Bay 12 Games Forum

I feel like we can drop the 40k part of the title until after our civilization starts researching FTL travel, since it's more or less "an evolving pre-sapient alien race is you" right now.

Q: Are all 'psionics' in this setting strictly related to warp phenomena?

I want to propose a mixed scenario, in which there is a mobile larval stage similar to wierd's plan, that during "mating" – between 3 units to start with, can evolve more and bigger configurations later if competition allows – the mating ritual forms physical bonds between units, cementing them together into a tube. Take the stronger, tougher dorsal layer of wierd's plan as the foundation for an outer shell while the delicate manipulators of the ventral section end up on the inside. This 'adult form' would have the combined neural capacity and memories of all participants, enabling it to be "smarter" than individual larvae. It thus has the capacity to use the now-internal manipulators for complex tasks no larva could perform alone.

Back to the psychic question: the adult's increase in capability comes at cost of mobility now that all the former legs are stuck in one mass. (I expect some creatures will evolve to leave the tips free for active defense, but then they are pointing every which way and the ones in contact with the ground/seafloor cannot shift the whole quickly.) It would be handy if these adults eventually find a means of communication with their more mobile youth. To ensure they get a steady food supply delivered, for instance.

If straight psionics are out something else could still substitute. Perhaps our electro-silicon tubes are covered in natural LEDs to flash messages. Or pheromones if you want to be boring.

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Unset Symmetry (0):
Tubular Symmetry (1): Chaoskl21
Paired Symmetry (1): Taricus
Triune Symmetry (1): MetalSlimeHunt
Further Symmetry  (Trigonal-60deg radial, truncated bilateral, "Weird's Symmetry") (7): Weird, Madman, Piratejoe, Glass, IncompetentFortressMaker, Kilojoule Proton, NG
Mixed Life Cycle – wierd's symmetry -> Tubular (1): mightymushroom
P.S. Also tried to recalibrate votes since so many came up while working. Apologies if I got yours wrong.

Quote from: wierd on June 11, 2020, 01:00:29 pm

It also means that if we develop FTL travel, ours will be PURELY technological, meaning it does not require going through the warp. (though it might be that we stumble on an arm of the webway, and reverse engineer creating a wormhole network of our own. again through purely technological means.)

Which isn't necessarily a good thing, since it would likely either be slower or take a lot more resources dedicated to our exotic FTL.

I am going to vote for boring triangles.

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Unset Symmetry (0):
Tubular Symmetry (1): Chaoskl21
Paired Symmetry (1): Taricus
Triune Symmetry (2): MetalSlimeHunt, Nirur
Further Symmetry  (Trigonal-60deg radial, truncated bilateral, "Weird's Symmetry") (7): Weird, Madman, Piratejoe, Glass, IncompetentFortressMaker, Kilojoule Proton, NG
Mixed Life Cycle – wierd's symmetry -> Tubular (1): mightymushroom


...just curious, given silicon, what would the Necrons (and Tyranids, for that matter) actually think of us?

Quote from: Ardent Debater on June 10, 2020, 04:37:29 pm

The trade-off with silicon is that its structural composition offers strength and durability that would be difficult to match without significant adaptions from carbon, but makes it difficult to survive indefinitely on carbon-based biospheres, as the carbon is incompatible with the digestive system designed to interface with a silicon-base. There's nothing preventing a silicon species from making appendage-lengths onto an alien planet or even breathing the atmosphere, if the chemicals their respiratory systems require are present in reasonable amounts, but a silicon species can't settle a world with a carbon-based biosphere without first replacing it with their own silicon system or finding a workaround.

They are rocks, yes, but they are living, respirating organisms and would have as much difficulty colonizing a barren stone as a carbon species. The problem is that carbon will have already established a near-monopoly on habitable worlds in the same orbital range as the species' home-world by the time the species is likely to reach a spacefaring state, which requires an additional step to the [Planet_Name]forming process. Neither are inherently more or less difficult, their biospheres are just incompatible. If anything, a silicon species would have an easier time handling some extremes of temperature, and withstanding a carbon environment isn't made any harder by their much more durable forms, but sustaining their alien chemistry indefinitely is where the complications arise.

Ok, 1. you really don't need to put all of your OOC comments in spoilers, and 2. ...is just eating rocks and metals not an option? I'm pretty sure there's lithovores even on Earth.
Or at least, figuring out how to process rocks and the like into edible forms.

Having completely incompatible chemistry would *mostly* be vulnerable to, say, reactions that proceed differently in the wrong kind of atmosphere. For example, something that lives in a freakishly lithium-rich environment might have *serious* problems entering an oxygen atmosphere when their body's own chemistry is turned against them.

