slow using only asexual reproduction (and that's saying something, given how slow it is anyway). Beneficial mutations cannot be put together and detrimental mutations cannot be bred out.

The time required for a species such as the one you have designed to evolve with only asexual reproduction would be several times (again, no exact numbers are available) what it would be if they had some mechanism for trait transferal.

Given the this is supposed to be a very old race, you'll either have to add some such mechanism, or increase the amount of engineering the species has undergone, meaning that either they once had genetic recombination and it has since been removed, or that their development was guided by outside agents, probably these Faded Immortals.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander 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.

You might want to use xeno-archaeologists in that case.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by Lysander What's 3 or 4 centuries when you're immortal? Exactly. Or were you disagreeing with me here?

I'm just not sure why this species would exert the energy and effort for such a relatively short time.

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Original post by Lysander Can you elaborate on the water distribution system? It seems implausible.

Implausible?

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Original post by Lysander It's relatively simple to convert sounds into electric signals and back again; as you say it basically just requires a membrane. It would require much more advanced technology to translate chemicals into electrical signals and even more advanced tech to translate it back and synthesize the required substances.

Why? If the technology was chemically rather than mechanically based then how would there be a problem? At the point in their evolution where they develop electronics they would probably already have advanced knowledge of chemistry ( being more chemically focused than humans... )

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Original post by Lysander I don't follow...neurons are very, very close together.

Neurons are based on the build-up of electrical potential at their dendrites. These beings could similarly be based on the build-up of certain chemicals (chemical potential rather than electronic) in the environment around them...it would (of course) be slower than a human brain, but no less effective.

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Original post by Lysander There are numerous problems. For example, after I read a book, others can read the same copy. But if it were pheromones, it would be used up, and would require "reprinting."

What's wrong with that? They don't think in terms of "books" do they? so they don't know what they're missing...(anyway: maybe they have developed some kind of gustatory/audible/visual/stimulus-based form of their language?)

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Original post by Lysander Any social species must be able to communicate in some way. It's axiomatic.

It's also true that they can communicate...that's what we're discussing. The point was that the aliens don't have to be able to communicate with us.

[edit] removed some stuff that really had no point...
and all that stuff about communication when a tiger is behind someone: these things can bend time

[Edited by - lucky_monkey on January 21, 2005 6:36:51 PM]

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Original post by intrest86 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 >_<

Wow, these are some interesting options. Maybe these could be special time skills, as you say. Space is mostly empty, anwyay, so maybe the Grand Masters can time things so that there is never a collision? You'd have to be incredibly sophistocated to do that, thought. [smile]

I want to be careful about destroying things because it sets up expectations ("how come I can't surround this building in game and destroy it?") They do this with time bubbles on a smaller scale, though.

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Original post by Nice Coder 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.

Nice abilities. I'm starting to think of these more along a "magic spells" model anyway, so these could be more advanced things they can do as the player improves.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage 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.

Good points. I think this is going to be a significant balance issue. The race needs to be powerful enough to attract players but not so powerful that they dominate.

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And when I think of them "walking", I envision the time-lapse footage of starfish traveling across the seafloor.

Yeah, that sounds cool.

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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?

I haven't really explored how the time manipulation power accumulates in their bodies, and how much power they have over time really impacts this. Let's assume that the more powerful the manipulation (slower or faster) the more energy it takes. If it's plentiful, they do it all the time; if it's sparse, they do it rarely (for defense and dangers, for example). I really like the hibernation ability and the idea that you might meet one who just left home but is unaware that wars have happened and nations have risen and fallen. In terms of the player doing this, though, it's a dicey subject because you're not going to be able to convincingly change art assets. You could have new ages, but they'd look like ages past.

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Original post by adventuredesign Well, because of the significant evolutionary period, organization would be almost automated, because if a species is around for that long a period of time, so then must their principles and values, as well as troubles and challenges, be well hashed out and solidified in an internal civilization sense.

Do we posit that over time our organizational principles improve? Or do we posit a more shambling, evolutionary (no direction but more life) approach? I like your idea more for a species of immortals, but to keep the tribal feel maybe they're more like this on a tribal level (giving rise to nomad cultures of advisors, diplomats and educators).

