Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

[crazygrox]

There are two miltary speakers, nine shangarim speakers, (three per and three shangarims) and four at-large.

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Ohhh, okay, I misread, I thought that was saying three total for three shangarim.
I'd missed that it was nine total, three for each shangarim.

 

[Leafy503]

The Vilani evolutionary path selected for a lack of curiosity. Being curious about shit was a great way to get killed on their homeworld in their Neolithic era, because it had a relative dearth of land predators but a lot of poisonous plants mixed in with the non-poisonous, meaning there was a strong pressure to stick with what you already knew once you'd found the first safe thing to eat.

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On the other hand, once the Vilani find something that works they refine it for thousands of years until it is very sleek and reliable.

While i like this fic i dont know much about GURPS. So can someone tell me why did the vilani invade us and other stuff about them

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The Vilani have a bureaucracy actually designed to make sure nothing gets done. With no outside rivals for thousands of years it makes sense. Sort of. Things were different when they met the Terrans.
Each interstellar war was basically a frontier governor trying to make a power play in "conquering the savages" so they could get more political capita.

 

[Sto Odin]

The other big worry is Vilani reverse-engineering. But if you look at historical examples, the time required for a big, insular empire to copy important innovations from elsewhere is typically measured in generations.

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Coming to this a little late, but I'm not sure how helpful historical analogies are in this case. The Vilani absolutely must have the scientific method in their cultural repertoire, even if they haven't been making a heck of a lot of use of it in the past millennium. Ming/Manchu China in touch with Europe didn't have science in their background at all (despite some extremely impressive individual accomplishments and the best pre-scientific engineering in world history). And sheer demographic math means the Vilani are going to have a lot of very intelligent minds to put to work on any particular problem they decide is important.

Of course, we can all agree that both the Confederation government and Sophia herself cannot remotely afford to assume that the Vilani will be hapless at reverse engineering. It hadn't occurred to me until just now, but the ultracapacitor will serve as a useful test case: how does the Imperium actually react to the appearance of a superior new technology? The next few years will give a realtime experiment -- admittedly, with a device that is basically civilian even though it probably has useful military applications.

 

[Leafy503]

It hadn't occurred to me until just now, but the ultracapacitor will serve as a useful test case: how does the Imperium actually react to the appearance of a superior new technology? The next few years will give a realtime experiment -- admittedly, with a device that is basically civilian even though it probably has useful military applications.

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Probably nothing. Innovation is a foreign concept to the current Vilani empire. At best you'd have some frontier governor discovering it and hiding it's existence from the others.

 

[Vrenze]

Probably nothing. Innovation is a foreign concept to the current Vilani empire. At best you'd have some frontier governor discovering it and hiding it's existence from the others.

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While innovation might be foreign, integration is clearly not as they successfully integrated multiple xenos and human branch cultures who all had if not outright unique tech ologies then unique means or methods of tech

 

[Leafy503]

While innovation might be foreign, integration is clearly not as they successfully integrated multiple xenos and human branch cultures who all had if not outright unique tech ologies then unique means or methods of tech

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The problem here is the Vilani's vast bureaucracy. By the time they would be able to even debate on idea of said tech decades would have passed. And that's not even mentioning if a regional governor of theirs decided to keep the tech's discovery for himself.

 

[Vrenze]

The problem here is the Vilani's vast bureaucracy. By the time they would be able to even debate on idea of said tech decades would have passed. And that's not even mentioning if a regional governor of theirs decided to keep the tech's discovery for himself.

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The same mentality that had the Vilani attack Earth for power could and likely would be used to acquire and use something as revolutionary as FTL communications. In fact might be a Causus Belli to get multiple OTHER regional governors to commit to kicking the filthy barbarians around to take their shiny toy for themselves to utilize and throw to the slow machine of reverse engineering. Yall keep talking like the Vilani are robots strictly adhering to "input = defined output" rather than merely more hidebound individuals than is Terran normal. They are not so stupid as to be incapable of taking leaps when necessary it seems, merely less likely to do so on their own volition. The story even says not to think of them as flowchart following fanatics. Hell, they probably have a procedure for utterly novel and revolutionary OCP which might be "throw pretty much everything out of priority that isn't in service of kill it and make it ours. Then heavily restrict use until properly understood, people who bring in such things are heavily rewarded." which given they are so damn good as to have socially engineered their society to work with up to a 5 year lag in communications, they likely have multiple OCP protocols generic though they may be.

