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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress: The Long Night (Legacy Thread)  (Read 125285 times)

squamous

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Dwarf Fortress: The Long Night (Legacy Thread)
« on: November 30, 2018, 11:10:34 pm »

NOTICE: This is a legacy page for the mod which I ran out of space to post in so I have moved it to here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=179676.0

Man ruled the solar system, once. In its grand epoch spanning thousands of years, Earth was the jewel of a great empire, its shining cities the capital of a vast civilization which stretched from the pitted surface of Mercury to the freezing depths of the Oort Cloud. But from the festering stagnancy of its millennia-long reign came resentment and ambition, culminating in its catastrophic end. From this arose a new age, an era of awe and horror incomprehensible to the common man, built upon the back of a new breed of scientific law scarcely understood even by its practitioners. Earth itself is unrecognizable, a broken world littered with a thousand dead nations and forgotten megastructures which obscure any trace of what was once a verdant oasis of natural life. The solar system is a haunted grave, the planets, moons, and even space itself strewn with the wreckage of long-dead peoples.

But this is all ancient history, long forgotten to the rising powers of the new Earth. They live in a different world entirely, an endless jungle of steel and carbon in which even the mightiest of cities are but mere drops in its ocean, in which even the greatest scientific achievements known to their ancient ancestors are but wheels and torches compared to the hypertechnological relics which they rely on to survive. Where mankind no longer rests at the summit of existence but submits to the authority of those who dare follow the path carved out by their forebears and seek to transcend the limits of mere biology. Where even posthuman demigods struggle for survival against ceaseless danger and overwhelming violence. A world in which the power of the individual once more reigns supreme, the ideals of equality and unity reduced to laughable fantasies. An era that waits with bated breath for its own end, and the rise of a new existence which will finally bring order to the anarchy and terror of a star system gone mad, or deliver the killing blow to what remains of intelligent life. But this terrible night of humanity's history will be long and harsh indeed, and only the greatest among the great stand a chance of bringing forth a new dawn.
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What is The Long Night?

The Long Night is a total overhaul mod which takes the game Dwarf Fortress and transplants it into a post-apocalyptic scifi future where the fragmented descendants of humanity struggle to survive in the broken remains of an Earth-turned-megastructure. Central to the game experience is the use of nanotechne; a programmable, infinitely mutable form of matter which forms the foundation of every civilization, and the process of transcendence, through which individuals can cultivate internal nanotechne to slowly gain superhuman abilities and obtain the power to fight the most terrifying foes Earth has to offer. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from playing a humble village of hydroponic farmers or a low-life scavenger either, but bear in mind that biological sophonts are far from the top of the food chain, even with armor and weapons.

Download Link: http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=14134
Music Source: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcavSftXHgxLBWwLDm_bNvA
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Change Log:

3.45 Changes:
-Some quick bugfixes
-Coil weapons are back. Any ranged weapons that previously existed are now all specified as "rail weapons", whereas these new weapons have the coil- prefix. They shoot a little harder but cost one extra bar. Visually they'd have a round barrel vs a railgun's rectangular one, probably. Hi-Caste and transhumans will have them, poors and mutants make do with railguns.
-Metal "grasses" found in the wilderness will no longer burn when hit with fire.
-Two new posthuman types added, the Superheavy and Metareflexive clades, which rely on size and probability calculations as their innate advantages respectively.
-Banditry rates made higher. You may not be aware of this, but there's a bug in the game where bandit forts will automatically replenish themselves after a battle or something like that, and a civ will drain away its army from constantly attacking it. I tried fixing this by lowering the banditry rate but it didn't help, so I'm just ramping up the banditry again since it'll at least give you more things to do in-game.

3.4 Changes
(this update would have originally been part of the 3.35 update but due to some bugs that needed quick fixing it got split into two parts, so now here it is)
-Tiles for sapients reworked. All posthumans will use 'o' or 'O', all lo-caste will use 'u' or 'U', all hi-caste will use 'i', all un-caste (aberrants) will use 'a'. This means I can add as many to each category as I want and you'll know where they stand aesthetically, while keeping the weirder tiles for more niche creatures like shells and hereditary cyborgs and so on. This will come in very handy when partial procedural generation is implemented and all of these groups will be dynamically generated.
-There are now multiple new clades of posthuman that can arise in worldgen. I have created a handful of new species which can form from hereditary cyborgs if one seeks out the slabs for it. You can also create a techne pill to brute force it in fortress mode with guaranteed success, but this will be INCREDIBLY expensive resource-wise and still requires you to have a hereditary cyborg to use it on. As I continue to work on the mod I will try to make more posthuman forms, but these should cover some basic variations with their own advantages and disadvantages.