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Also, it is not likely they would have a heirarchal system such as marshalls and provosts, but more likely a collective inhibitor AI or collective consciousness self organizaing principle. To make such an evolved society so structured would be logically redundant. These people are highly self reliant and individualized, and, because they are all over space and also time, they are not likely to be predisposed to having a large homeworld or collective location of origin that is highly populated, since they are time farers, who would want to be showing up in real time at once place as this is contrary to both the time vagabond status and is really an earmark of an underevolved species. Rather then, this species is likely to be each it's own nation state, which in dramatic senses, is much more viable, as you can apply the human principle of power corrupts, and as time travelers and almost certainly incredibly technically advanced, they pretty much have absolute power, so if the human principle of absolute power corrupting absolutely applies universally, so it is true for this species. This gives you more dramatic choice in terms of characterization in the sense that each can be quite uniquely designed, offering huge contrast opportunities between each archetype of species you choose to portray.

I've pretty much spent my creative budget on common minds and AIs elsewhere, so I'm trying for a different approach here. You give me a VERY interesting possibility, though: The individual nation state is just a very cool concept. I'm starting to agree that hierarchical would not work for those wandering around space because they're in so many different states. Instantaneous communication could be a factor in some level of organization no matter where they are in the time line, though.

Maybe this system is begging for both ideas. Any organization would, to me, be a strong reaction to common threats (which the main baddies in the game, the mind-devouring Siegers, represent). But the ability to get out of synch with their brethren would counteract that.

One serious flaw in my world building is to oversimplify the moral dimension of the beings I create. This makes it impossible for races to be textured, and I end up with "heavies" and "saviors" which aren't very useful in terms of surprises and reusing game assets.

So what if they are a mix of academic tribes devoted to gathering knowledge and raising the young, and lone wanderers. Maybe the and individual nation-state personality becomes a kind of dementia or natural reaction to loss of the tribe. These Ceticians could be very much wildcards, characterized like powerful wizards in fantasy settings: Pursuing their own goals, seeking arcane mysteries, and possibly not really caring who gets hurt in the process.

The academic tribes would maintain powerful, well defended colonies and play the roles of advisor and councillor to the rest of the galaxy. These beings would still remember their wounding as part of their culture, and it would make them very motivated to create a just and non-victimizing universe.

The vagabonds (not a bad name btw) would reject this society and often seek resources among other races until they were powerful enough to build their roving "wizards towers," ships crewed by servants taking them around the galaxy on quests both moral and amoral.

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Original post by Lysander I don't understand. How is it related to whales?

I was going with Cetus, the whale constellation. (Hey, thanks for putting so much thought into this, it's helpful to be so rigorous).

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While did they not call them "Cetians?"

Why don't we call people from Moscow Moscowians rather than Muscovites? [wink] Or people from San Francisco San Franciscians? Apellations are rather arbitrary and need only stick.

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Original post by Wavinator You seem to have misunderstood (or perhaps I'm not completely clear on the mechanisms of what you're describing). Human speech travels at the speed of sound, about 700mph. That is fast enough for ancestral applications, like "Hey, there's a tiger behind you!"

Consider: What if humans were 100 times the mass they are now? Would tigers be a problem? You're positing a situation specific to the human frame of reference. Elephants, with the exception of man, have rendered predators irrelevant. Consider, also, that the same human mechanism does nothing to protect us from avalanches or flashfloods, though those have certainly been long term problems primitive humans have had to deal with.

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Additionally, it would be biochemically taxing to produce the quantities of pheromones required for a language at least as complex as English. And they would require huge storage bladders.

FWIW they have big bodies. Also, nothing is said about how quickly they synthesize new material. [smile]

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Original post by Wavinator It's true that human voices don't carry that far. However, my point is, how useful would that be? If there is another individual 100 yards away from you and you send a jet of pheromones at it on even a moderately windy day, the wind would have blown it off course--and that's assuming there are no solid objects interdicting. If the message was, to continue the example, "There's a tiger behind you!" how useful is it if the person with the tiger behind them never gets the message, but someone 200 miles away does?