 

[cliffc999]

I won't comment on the exact ins and outs of the Vilani system's ability to respond to OCPs, but I will point out that the story has already shown that the current leader of the Imperial Rim Province is a brilliant and experienced intriguer who has already proven that she's both bureaucratically and ethically flexible enough to outright betray her chain of command, let alone finesse the rulebook, in pursuit of what she sees as a necessary greater goal.

 

[Leafy503]

The same mentality that had the Vilani attack Earth for power could and likely would be used to acquire and use something as revolutionary as FTL communications. In fact might be a Causus Belli to get multiple OTHER regional governors to commit to kicking the filthy barbarians around to take their shiny toy for themselves to utilize and throw to the slow machine of reverse engineering. Yall keep talking like the Vilani are robots strictly adhering to "input = defined output" rather than merely more hidebound individuals than is Terran normal. They are not so stupid as to be incapable of taking leaps when necessary it seems, merely less likely to do so on their own volition. The story even says not to think of them as flowchart following fanatics. Hell, they probably have a procedure for utterly novel and revolutionary OCP which might be "throw pretty much everything out of priority that isn't in service of kill it and make it ours. Then heavily restrict use until properly understood, people who bring in such things are heavily rewarded." which given they are so damn good as to have socially engineered their society to work with up to a 5 year lag in communications, they likely have multiple OCP protocols generic though they may be.

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I doubt a single piece of tech, or even multiple, would galvanized the Vilani to do anything proactive. It says alot that the whole interstellar wars were seen as territorial disputes by the greater Vilani Imperium what with the cost being within a regional governor's budget.

I won't comment on the exact ins and outs of the Vilani system's ability to respond to OCPs, but I will point out that the story has already shown that the current leader of the Imperial Rim Province is a brilliant and experienced intriguer who has already proven that she's both bureaucratically and ethically flexible enough to outright betray her chain of command, let alone finesse the rulebook, in pursuit of what she sees as a necessary greater goal.

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She's a outlier seeing the Vilani's views on tech.

The Vilani civilization couldn't get started until the constantly-fighting Ancient juggernaut war machines finally ran down, about 200,000 years after the war ended. Aeons later, they have an instinctual fear of anything unfamiliar, to the point that they refuse to develop any technologies without spending multiple generations testing it. This even applied to ideological developments, resulting in a draconian bureaucracy that would send a North Korean planner into screaming fits - and this refusal to adapt to unforeseeable events enabled Earth to conquer them over the course of a century of repeated wars.

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Of course this works to her advantage considering how slow everything related to FTL is. A frontier war could be over and done before orders could even be issued.

 

[Blade4]

The problem being it does not matter how brilliant or talented they are if they are so caught up in their own issues and arrogance they cant see threats or so decentralized that a cancer can grow until it eats their heart and they can respond.

 

[ryune]

So I'd actually argue against the Vilani actually having that much luck with reverse engineering something like FTL comms as opposed to the ultracapacitor.

The Ultracapacitors are just the same thing they already have but in a more compact and generally better at it's job. At the end of the day? It's just chemistry at the end of the day and implementing them into the current tech would just be a matter of changing one part out for another in the production process. A minimal impact to the belt spaghetti for those of you who play factorio. Sure, it might take them a year or three to change over once the breakthrough has been made but that's just tooling issues on a single factory type.

Then we have something like FTL comms. We don't know yet if this is going to be more in line with Battletech HPGs or something slimmer with less range but use the source examples as the baseline. These things are something that an entire supply chain would need to be retooled to produce. It might well take them a decade or more to get even one into production provided they had an instant research button. And that's assuming that they do more than monkey see/monkey do for production.

And that is even ignoring that such an installation would be at the very least a city scale project on the scale of building a power plant or stadium and the fact that at the very least the planetary governor would need to approve it's construction and existence. And even that is discounting that the central authority wouldn't nix the construction on "public safety" concerns.

So yeah, I'd expect somewhere around 40-80 years for actual implementation beyond direct military stuff like ship board systems that a new ship would probably need to be built around.

Another thing to consider is the command loop. In modern times we are really used to being able to access a lot of information without even bothering to leave the house. But the Vilani are operating on a paradigm that is better compared to the days before electricity was widely used. All communication between worlds is at minimum on a 2 week round trip discounting time taken to formulate a response. That means that to get the maximum out of any reverse engineering effort... you are going to have to move everyone to the same star system at a minimum and the same city for the best results. For the Vilani to do this... they will waste even more time as a search goes out for scientists to work on it, and then convincing them it's worth their time, and then shipping them to the research site.

