Node System Discussion 2, Electric Boogaloo

[Ray of Meep]

It's been a few months since we last talked about the Node system. Since then, our writing philosophies and how we coordinate our writing each other has matured, so it's worth it to revisit this subject and make any changes necessary. Below is what we already have discussed and written on the subject. Some of the people involved in the original discussion have since become inactive.

The Tree of Life

noblesofnull.com

Node System and Magic Q&A

Put all your questions and concerns about how magic and the node system works here. Here are some wiki articles to review first: https://noblesofnull.com/wiki/magic https://noblesofnull.com/wiki/the_node_system

noblesofnull.com

 

[Ray of Meep]

Reviewing what we have, it's implied that the node system, "The Tree of Life", relies on sapient will when approaching a node, after which travel just happens between nodes. It could be a wormhole, could be entering an entirely new dimension. I'd like to keep this aspect up to interpretation. This is one aspect where the less is explained, the better, or that the true nature of the node system is explored in plots organically.

After discussing the Vrexul and Theradectans in a GM conversation, more questions of the node system have been raised, which I'm happy with. In particular: how expansive is the node system, really? Because if the Vrexul, Theradectans, and Aos Si are all mere regional powers, all living in the 600 light year diameter, this doesn't really prove or disprove the node system's stretch across the entire galaxy. It could just be a megastructure constrained to the local area that takes up half of a percent of a percent of the galaxy. These questions leave the setting open to expansion, but it doesn't require it. It also raises further questions of the Fermi Paradox, which is a background theme of the setting as well.

 

[Uso]

I'm mostly working on this from the perspective of my plot. I want to have a general idea for what's going on in the mega-scale but I'm pretty ok with leaving stuff to explore later.

Maybe the Tree of Life was created by the Aoi Si, or maybe it was just utilized them, but I think regardless of the history of it, the Aoi Si were the ones to turn it off to avoid being wiped out. Mega-high-level-magic is something that is rather abuseable and its use was creating multiple end-times scale events that the Aoi Si civilization may have been able to contain one at a time but couldn't possibly contain when they occurred all at once.

And from here on out there are spoilers for possible upcoming antagonists for the ED:

Spoiler: Edward Deming Spoilers1

Two of the magic antagonists I had in mind was

1) someone who has just been using magic to copy and hive-mind themselves, with their magical body-production making them a threat to other people who now ALSO need to use the same body-duplicating magic to keep up. Naturally this spirals out of control until magic is turned off so that these hive-minds die.

2) Healing-Spell-gone-wrong that just turns-off death in an increasingly large area. Bacteria, cancer cells, etc just don't die anymore and start drawing on magic for sustenance. This pink-goo just starts blobing over the area and expanding through the node system to other planets.

3) ALIYUMS: I 100% imagine the ancient Aoi-Si have run into the Aliyums at some point. The Aoi-Si have magic and FTL and all that other stuff while the Aliyums ONLY have technology that is sorta plausably near-future just really well developed. I imagine the Aoi-Si easily defeated the Aliyums planetside for hundreds of years until their planets just started exploding with no warning. The Aliyums response to these attacks with no real way to attack back due to the timescale involved was to build a giant mirror array around a star to fling RKVs at Aoi-Si worlds at near lightspeed.... of course it would take hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years for the attack to arrive.

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Further, I kinda like the idea of it being an Echoni inside of a Grawla-Iconman to be the one to re-enable the system by kinda-accident, starting with forming a basic bridge between a few worlds starting on Hawking and then having the system start to gradually power back up across the Galaxy.

 

[Ray of Meep]

Regarding the last point in your spoilers, I'd like the node-collapse's extent be up for debate at the moment. Was it just a local shutdown? Or is it galactic? Is the node system even galactic spanning anyways?

I also see the potential of incorporating the node system into ideas of the Fermi Paradox. Even with this advanced technology, or physical reality of the local universe, are civilizations doomed to only spread across a few star systems before they are contained or sent back to the dark ages by unknown forces, both internal and external? What does this mean for humanity's future? In recent memory (by 25th century standards), humans have got to be pretty confident in their eternal survival now that they've achieved FTL travel and advanced colonization technology.

 

[Acewing13]

Well, the Theradectans have been/are being written as if they had access to nodes throughout their history, besides the splinter group on Outremer. And as far as I know, the Vrexul are written with the same assumption?

 

[ParoxysmalBirth]

Well, the Theradectans have been/are being written as if they had access to nodes throughout their history, besides the splinter group on Outremer. And as far as I know, the Vrexul are written with the same assumption?

I never quite figured out exactly how the nodes play into their lore, but I'm thinking the Primordial Voice/Blood Axis have control of a few at least with their enemies having a far lesser number.