When we hunt animals or try to evade them, or when we sail, we take note of the wind. In fact, an entire psychology and strategy has been developed around a force that we can't even see. Now if you're huge and impervious to all but natural or intelligent threats, have excellent senses and a fantastic brain, and used to a slow pace, you could develop a workable system of relaying messages (like ships honorbound to relay distress semaphors). You would develop a psychology and strategy around communications (perhaps requiring patience that would drive a human mad).

Intelligence and creativity find solutions. It is not so useful to say "this cannot be" but rather to say (as NASA theorists often do in creative exercises) "for this to be what must be true?"

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And are the pheromones more or less dense than the planet's air?

As master chemists, I see a wide range of possibilities open to them, from liquids to gases which can be manufactured in the chemical factories of their bodies.

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Original post by Lysander I'm talking about the normal surface matter of an M-class planet rocks and plants and such. Sound waves can go around or through them, but gases cannot, except by diffusion. Can you elaborate on the water distribution system? It seems implausible.

I think the intriguing article lucky_monkey posted helps a lot here. I'm now seeing even rivers being communication channels.

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Original post by Wavinator Perhaps I overstated that a bit; what I meant was that it would be very difficult for a primitive society to get it working, and thus it would be unlikely that they progress past that point in that area.

The problem is again here you seem to be positing human technological prerequisites. The Greeks had the steam engine in the form of wooden toys long before Europe went into the Industrial Revolution. The wheel was a toy in Aztec and Incan societies but never made it to being a wagon. We can't go by human standards here.

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It's relatively simple to convert sounds into electric signals and back again; as you say it basically just requires a membrane. It would require much more advanced technology to translate chemicals into electrical signals and even more advanced tech to translate it back and synthesize the required substances.

You see, I have a problem with the notion of simplicity. The forces that brought us the telephone where based on a huge foundation of different philosophies and interdependencies. We had drums for thousands of years, maybe even tens of thousands of years. Why was there no telephone before Alexander Graham Bell? Why did electricity take as long to puzzle out as it did?

The creativity and the abilities match the species, and I think there's a huge dose or randomization as well.

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Original post by Wavinator I don't follow...neurons are very, very close together.

Imagine big electrochemical networks (between habitats) being developed as an outgrowth of Mendel-style selective breeding.

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Original post by Wavinator There are numerous problems. For example, after I read a book, others can read the same copy. But if it were pheromones, it would be used up, and would require "reprinting."

Again, agreeing with lucky_monkey here: Once upon a time we dedicated THOUSANDS of people (naturally) to meticulously creating books. The people would spend good parts of their lives faithfully copying data by candlelight. They thought nothing of it.

If we tried to impose modern human sensibilities on these people, we'd find it preposterous that humans would sit, hunched over in the half dark, taking hours and hours to draw out a single paragraph. But they did it because the society, socialization and world views of the time described it as a laudable activity.

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Original post by Wavinator Any social species must be able to communicate in some way. It's axiomatic.

Again, agreeing with lucky_monkey here, communicate with themselves, but not necessarily with us. They could have been happily wandering their planet for eons with no greater threat than periodic climate change (which even humans were helpless before).

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We have a hard time communicating even with other humans from non-Western cultures, like the Japanese. Can you imagine trying to communicate with a species that has no emotions, no gender, can control time, communicates using chemicals, is capable of personality transfer, and is immortal?

:) What enabled Japanese and western societies to communicate? Commonalities, patterns and logic. The two were able to find common ground and build a system of constant responders ("this means rock" "this means sky") etc.

Now, I add in the Fading Immortals to the mix and they offer a wild variable, because they could be responsible for teaching their slaves a great many skills.

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Our minds are 100% the products of evolution, just like our bodies. Our perceptions and ideas are tainted. Alien intelligences would be likewise, but in completely different ways.

This might be a side note, but I notice humans have developed all sorts of maladaptions despite their evolutionary drive. Nuclear weapons able to destroy all life on the Earth being the best example.

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You seem to be so concerned with making them physically different that you have neglected the consequential differences in their psychology. You're taking one aspect of the human psyche and exaggerating it--exactly what Gene Roddenbery did.