A funny thing is that although the human body reacts badly to living transplants, it actually reacts fairly well to cybernetics made with proper materials. Look up the results of Kevin Warwick's Project Cyborg experiments for more, but the short of it is that the nervous system and the brain both reacted with "sure, I guess" when hooked up to an electrode array controlling a machine. The Mechanicus may not be so far-fetched as you'd think...

Not that this helps us, unless this species gets the same kind of cybernetic adaptability.

autochemotrophs are a thing.  They mostly live in the deep ocean in hot water vents that are filled with reduced sulfur compounds, but in an irradiated environment, a strong scouring UV source that breaks atomic bonds down (and thus produces energetic free radicals that can then be used for metabolic purposes) could enable a plethora of inorganic substances to be used as chemical energy sources.  It would mean that our biology would be very high-energy resistant, and thus would need pretty strongly chemically active materials to use as food. (Strong acids, highly reactive alkaline earth metals, corrosive gasses like chlorine, etc) that form very strong bonds, and have strong bond energies. (Otherwise the solar radiation would degrade our organism as well!)

I am thinking this:

Silicon based life that uses chlorine instead of oxygen. Perhaps with silicon tetrachloride + water reaction to produce silicon oxide and hydrochloric acid as waste product.  The water should be the result of internal chemistry from the decomposition of minerals, via UV radiation, in a process similar to photosynthesis. (in that a high energy radiation source is harnessed as an energy source to produce substances inside a lifeform. In this case, it is the harsh high energy particles and UV light from our star.) This would allow us to produce a silicondioxide exoskeleton, (or a complex of compound silicates to exploit chirality and crystal structures to create something both flexible and highly resistant to radiation, external sources of water, and mechanical attack)

This kind of metabolism would enable us to have a ready supply of "Highly deadly" waste we could employ against ordinary lifeforms. 

Since chlorine is so reactive, suggest we consume it in the form of rare-earth salts, and to have evolved to consume such salts in crystallized form, as well as adaptations (evolutionary) to consume strongly saline water (despite the toxicity of the water.)

Flavor description: Exoskeleton replete with microscopic ridges and structures between secreted silicate mineral crystal type boundaries, which capture and absorb high energy photons, and convert that energy directly into internal electrical potentials. (Photovoltaics, and the like.)  (see also, this article about how adding these to silicon based photo cells improves their performance.) This would make our appearance very "Prismatic", similar to the "Structural colors" found in blue insects, or on peacock feathers.

Basically-- We eat salt, and rocks.  We exhale/urinate concentrated hydrochloric acid solution as a metabolic biproduct.  We utilize the rare-earth minerals and silicon compounds in the surrounding regolith, along with the ever-present high energy radiation from our star to perform this chemistry.  Our internals are liquid solutions suspended in silicon chloride solution. Water is theoretically toxic to us, but our exoskeletons prevent exposure from outside sources being harmful to us, and our digestive systems produce water in trace amounts as a biproduct, necessitating their resistance to it.  We do not respire in the normally conventional way; We expel a vapor/mist as a waste product, but do not inhale.  We metabolize some of the water our primary energy consumption mechanism produces to create silicon rubbers, and other flexible materials for our internal body structures. Our exoskeletons are thick, and ornate in appearance, with a shimmering prismatic quality, due to their use as both environmental protection and as an energy harvesting organ.  Nanostructures in the exoskeleton force lower energy photons to be re-emitted as higher energy ones, (shorter wavelengths) by acting as naturally occuring nanoscopic waveguides. To humans, our appearance is black and iridescent.   Our optical systems are adapted to use higher frequencies of light than humans. We utilize light in the ultraviolet and Xray spectra. We appear translucent to other members of our species.

Downside:  We *NEED* the high energy environment to survive.  Being naked in space poses little trouble to us aside from temperature and internal pressure regulation; we do not breathe, and the harsh, unfiltered radiation of a star is our food. Requirement of chloride minerals limits our ability to move to naked planetoids. (Without an atmosphere to help recycle those compounds via reaction with a local regolith, we would quickly run out of metabolic material and starve to death, despite being surrounded by otherwise edible rocks. HCl is a gas, and would escape into space without a suitably strong gravity well, and atmosphere.) As such, we still need "Biospheres", and space suits.