3.36 Changes:
-Goofed the tablet interaction in fort mode
-Maybe fixed the nanomold plant stuff, they're called nanofactories now and there's more than one of them.

3.35 Changes:
-Fix to some buggy interactions
-Fix to adventure mode armor crafting
-This mod existed before altars and die were a thing, I have now added them to the mod whoops.
-The title "Transcendent" will now be applied to all those who have learned Techne Arts, differentiating them from normal biosophonts, cyborgs, or posthumans. Even a posthuman life form can be managed through the sufficient application of force, but Transcendent individuals are those who can freely live outside the laws of society if they obtain enough power.
-So it turns out you can't read slabs in fortress mode. This puts a bit of a damper on my whole "create a dynasty of cool cyborgs" thing. So, you now have a special interaction where you can make nanotechne tablets in the techne refinery which when consumed offer a 1% chance of turning into a cool cyborg, representing the character slowly accumulating internal nanotechne until a qualitative chance occurs. Yes this will be a slow and tedious process but it also has zero risk. If you want quick gains topple statues or drink the blood of transcendent individuals, or read books if someone wrote any. All books with powers have "Transcendence" in the title.
-Waistcloth as pants moved to just be the fashion of rag-wearing savages and fancy posthumans who want the cult look, civilized city folk wear an undersuit below their normal jumpsuit as "pants".
-Some governments altered. Low Caste civilizations will now have sects which comprise cyborgs, posthumans, and people trying to become them. Sects are quasi-independent militant organizations which exist outside the boundaries of a normal city state's government. In fortress mode gameplay you will need to have hereditary cyborgs or posthumans in your fort to elevate to a sect matriarch/patriarch. They will make demands but not mandates.

3.3 Changes:
-Various bugfixes
-So it turns out even if you use every trick in the book to make it not happen civs will still make chairs and castles out of nuclear fuel rods and such so I will be removing that stuff until I can make it work.
-Additional types of nanosuit added allowing for a greater variety of military customization.
-Some new Techne arts added.
-Names of weapons changed to be more readable, less unimportant differences and more important ones with gameplay applications.
-New Light Ranged class weapons added, rail-pistols. They're half the cost of gun/melee hybrids and not as good in melee but still have useful bayonet attachments that make them worth deploying.
-New Hi-Caste race added, the scicaste, who are engineers and scientists. They have good attributes for being craftsmen and scholars but aren't good fighters or leaders, so their sects are rather small and they mostly exist to be conquered and put to work by other civilizations. They also have strange moods.
-Some more weird animals added across the board.
-New Un-Caste races added, or rather split. The original Aberrant has been divided into Carnivore, Omnivore, and Herbivore subtypes, as there was conveniently one species of each dietary preference that regained sapience. Each subspecies has different advantages and weaknesses that hint at their original lineage.
-New cyborg race added, Shells. Shells are organic brains in robot bodies. Are they human brains? Prooobably. They're big guys but aren't made of the best materials, so they still don't outperform hereditary cyborgs. They are a good early game asset in combat due to their size however and are excellent for heavy lifting.
-Names shuffled around again. Essentially, all posthumans will be going by their "scientific" multidenominational names now, based around their most notable trait as a prefix to the 'posthuman' status. So, 'immortal' posthumans are your basic all-purpose ones, 'adaptive' posthumans are the Asura due to their adaptation to their environment (sometimes to their detriment), Deva are 'collective' posthumans due to being mini group minds, and so on. I want all posthumans to follow the same naming conventions because I will soon be adding many new types of posthumans and need a group-wide naming schema that is consistent.
-Uplifted animals removed for the time being. Now, I'm aware they've been in the mod for awhile and have some nostalgia value, but I've spent a lot of time thinking about this decision, and ultimately I have come to the conclusion that as they are they just don't fit in with the rest of the setting at present. You have a fragmented humanity divided into dozens of subspecies, cyborgs derived from them, and immortal posthumans they can become, it's all very human-focused. Uplifts just get sidelined and seem out of place being the only "normal" animals (intelligence aside) when everything else is made from either people, machines, or gene-spliced mutants. Mechanically they're also flawed. Cetaceans and Delphinids ought to be an oceanic civilization but the game won't let them, corvids should fly but flight pathfinding for sapients is bugged, and so on and so forth. For those wishing to play ape-men, the Aberrant species should fill the same itch. For the more exotic body plans, Shells come in all sorts of shapes to experiment with. When uplifts can be more meaningfully integrated into the mod and take advantage of the unique niches they could fill I will try to re-add them.