I don't think so. Whenever you create a society you must build a bridge between the unknown and the known. The length of the bridge (how far they are apart) is in part a reflection of how far you think people are willing to go to understand a new species. You could throw out a bunch of different, irrational concepts that no one understands and call them alien, and they'd be useful only as NPCs at best.

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Also, it seems like you're saying that all individuals are similar--is this purposeful, since they are genetically identical?

No, all individuals aren't similar, but as I noted to adventuredesign I don't put enough work into morally varying the beings I create. There's no reason why genetic sameness should automatically result psychological sameness (I guess this is a nature nuture thing).

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Original post by Wavinator I advise against this. The "ancient, incredibly-advanced, now-fading or vanished race" is quickly becoming a sci-fi cliche.

I'm not too worried about this one. It fits very nicely with the storyline and I have so much ground to cover that I won't be able to swing a dead cat without hitting some cliche somewhere.

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And you didn't address my other questions.

Sorry, could you restate. We're covering a ton of info here.

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Quote: Original post by Wavinator 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. Will this be in-game? I have a limited though above-average knowledge of quantum mechanics and this doesn't seem possible. That's not really a criticism; lots of good sci-fi uses shaky science. I just want to make sure you're aware. Apologies if the problem is mine.

I think, especially with highly theoretical science like quantum mechanics, you get a lot of license to create. By no means am I going to have you messing around with virtual particles. [grin] (Reminds me of a game that made a very bad choice to have you, in game, sequence DNA-- very, very dull).

Basically, the above serves as backstory for why they can do what they can do. Most people won't mind that an i isn't dotted or a t isn't crossed, but if you have a better suggestion please advise.

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Original post by Wavinator Yet if none are dying, on a very long timeline--as you seem to be dealing with--there will still be a very large population. Furthermore, such a species would not be evolutionarily viable; in the species' ancestral environment, there would be some type of predation or something with the same effect. Therefore they would have to reproduce fairly often, and would retain the instincts to do so, as we have, unless they are purposefully excised.

Because of the asexual reproduction aspect I imagined a highly static environment at some point (don't know if it would have been dynamic in the beginning, but something would have caused them to grow big).

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Original post by Wavinator It's not proven mathematically because we don't have the data required to do that.

:) Creative license time.

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Given the this is supposed to be a very old race, you'll either have to add some such mechanism, or increase the amount of engineering the species has undergone, meaning that either they once had genetic recombination and it has since been removed, or that their development was guided by outside agents, probably these Faded Immortals.

I don't really have a problem with their development being guided by the Faded Immorals. I'm still not sure it would be necessary, though.

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Original post by Wavinator You might want to use xeno-archaeologists in that case.

It always strikes me as funny, the putting of xeno in front of everything in sci-fi. (heh, there's a cliche!)

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Original post by Wavinator I'm just not sure why this species would exert the energy and effort for such a relatively short time.

We're again back to psychology, which is vary shakey ground to stand on when you've got a sample of one.

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Original post by lucky_monkey [edit] removed some stuff that really had no point... and all that stuff about communication when a tiger is behind someone: these things can bend time

LOL! Thanks for cutting my work in half (nice article of pheremones, btw). The time control thing doesn't come until later, but it does offer an interesting explantion for why they're not exterminated once in contact with intelligent species. At that point, they become pretty formidable.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by Lysander Can you elaborate on the water distribution system? It seems implausible. Implausible?

Yes. The article you linked discusses chemical signals released into the species' ancestral environment--air for insects, water for marine life. It is my understanding that the Ceticians are land based. By what mechanism are the messages extracted from the water?

This article is actually a good source on the shortcomings of this mechanism of transmission that I had in mind when I questioned the plausibility:

Turbulent mixing results in the formation of large scale eddies that can themselves generate successively smaller eddies. This results in odour plumes that have been shown to be extremely heterogenous in nature (Moore and Atema, 1991). Away from the source, pheromone plumes are patchy rather than continuous streams.