So wait a moment the fungus Orks, the Skynet kill all organic robotic Necrons, and the Flood-knock off Nids (I simply jest ) are all immune to Chaos because they don’t have any emotions and whatnot; so would it be possible to create a Silicion species that can’t feel or display any emotion besides pure calculating logical thinking result in them having the possibility of being immune or gaining a high level of resistance level to being corrupted?, that just seems to make the Rocky-bois the better pick imo.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/9txkrz/because_chaos_can_corrupt_anything_with_emotion/

Silicon entities might still produce chemicals analogous to hormones, thus giving the ability to feel emotions. (Hormones govern our emotions. To me, it wouldn't be farfetched for silicon based species to have similar processes)
On the note of emotions, why do animals on Terra have them? I'm a human and don't really know why we have them in the first place. Like, I know other animals have them too, My question is why emotions evolved in animals on Terra in the first place, and why they stayed.

Code: (Biochemistry Vote) [Select]

Carbon (1): MetalSlimeHunt
Silicon (3): NG, IncompetentFortressMaker, Madman
Something Exotic (0):

I mean, I kind of want to suggest that multiple forms of life somehow arose on our planet so we could have carbon competing with silicon or whatnot. Also, I'm now regretful we didn't have exotic materials or whatever it was that would've allowed us to be made of something exotic.

Carbon.
We're isolated so we don't need the combat strength, and difficult FTL means our colonies are going to be hard enough to start without the great effort terraforming for silicon life would need need.

Code: (Biochemistry Vote) [Select]

Carbon (2): MetalSlimeHunt, Nirur
Silicon (3): NG, IncompetentFortressMaker, Madman
Something Exotic (0):

Code: (Biochemistry Vote) [Select]

Carbon (3): MetalSlimeHunt, Nirur, Superdorf?
Silicon (5): NG, IncompetentFortressMaker, Madman, TL, SC777
Something Exotic (0):
I mean what other silicon life form can be that isn’t just rock-“something”?

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GM question:
Can we write in minor perks here?
I'm thinking of a pair making our moon slightly richer, with the minerals visible through a telescope, at the cost of guaranteeing a super-predator evolves to hunt us. I don't want it to be on the level of a deathworld predator, but evolved specifically against our strengths and weaknesses. I imagine smaller tribes will usually escape notice and be fine, but larger tribes will start to see problems. Iron age cities might be able to be relatively safe, with enough investment, but we wouldn't be able to properly deal with them until around the industrial era.

Well, this is rather more next-level than I expected from the thread title — looks very very cool.

I’ll probably end up throwing in for someone else’s plan, since I find it a little unlikely I’ll gain too much traction, but I find the concept of a people huddled from cavern network to cavern network, isolated away from each other by radiation slamming down through a shallow sea, wondering what exists outside of their little points of life, unaware of just how many things truly do... well, I find it quite poetic indeed. (Also, this works quite well for an empire that focuses quite hard on building up technology, which I try to encourage along with really building up and relying on the cavern networks.. Hell... maybe we come up with a method of FTL that doesn’t rely on the Warp quite like Terran ships do.)

As for home world my goal was super amphibians hence we survive super acid ( and meteors due to ringed gas giant.)

I've crammed every evolution boost in, including the dangers of more psykers, and the only natural (or warp) disaster is sporadic orbit. Which might make us stronger.
We have a warp nexus to get to our neighbors and look for richer systems, and only sporadic orbit slowing our growth. The empty home system means that nobody other than us can hold our system for long without allying us, once we develop surface-to-orbit weapons.

And, Ardent, don't worry so much about the breathing "problem" or the amount of detail going into it. Most people don't care and it doesn't disrupt their suspension-of-disbelief (and it doesn't really harm mine, either [we're already in 40k so disbelief has run away screaming some time ago]). I just happen to enjoy telling people interesting science-y things that I know.

Hm. boring later on is a fair point, maybe we don't need to be fully isolated. I would still rather not be crowded however.

Well, here goes! Don't be surprised if I screw absolutely everything over with this plan. I have played literally zero games of any sort wherein you develop a civilization and then have it go out into the unknown regions of the cosmos.

There seems to be a strong faction against meddling with the Warp. If I'm projecting the intent correctly we'll have to deal with it sometime regardless; when we reach interstellar contact if not sooner. I'm not averse to getting in some early practice.

Remember: Humanity grew up in an era of warp-calmness as well, even in spite of having some sensitivity. The outcome was Old Night.

There may be some benefit to non-oxygen or exotic atmosphere existence - we wouldn't be directly competing with oxygen-breathers for planets and certain groups of oxygenated genocidal xenophobes would find invading our worlds difficult, as well as making extended occupation nearly impossible. Granted, most such people would just bomb the world from orbit until nothing remains, but it's an edge.