3.23 Changes:
-Fix to recycler nanomold so it can be used to make paper.
-Changed introductory section to account for the more polished lore.

3.22 Changes:
-Fix to posthuman skill rates
-Fix to nanomachine zombies being OP
-Fix to a goof I made in the large advanced worldgen map.
-New weapon variant added, Ultraheavy weapons. These weapons have nearly the same mass as an adult human and are only used by strong civs like warcladers, aberrant mutants, and posthumans. However, any Transcendent life form can become strong enough to wield them. They all use the Heavy Melee Specialist skill.
-New civilization added, independent hereditary cyborg sects. They'll probably get wiped early in worldgen but will allow for a greater number of advanced evolutionary life forms to appear later on.


3.21 Changes:
-fix to some adventure mode crafting stuff

3.2 Changes:
-Fix to exhuman asura, color bug (I was originally going to add the other stuff later but this needed to be addressed, enjoy some new content)
-A new megabeast added, the Myriad Immortal. The lowliest remnants of the Myriad, the immensely powerful transhuman overlords who ruled during the short-lived Age of Sorcery, they are either mad vagabonds dwelling in abandoned temples or the venerated rulers of mortal city-states.
-Age of Sorcery lore added to the bay12 page, you can now learn why everything is so horrible.
-"silk"-producing factory worm variant added for easier access to fabrics.
-New melee weapon types added, saw-bladed, high-frequency, and pneumatic. Pneumatic weapons replace pile bunkers as infantry melee weapons that perform the function of a pile bunker, but come in spear and hammer variants.


3.16 Changes:
-Fix to cannon ammo.
-Added biofactories, which are factory worms but they produce nanotechne now, so even if you aren't a civ which produces advanced nanotechne you can still get a reliable source of the stuff if you shell out enough cash.
-Made Asura a little less angry.

3.15 Changes:
-Fix to crafting condensed nanotechne
-Fix to wafer crafting name

3.14 Changes:

-Fix to domestic animal names being broke

3.13 Changes:

-Added loosely defined underwear due to the fact DF doesn't know what jumpuits are and assumes everyone is pantsless
-Fixed crafting armor from advanced nanotechne.


3.12 Changes:

-Duplicate raw fix

3.11 Changes:

-Fix to nanotechne crafting
-Another fix to adventure mode crafting

3.1 Changes

-Fix to adventure mode leather crafting
-Fix to some creatures having the wrong profession names

3.0 Changes

NOTE: This is a big update, there might be things wrong, please let me know when you encounter anything buggy.