So yeah, I can realistically see the Vilani implementing the FTL comms being either surprisingly quickly but I can also see them taking 200+ years solely because of logistical issues. That 2 week turn around minimum is a real killer for any effort to actually get off the ground.

 

[cliffc999]

She's a outlier seeing the Vilani's views on tech.

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IIRC that's from the original GDW edition of Traveller, not the GURPS edition. The Traveller RPG has been through at least three entire separate companies holding the license, and while the outline and basic history of the setting remains unchanged through all three the level of detail has had, shall we say, a degree of variation.

My story uses the GURPS Traveller interpretation of the setting as a base, leavened with bits from the others as I find them useful.

Although even by that edition Sharik Yangila would be an outlier from the POV of Vilani genetics... because she's not of Vilani ancestry.

 

[Leafy503]

Although even by that edition Sharik Yangila would be an outlier from the POV of Vilani genetics... because she's not of Vilani ancestry.

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I mean considering all the different human variation scattered on different planets.... Grandfather really went to town on testing different environments where humans could live.

 

[cliffc999]

Let's not get into that one particular take on the Ancients, please. It's... disputed. (Canonical to at least one of the game lines, but still, disputed.)

 

[Sto Odin]

Let's not get into that one particular take on the Ancients, please. It's... disputed. (Canonical to at least one of the game lines, but still, disputed.)

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I'm glad to hear you say that, even if it already seemed unlikely the True Nature of the Ancients was going to show up as a plot point. Game lines always find it tough to make a revelation that lives up to a setting mystery, and that... wasn't one of the exceptions.

 

[litaispe]

The Ultracapacitors are just the same thing they already have but in a more compact and generally better at it's job. At the end of the day? It's just chemistry at the end of the day and implementing them into the current tech would just be a matter of changing one part out for another in the production process.

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In many ways, BattleTech material science is insanely divergent from 20th/21st century material science.

The "Ultracapacitors" are functionally as magical as the FTL comms. The energy density suggests suggest at a minimum they are some sort of super-conductive loop which stores free-electrons.

Trying to make them a chemical battery would suggest energy density greater than most high-yield explosives. Which aren't reusable never mind rechargable.

 

[Leafy503]

Let's not get into that one particular take on the Ancients, please. It's... disputed. (Canonical to at least one of the game lines, but still, disputed.)

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Sure. I was just pointing out there are alot of "humans transplanted on other worlds" that can be used. A bunch of little variations here and there.

 

[Waste]

Also note that a goodly chunk of the royalties are being paid in stock options instead of cash.

Stock options. In one of the Confederation's primary shipbuilders and defense contractors. Shortly before the start of either the Fourth Interstellar War, the introduction of a revolutionary new form of jumpdrive, or both.

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We found the solution, she can just pay the vilani to go away.

 

[Cheetored20]

We found the solution, she can just pay the vilani to go away.

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ah yes, the cause of, and solution to all lifes problems. CAPITILISM

....poor Jim Cary tho. he went to space to escape it.

 

[Narwhale]

ah yes, the cause of, and solution to all lifes problems. CAPITILISM

....poor Jim Cary tho. he went to space to escape it.

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Zofia: "I'll pay you one hundred dollars to fuck off."

 

[WyldCard4]

About to dive into this. Is GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars the best reference material for this to keep handy/look at first, or is there another of the apparently many versions of the RPG that serve as a better intro to the setting?

 

[LordMelvin]

While i like this fic i dont know much about GURPS. So can someone tell me why did the vilani invade us and other stuff about them

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It's worth noting (other people have answered your actual question up thread from here) that this setting is the classic sci-fi rpg world of *Traveller*, and it being the 'GURPS' version is a matter of mostly relatively fiddly details.

GURPS (an acronym for *Generic Universal Role-Playing System*) is a tabletop gaming system that was specifically designed to be flexible enough that your gaming group can play any story you want using it without having to learn much in the way of new game rules, beyond making sure everyone in the group knows if their characters can use 'magic' or 'action movie' type perks and skills. It has a huge range of settings available, in all kinds of genres, but unlike certain other roleplaying games (cough-dnd-cough-forgotten-realms-cough), is mostly devoid of any 'core' world that players would expect to be in - 4th edition technically added a core world, but it's just a bunch of portals to different genres.

Anyway, the key part of the setting name is 'Traveller' - GURPS just tells you which version of Traveller we're in, and GURPS without 'Traveller' (or 'Bunnies&Burrows' or 'Supers' or 'Autoduel') is as useful for describing the setting of the story as naming a travel destination 'New' or 'South' - New Brunswick and New Delhi are pretty distinct, despite the partial shared name, as are South Korea and South Dakota.

