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Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

Reader mode
Wonderful to see the continued, I always thought it had immense promise, and I was on the edge of my seat as the major tech deviations from the baseline setting were just about to pop off when it died.

This was a wholly unknown setting for me, and quite interesting, I'm going to have to take a day or so to reread the whole thing before devouring the new chapter, but given the historic quality of your work cliffc999, I have no doubt it's a masterpiece, thank you so much for deciding to share more of your words with us again.
 
Duquette7 said:
I was on the edge of my seat as the major tech deviations from the baseline setting were just about to pop off when it died.
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Yeah, that's the point where I always choke when writing one of these fics. My worldbuilding brain goes into decision paralysis.

Still, I'll never grow as a writer if I don't at least try to do some of the things I'm not great at, so, here we go again.
 
Nice, glad to see this is back. I remember liking this, but I really have to re-read to remember all of it, though I really do get what you said beforehand, about the problems in being able to continue worldbuilding past a certain stage in story development.

I've thought about it before as a writing exercise with concepts like the Celestial Forge, and though there are a few good avenues to go down that aren't solved directly or immediately with overwhelming force (internal struggles, cultural adjustment to new technology, people misappropriating said new technology and using it against the MC, etc.) I've also thought that other viewpoints would be a pretty good way to circumvent that. Have Private Joe Schmoe react to suddenly being given a big-ass cannon, or looking at his buddy who got augments and is suddenly a terminator on the battlefield. Or alien reactions to these developments, with a mix between the soldiers having to fight against these abrupt increases in technology and their scientists trying to figure out how they work, and having some new insights into their own techbase as a consequence, which lets them not be rolled over as easily.

I feel like this approach comes with a few downsides as well, though, since it kinda goes against a normal story's progression, with the protagonist becoming less of the hero of the story, and more like a plot device around which the setting unfolds and progresses, though it could be a cool premise.

Also, I don't know if you've read it, but a really cool comic recently came out which shows very good ways to write OP characters called 'The Power Fantasy'. Not as applicable to this story specifically, but I think it shows a good way in which situations with OP characters can still be interesting and tense, especially if there are other characters around the same strength level.
 
thanks for the chapter its been a while, hope you are back. I understand why her invention pace is slow, but I would love to see her building out her own personal space. and not just for the military. maybe a speeder bike or a super car, or maybe just a nanny bot. something fun that she can tinker with instead of all the stress building.
 
I really enjoy this fic but I feel like you've set yourself a land-mine, between all the retroactive changes and the outside perspectives you've done with the Academic committee, it feels like there's either a paradox that happened somewhere that invalidated some of what you've written, or somebody is going to really examine her and mistake her as a spy or something
 
From my understanding, having jump-9 ships and FTL comms risks winning too much, and crushing the Vilani in a war badly enough that the central government takes notice while they still have the superior capacity to be able to crush the Terrans in return with overwhelming numbers.
But the MC has the celestial forge and can probably get ahead of the problem. Hopefully.
 
cliffc999 said:
Author's Note: It lives!
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Yes, this one was my favourite! I remember reading that Shadowrun Unconquerable fic then basically everything in your snippets thread (the villainess snippets were good fun and got me to listen to all the Tangled Ever After songs; and the Girl Genius snippets were almost enough to get me to fall into that fandom) and got to this fic when it started. I vibed immediately with Sofia's anxious empathy and care and principles. Then I took a break from reading for a bit for exams and when I came back, the fic had died and the murdering chapter had disappeared!

Anyhoo, so glad to see this is back! I basically jumped to the end of the chapter to see if this was a return or a publishing of unfinished drafts. Now I get to reread the fic again, with new stuff at the end; brilliant!
 
cliffc999 said:
building a jump-9 ship
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I'm sorry, jump-what? The Third Imperium doesn't even have jump-9. I'm surprised her reward for boosting tech in a military significant fashion didn't trigger here.
cliffc999 said:
honest-to-god FTL comms.
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And then I got here, and realised why she didn't. For people who don't know Traveler and didn't get it from the Forge saying so, this breaks everything. Communication in Traveler is handled by mail ships between planets, because it's faster than any other option. And she just broke that.
 
... well, this is a surprise.

I kinda know how you feel, there isn't really a whole lot published about this time period in TRAVELER. Most of what we get in the rulebooks is basically a paragraph talking of ancient history centuries past.

So you coming up with what you have is massively impressive.

An idea is maybe have one these super jump ships they are developing now let them meet an actual alien species (could borrow from your favorite media?). Because there are a few sentient aliens in TRAVELER. There are the Hiver, off Coreward, and the Droyne which are scattered in a ton of worlds all over... though I think all of them (except when citizens of another polity and uplifted to that tech level) are stuck at Paololithic and early civilizations like pre- early Kingdom Egypt.
 
I really need to re-read this from the start. I re-read the previous chapter as I couldn't recall what fic this was.

Oddly, what I enjoyed the most about this chapter is the MC getting a new best friend. Well, she's not there yet, but if she sticks around, she's got the position by default. The MC needed some social interaction outside of coworkers and her parents.

The MC was under some extreme personal stress and was risking burnout.

She was right that she hadn't really invented anything yet.

She has a nice large tech database with battle tech stuff that'll take her awhile to push out. Thinking about it, she won't "need" any other tech base. The real hard part is getting all that tech out of her head and spread out there. Uplifting and changing her faction.

My only exposure to this setting is this fic. Its amazing how both sides seem about the same. They've both setup systems for stability and all that. The Terrans need tech advantages and haven't been around in space and spread out for thousands of years.

Of course, they want their explore out and colonize a sector of space phase. In many ways, they aren't socially ready to switch their thinking to Vilani POV. They are getting there. If they were left alone for a few centuries and survived a civil war without the Vilani being there as the big scary neighbors, then they might have come around.

The Vilani really should have gone the PR route, shipped over their TV shows/culture, and gently introduced the Terrans to their massive amount of laws. Then they should have stepped back and waited for a century or two. The Terrans have had little choice but to be culturally assimilated with more exposure to the Vilani and given time.

I could see the Vilani giving the Terrans plenty of time to go through the phases and collapse independently. They should be able to model the Terran society and plot about when it should occur. Wait another few decades and see if the Terrans are ready now to join the Vilani's POV of social stability. The Vilani should have that down to an art form and not need to send any warships. They've got the cultural advantage.

Oddly, I could see the Terrans run through and "conquer" the Vilani for a few decades/centuries, but the Vilani social engineering is far too deep and they won't be changing their POV any time soon.

I'd like to see the Terrans expand where the Vilani can't even go. They can fight a war with their current ships and win with FTL coms. They can explore and colonize new systems with the new FTL ships. Ignore the Vilani, and I could see the Terrans expand/colonize like crazy to attempt to outnumber the Vilani in the long run.

I'd love to see the look on their faces when they find out in a few centuries that the Terrans have expanded to a few hundred thousand worlds and completely surround the Vilani empire. Sighs, they've got BT tech, they'd end up splitting into different factions and fighting wars, barely caring/noticing that the Vilani exist.

At that point, I could see the Vilani pretending really hard that the Terrans don't exist. They told folks not to explore/advance for reasons!

At that point, I could see the Vilani becoming the good guys, and trying to figure out a way to socially engineer the mess of the Terran branch of humanity into some form of stability rather than the constant wars. I could also see given a few centuries of BT style wars going on, that large sections of the Terrans would rather have the Vilani than the Terran great houses running things.

The Terrans would be rather lucky if they could keep the Terran Confed around for a few centuries and a few thousand new colonies.
 
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