-I actually don't know how I did this but there will be a lot more war now, both between civs and between civs and necromancers.
-Organic races overhauled. The current lineup of human species is very much something that has been needing some tweaks, as a lot of it existed before I truly conceptualized what I wanted the Long Night to be. Organic races have been reshuffled to reflect the currently existing lore. Humanity has been divided into two primary types, hicaste and locaste clades. The hicaste consists of the civclade (noble, old jovian), warclade (neo-human, old titanian), and joyclade (old europan) lineages, being human species highly specialized for particular roles in society, which is reflected in their personalities and attributes. The locaste gene-clades consist of the masses of relatively normal humans who colonized the various worlds under the leadership of the ruling caste and their hicaste administration, and rather than role, are divided by the environment they were grown to colonize. Major locaste lineages are Terran (human), Venusian (old martians), Europan (new race), Martian (new race), Lunar (new race), and Spacer (new race). The vibrant colorations of engineered humans you are familiar with are now found in the hicaste races, who were modified for aesthetic purposes and have distinct configurations and styles to them. The bay12 page will go over the new race lineup and what they offer.
-Armor overhauled. I do like the idea of particular brands of exo-armor, but the primary issue is that it also ties what could be cool and emergent armor styles to a pre-existing pool of non-customizeable sets, which are also reliant on players opening a separate webpage to know what they are looking at. I would like your fortress's soldiers to be a unique product of your own style. As such, armor has been overhauled to allow for this. There are now multiple components to a single fully armored soldier. The helm, mask, exo-frame/exo-walker, nanosuit, exo-arms/nano-arms, and exo-legs/nano-legs. The armor section on the bay12 wiki will explain how this all functions.
-Bioframes overhauled. There has been a consistent issue with bioframes since their introduction, that being the existence of multiple species of them. This issue is simply that the game does not understand they should be rare. Each species of bioframe, when tamed, can lead to a civ possessing hundreds of them. Multiply that by the 8 different bioframe species available, and the issue becomes obvious. The sheer amount of biomechanical mecha leads infantry to become effectively useless in off-site conflicts. As a result, I have condensed bioframes into a singular species. Rather than brands, each bioframe is now a unique being with its own shape, coloration, weapon, and power set, allowing for hundreds if not thousands potential combinations. Given they are supposed to be rare relics representing the peak of the Age of Sorcery's biomechanical warfare, this should be more fitting for them and prevent oversaturation.
-Cultivation overhauled. The current transhuman system was too limiting. There are now multiple forms of ascendance available. In addition to conventional cyborgs, one can become a sapient vehicle or biomechanical monster starting from an organic base. The Deva and Asura have different evolutionary paths however.
-Nanotechne overhauled. Grades are gone, they were arbitrary and didn't explain much. There is now Basal Nanotechne (Grade-C nanotechne), neurocybernetic nanotechne (Grade-S), normal nanotechne (Grade-M) and then Advanced Nanotechne, (Grades K, X, and N). In addition, however, there are new specialized kinds of nanotechne which can be used to create weapons with particular properties. For example, Overcharged Nanotechne creates weapons with the Energy-Bladed modifier, giving them doubled sharpness. Condensed Nanotechne creates Ultradense weapons, giving them more kinetic energy to inflict. I will add more special types as I find ways to add new useful properties to them. Furthermore, creating nanotechne is now the domain of a new, custom skill/profession, the Nanotechne Breeder, also called the alchemist, and a new workshop, the Nanotechne Incubation Reactor. This adds an additional layer of complexity to crafting nanotechne for yourself, and this is by design since you will now get traders every season, so players should be incentivized to rely on trade more often. Simply achieving nanotechne self-sufficiency is intended to be a milestone for your settlement.
-Plants overhauled. Most plants are now hydroponic, and most civs will make use of exclusively hydroponic plants in worldgen and NPC sites. You can find them underground, the systems are designed to be pretty self-sufficient. "Real" fruits and vegetables fetch five times as much profit due to rarity and expense, peasants eat bugs and algae. There are also various synthetic oozes which extract all kinds of useful resources from the ground, so remember to plant those too.
-Weapons overhauled. They should be much more streamlined and fit the world better while having more meaningful variations between them. Skills have also been changed to be more balanced using a system similar to Fall From Grace. The four main skills are one-handed/shield using melee weapons, two handed melee weapons, combination weapons (gunblades), and proper ranged weapons.

2.87 Changes:
-Fix to exponential minion spawning

2.86 Changes:
-primitive crafting fixed for real this time

2.85 Changes:
-fix to uplift transcendence
-fix to primitive crafting
-tribulation machines have become demons rather than megabeasts and devas will not spawn normally in worldgen and will instead invade from the megastructure center of the earth
-ancient nanotechne improved
-other small fixes

2.83 Changes:
-Pale star cult will now be aggressive

2.82 Changes:
-Bit of an awkward rollback but we're back to just using energetic compound for ammo. I originally added other ammo material types as a slapdash fix for a perceived difficulty in finding EC material, but I've sinced fixed that and would like ranged weapons to have a more consistent damage output. It has the added bonus of forcing the player to decide if they value their energetic compound as fuel or as ammunition, since it serves the role of both.
-Tweaks to some civ values, I accidentally made martians a dictatorship instead of a republic
-Some changes to the "magic" system abilities, projectile manifestations overhauled. Let me know if this has caused any issues.
-Multiple small bugfixes, please tell me if you encounter something that seems bugged or broken.
-Adventure mode crafting made less grindy.