 

[BigBad]

Illustrative of Vilani culture, we present the Vilani version of the classic lightbulb joke, taken from TV Tropes:

Q: How many Vilani does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Six.

1. One from the ladder carriers' guild of the maintenance bureau to bring the ladder in and set it up.
2. One from the ladder holders' guild of the same bureau to steady the ladder once it is set up.
3. One from the clerks' guild of the government bureau to make sure the proper forms are filled out for changing light bulbs and to pay the proper fee to the energy bureau.
4. One from the lightbulb-changers' guild of the energy bureau to change the bulb.
5. One from the wick-trimmers' guild because it is traditional.
6. One from the supervisors' guild because his presence is required by law whenever five or more workers are engaged in the same task.

 

[Leafy503]

Basically a rundown of the two human races introduced.

Spoiler: Being Terran

Even though Terra has come under the unified rule of the Terran Confederation, Terran society still exhibits a lot of diversity. It's difficult to define a set of features that most Terrans have in common. Of course, those few Terrans who are likely to go on interstellar adventures are likely to have unusual personal histories– the community of Terran adventurers does have a number of features in common.

Innovation
The last few centuries have been hard on Terra's traditionalist subcultures. Waves of social, economic, and technological change have shattered many communities that would have preferred to cling to ancient ways of life. Although a few such communities still survive, most of today's Terrans are at least able to adapt to change. Naturally, those Terrans who are likely to leave the homeworld for interstellar adventure are the most adaptable, even creative, of their kind. Many of them are entrepreneurs, aggressively seeking out new opportunities to make a fortune. Others are social or political misfits, who wish to escape the heavy hand of Confederation rule and set up a new community on another world.

Militarism
Since the beginning of the Interstellar Wars, the Terran Confederation military has become one of the dominant institutions of Terran life. Every adult Terran is required by law to serve a short term in public service, and many serve in the military during this period. Most citizens have either served in the regular military forces, or are close to someone who has. This is particularly true of Terrans who have the opportunity to seek adventure among the stars – prior military service is almost a requirement for many starship-crew or colonials jobs. Individual Terrans vary in their attitudes toward the military, of course. There are very few rabid Terran imperialists, out to tear down the Vilani by any means necessary. There are also very few absolute pacifists. Most Terrans, especially those with prior service, view the military as a necessary, but not always positive, institution.

Independence
Most of the homeworld's citizens are at least tolerant of the Terran Confederation's rule – they may not agree with all of the Confederation's policies, but they support the Confederation as the best way to ensure Terran survival. Those who disagree are among the most likely to move to the colonies, or to take a job involving travel far from Terra. As a result, members of the Terran interstellar community are likely to be much more independent and disrespectful toward authority than citizens back on the homeworld. This independence doesn't mean that all Terran adventurers are rebels. Most colonists and starship crewmen are willing to give the Confederation their loyalty, especially when directly employed by the government. However, that loyalty isn't likely to be unquestioning or absolute. The colonist or crewman is always thinking for himself. He prefers to avoid government interference when off-duty, and may eventually put his own interests ahead of those of the Confederation.

Spoiler: Being Vilani

Across thousands of Imperial worlds, Vilani tend to share certain common traits. Even Vilani khagarii have the same basic psychology.

Tradition
Vilani are devoted to tradition. Whenever a Vilani must make a decision, his first thought is usually given to what other Vilani have done in similar situations, what the customs of his family and caste require, and soon. Vilani rarely rely on their own initiative to solve problems, and can struggle when the situation is genuinely new. On the other hand, Vilani gain confidence from the vast body of tradition they can draw upon. Creative and innovative thinking are strongly discouraged by Vilani society. Those who insist on applying new ideas are regarded as a danger to society, attacking the traditions that hold civilization together. A Vilani who persists in being innovative is often treated as criminally insane. Tradition covers Vilani technology, standardizing it almost everywhere in the Imperium. Tradition also freezes Vilani technological development in place; the standard Imperial toolset has seen no significant changes in over 2,000 years. Vilani art, music, and literature are also firmly grounded in tradition – a present-day Vilani artist will often produce works in a style thousands of years old.