A message with a greater-than-atomic level of complexity would be completely garbled in the water. It might be ok for extremely simple messages like the animals in the article use--basically a mating call for some of them--or something like "DANGER," but otherwise it would be like if a telephone random switched sounds around.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by Lysander Perhaps I overstated that a bit; what I meant was that it would be very difficult for a primitive society to get it working, and thus it would be unlikely that they progress past that point in that area. Are you saying that it was easy for humans to come up with speech?

Absolutely not. We're discussing the development of technological transmission of communication, not natural.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by Lysander It's relatively simple to convert sounds into electric signals and back again; as you say it basically just requires a membrane. It would require much more advanced technology to translate chemicals into electrical signals and even more advanced tech to translate it back and synthesize the required substances. Why? If the technology was chemically rather than mechanically based then how would there be a problem? At the point in their evolution where they develop electronics they would probably already have advanced knowledge of chemistry ( being more chemically focused than humans... )

What do you mean by chemically-based?

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by Lysander I don't follow...neurons are very, very close together. Neurons are based on the build-up of electrical potential at the dendrites. These beings could similarly be based on the build-up of certain chemicals (chemical potential rather than electronic) in the environment around them...it would (of course) be slower than a human brain, but no less effective.

You'll have to explain further. It sounds like it would actually be quite a bit less effective. And speed is a factor. The human brain is in a completely closed, controlled environment.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by Lysander There are numerous problems. For example, after I read a book, others can read the same copy. But if it were pheromones, it would be used up, and would require "reprinting." What's wrong with that? They don't think in terms of "books" do they? so they don't know what they're missing...

It doesn't matter if they think it terms of books or not. The point is that it must be replenished.

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Original post by lucky_monkey (anyway: maybe they have developed some kind of gustatory/audible/visual/stimulus-based form of their language?)

As nothing like that has been mentioned as far as I can see, I must assume they have not.

Original post by lucky_monkey

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Original post by Lysander Any social species must be able to communicate in some way. It's axiomatic.

It's also true that they can communicate...that's what we're discussing. The point was that the aliens don't have to be able to communicate with us.

Oh, if this is the case, then the original wording was unclear; what he meant was "What in your world view says that the universe MUST make species able to communicate with other species?" I read it a different way.

In this case, the answer to the question is nothing. That's one of my points--I don't think the Ceticians would be able to communicate with humans in any meaningful way.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Quote: Original post by Lysander Will this be in-game? I have a limited though above-average knowledge of quantum mechanics and this doesn't seem possible. That's not really a criticism; lots of good sci-fi uses shaky science. I just want to make sure you're aware. Apologies if the problem is mine. And "a species that has no emotions, no gender, can control time, communicates using chemicals, is capable of personality transfer, and is immortal" is? :)

Yes, it's certainly possible in the sense that I don't know of anything that would prevent it; I know what Wheeler foam/quantum foam is, which is what makes me question above.

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Original post by lucky_monkey Remember when the world's leading scientists thought that the world was round?

Do you mean flat, or are you being cute, since the world's not perfectly round?

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Original post by lucky_monkey and all that stuff about communication when a tiger is behind someone: these things can bend time

It is my understanding that they acquired that ability long after they had evolved. Therefore it is not revelant.

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A message with a greater-than-atomic level of complexity would be completely garbled in the water. It might be ok for extremely simple messages like the animals in the article use--basically a mating call for some of them--or something like "DANGER," but otherwise it would be like if a telephone random switched sounds around.

I would say that it is safe to allow molecular messages to be understood. The molecule would remain cohesive and could be theoretically any size. Imagine pheremone the size of DNA. Yes, entire messages could be created on one molecule. Yes entire books could be created. Yes, the blueprint for an entire living being could be transmitted.

Wavinator- perhaps their pheremones can be tagged with a personal address. oh no...[rolleyes] the new field of the day is pheremone cryptology.

About the tigers- Not too many trees worry about being eaten by tigers. Maybe they use there pheremones to *convince* would be predators that there is nothing tasty there. As a side note, its been shown that trees communicate about insect attacks using airborne pheremones.

When it really comes down to it- as long as there is suspension of disbelief then you will captivate your crowd. Nitpicking some of these points, while academically pleasing, will not make a better game.