2.81 Changes:
-emergency fix to duplicate raw bug, game will work now

2.8 Changes:
-All water biomes totally overhauled to be more in keeping with the rest of the setting. I'll further expand on it as I get more ideas but now there's a solid foundation to add more weird stuff.
-A new race, Venusians. These genetically-modified humans lived on floating cities above the clouds of Venus, but their heavy reliance on Earth for supplies led them to flee back to the planet once their floating cities began to sink into the superheated acidic fog. They're snobby but socially adept, Venus was actually a pretty nice place to live during the Imperial Era.
-Nation names changed to be better
-Some bugfixes


2.79 Changes:

-Asura and Deva given the ability to move up a level according to their caste. In short, just like how studying cultivation techniques allows for organics to become cyborgs, Asura or Deva who study them also have a chance to move up a level in power. In worldgen, a lowly Kalakeya brute can reach the level of an eight-armed Asura, but unfortunately in gameplay you can only move one rung up the ladder because you're hardcoded to only get one transformation, so bear that in mind.
-Changes to resource gathering. Dismantle rare technologies and relics beneath the earth to harvest their secrets and energy.
-Changed ammo again. You can now make ammunition out of brass, lead, steel, iron, silver, and depleted uranium as well as energetic compound.
-Deva get their own language now.
-Slight changes to posthuman armor. They're now exo-armors like the rest, and the skull helmets have been altered to be a variant of normal helmets, but open-mouthed. Posthumans wouldn't know or care about the beasts the skulls were derived from, and it would make more sense for them to have an open version of a normal helmet which lets them rip metal apart with their own set of fangs rather than a proxy.
-Bug fixes

2.78 Changed:
-Quick fix to some mild bugs


2.77 Changed:
-Quick fix to a description issue

2.76 Changes:
-The Pale Star cultists, who have supposedly been the main villains of the setting for all this time, are now actually relevant and should serve as a terrifying enemy to face in both fortress and adventure mode. While they start in worldgen as mere mortal cultists, they work towards the Pale Star's goal of total subjugation, and can create monstrous parodies of cultivator cyborgs and even malformed bioframes along with armies of eldritch undead slaves. Due to world generation there is still no guarantee they will become an existential threat but repeated testing has shown it is now very possible.
-The moss forest fauna has been altered signficantly. Things should more toned down and less ridiculous now, more fitting with the overall theme and aesthetic, though it should still be interesting. More of a dark and moody sort of feel than the poorly-thought-out menagerie I ended up putting in before for some reason. More little scampering and skittering things surviving in the last natural ecosystem on earth, kind of pitiable more than anything. Except for the horrific monsters, of course.
-Psychic powers have been phased out on account of the fact that I never actually did anything with them and everything they were intended to do has been overtaken by post-singularity superscience and they're just sort of irrelevant now. There were only like two of them and those same abilities can now be obtained via cultivation as nanomechanical augmentations.
-A fun new monster added.


2.75 Changes:
-Updated to latest version.

2.72 Changes:
-So it turns out putting all factory worms as the same species causes errors with resource production, each model is now a separate species to fix this. As splitting them up was a little wonky, I may have done something wrong. Please let me know if this was the case. On the plus side, there will be more of them in the wilderness, so there's a greater chance of being able to domesticate them.
-Additional cyberization technique added, speed boosting. If you learn an ability of this type, you can temporarily move much faster. Useful for attacking and retreating.
-Some other little tweaks and bugfixes

2.71 Changes:
-A quick fix to permanent attribute increases. Basically in previous versions you'd get the ability but wouldn't know you had it. Now it'll be listed in your acquired powers section, though "activating" it doesn't do anything, it's just to keep track of it.

2.7 Changes:
-Additional Techniques added. Learning them allows you to immunize yourself against becoming a Fiend, or possession by certain forces.
-An additional transformation added should one become victim to certain forces. It is not a boon one should seek.
-New fun clade of critters added, the Preservates. These creatures, resembling a cybernetic cross between human, rodent, and insect, were once used as quasi-sentient engineers to maintain the megastructures of earth, but have since degenerated into yet another biomechanical organism in the complex ecosystem of the ruined planet.
-Much-needed rework to the Custodian faction. The Custodians are renamed to "Deva". They are a fully mechanical race of AIs originally intended to uphold the balance of power in the Solar Empire and automatically hunt down those who would seek to overturn the natural statified castes of the empire in the name of their own ego. They were ultimately unable to fulfill this function due to the simultaneous catastrophes of the posthuman rebellion and the pseudosingularity, but still exist as a faction of balance-minded keepers of the order and harmony. They tend to dislike posthumans and cultivator cyborgs, seeing them as inherently flawed in that they magnify the harmful animal passions of mankind into something even more untameable thanks to their strength, and for this purpose have released mighty mechanical megabeasts, the Tribulation Machines, to ensure that the wrath of the earth-spanning security system, 'Heaven', will come down on those with the arrogance to think they can rise above mankind.


Quick Fix:
-Changed file from .rar to .zip so mac computers can open it.