Pragmatism
No matter their caste or subculture, the Vilani are very pragmatic people. They don't waste time on abstract theories or unattainable ideals – they are interested only in doing what works. To them, the real universe is much more important than the world of ideas. Vilani are administrators and engineers, not philosophers or scientists. To some extent, Vilani pragmatism is related to their insistence on tradition. Methods, technologies, and ideas become traditional once they have been proven to work over long periods of time. Vilani innovators are regarded as dangerous because they proceed without being able to prove that their innovations will do more good than harm.

Community
Vilani are strongly community-oriented. Vilani are certainly capable of individualistic behavior, but their society trains them to always measure their actions by their effect on the community. A Vilani defines his self-image in the context of his family, his caste, his work team, his home city, his home world, and the Imperial system as a whole. He regards his prosperity as depending on that of the group. He expresses his ambitions by demonstrating that he is better able to advance the group's interests than anyone else. One expression of this group thinking is the Vilani attitude to work. Vilani are diligent and efficient workers. A Terran might expect to spend a third of his day on the job; a Vilani thinks nothing of spending half of his day, and will often work longer hours than that. Vilani enjoy their recreational time, but to them life isn't about having fun – it's about working hard to make the community healthy and prosperous.

The Vilani prefer communal decision-making. The notion of the autocrat, the lone decision-maker who is subject to no other authority, is alien to Vilani thought. Even the Vilani Emperor is simply the chair-man of the ruling council of the Imperium. At all levels of Vilani society, from the Imperium down to the single family, decisions are reached by groups who meet and work out consensus. The process is often slow, but once a decision is reached it has the committed support of all members of the group.

Vilani communities are held together by codes of courtesy; these codes can be extremely elaborate, especially among the "High Vilani" castes that fill out the aristocracy and the ranks of senior administration. Vilani courtesy helps maintain harmony within the community, and helps individuals to keep their expression of emotion within the bounds set by tradition. Even bitter enemies are unfailingly polite to one another when they must interact socially.

 

[cliffc999]

The Vilani prefer communal decision-making. The notion of the autocrat, the lone decision-maker who is subject to no other authority, is alien to Vilani thought. Even the Vilani Emperor is simply the chair-man of the ruling council of the Imperium.

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And this is simultaneously true despite the Shadow Emperor having, legally, unquestioned authority... because to the Vilani way of thought, it is axiomatic that a senior administrator pay due consideration to the advice of his staff before issuing a ruling. While sometimes a hard decision that pisses people off just has to be made - after all, the Vilani live in the real world - it's only supposed to be made after all attempts to find a workable compromise have failed. The Vilani management castes have not only heard the one about "Never give an order you already know won't be obeyed", they think it's a truly brilliant idea... for the Vilani management castes.

Yes, this is a massive disconnect from how they treat non-Vilani cultures. But that also makes sense (to them) - the Vilani have painstakingly worked out the best way for societies to ensure long-term stability and prosperity, which means all the rest of those non-Vilani barbarian cultures are doing it wrong. And so they need to be brought into line before they can possibly do substantial harm to the Vilani way of life with their bad behavior.

 

[Anti-No]

"Let us start the War for Peace!'* ...okay, I've heard worse in the news, so that tracks.

* Yes we had peace... but it could have been interrupted by war. Much better to guarantee war by starting it right now! For peace. Yes.

 

[Leafy503]

The first 8-ish interstellar wars basically ended after each side pounded each others navies to scrap.
The Terrans withdrew because all their fleets were gone, the Vilani withdrew because their money transaction from the bank was too slow.

 

[Blade4]

So crazy idea but is there any reason for Sophia to not tell the Confed the truth at this point? Under observation and and lie detector and sensors buy something material that cant possible come from their universe or gives her obvious powers or changes and then spell out the truth that something is augmenting her and gibing her missions and her big one right now is preventing the confed defeat in the 4th war.

 

[Organmonkey]

So crazy idea but is there any reason for Sophia to not tell the Confed the truth at this point? Under observation and and lie detector and sensors buy something material that cant possible come from their universe or gives her obvious powers or changes and then spell out the truth that something is augmenting her and gibing her missions and her big one right now is preventing the confed defeat in the 4th war.

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There's not a benefit to doing so and telling them risks an info leak or trying to force her to produce stuff like the bioweapons she destroyed the nanos at the though of.

 

[Blade4]

There's not a benefit to doing so and telling them risks an info leak or trying to force her to produce stuff like the bioweapons she destroyed the nanos at the though of.

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Yeah thing they are not stupid and after she starts producing miracle tech they will look back at that and ask themselves what did the girl with every reason to hate the Vilani and want them dead make in that bio lab that so horrified her when she saw the end result burned it and apparently refused to touch biology since?