2.69 Changes:
-Quick fix to gorillas not transcending to cybernetic demigods, this should happen now
-Fix to ammo crafting.

2.68 Changes:
-Fix to nanotechne summons not being butcherable
Sorry for all the tiny updates, I keep finding errors after I think I've cleaned them up

2.67 Changes:
-Potential fix to kiln-based crafts and general touching-up

2.66 Changes:

-Change to how ammunition works. All normal ammunition will now be made of "energetic compound", a type of unstable solidified plasma which requires a lot of energy to fire, but has the ability to damage and penetrate the heavy armor found ubiquitously across both monsters and machines. On the other hand, it explains why infantry weapons take so long to reload. Energetic Compound can be extracted in trace amounts from various materials. It always was sort of a stopgap to me that I had super-expensive hyper-adaptable nanotech be wasted by making it into bullets.
-Overhaul to conventional vehicles, they should be better organized and there will be more of them.
-Europans now make cities out of bioengineered glowing fungus.
-Some freaky, purely organic feral mutants added to make the wastes a little more hospitable to normal humans.
-Cultivator Cyborgs no longer have innate bonuses to physical attributes. This incentivizes learning techniques that boost them.
-Some extra techniques add.
2.65 Changes:

-Various fixes to minor bugs people have reported, thank you all for doing so, if I missed one it will be fixed in the next update, just remind me.
-Alternate pre-made map scenarios with huge site caps in world gen. If your computer can handle it you can try and get a megacity going.
-Major overhaul to the technomancy system. Rather than everything being in one slab with a percentage of getting it, each slab is now guaranteed to teach one technique, with a 5% chance of the reader ascending to become a cybernetic immortal. You can gain techniques by reading slabs, defiling the temples of disembodied machine-gods, or drinking the blood of another technomancer, if you can survive the attacks that come after. There should be a wide variety of options for players to choose from as they build their character. Read a more in-depth overview on the forum page.


2.61 Changes:
-A possible fix to a bug regarding farming certain crops, let me know if problems still happen with it.
-Fix to crafting scattergun ammunition in adventure mode.
-Fix to megabeasts burning their fat off.

2.6 Changes:
-Factory worms totally overhauled into utility worms, which are like factory worms but they are bigger and there are way more of them. Many different organic and synthetic products can be harvested from these worms, so take care of them when you get them.
-Some big ol swords added
-Due to living on a polluted megastructure lots of baseline humans get born missing limbs or with failing organs, so they are given replacement limbs if their family can afford it. Basically around 1/3rd of humans will have some kind of mechanical limb. All intelligent races have spinal implants that let them interface with machinery. This change may seem weird and abrupt but because of the way DF works it lets me work around a bug associated with cybernetic apotheosis.
-Speaking of cybernetic apotheosis, the Cyberization secret has been re-worked. If all goes well, entities should be able to transform into hereditary cyborgs (cyborgs that have cyborg children) with coloration that explains what race they were, while also allowing them to interbreed and produce a next generation with unique features.
-Intelligent octopi added to the uplift races. However, due to octopi having alien and solitary natures, they tend to exist in small clans within the underground and only rarely interact with the civilized world.
-Posthumans renamed to Asura-Class, because there will be more posthumans than just them now and I need to differentiate.
-Several new minor Posthuman factions added.
-Nanomachine monsters reworked to fit the theme.
-Venusians reworked into the Custodian faction. Custodians will represent a pervasive mechanical presence that will be found throughout the world as a challenge to players, forming a network of drones, autonomous tanks, hidden assassins, and other lethal devices that can catch unwary players by surprise. Unlike most technological entities, the Custodian System is fully mechanical, a relic of a bygone era where sprawling defense systems were used to suppress an entire planet.
-Lore overhauled to finally explain a lot of things.
-New type of Nanotechne added, Grade-S or "soft" nanotechne. It actually can't be used for weapons or armor or anything, but makes up the innards of several types of machine and is very valuable, so consider it something like gold or platinum.


« Last Edit: January 18, 2023, 09:36:49 pm by squamous »
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squamous

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.0
« Reply #1 on: December 03, 2018, 01:47:26 am »

New Mechanics:

Nanotechne:

Nanotechne is the axis on which the world of the Long Night spins. A type of programmable matter comprised of nanomachines incubated in the bodies of fringe revolutionaries during the days of the Solar Empire, the material can be programmed into a wide variety of substances, from computers to weapons to armor to bodily augmentation. Nanotechne suffuses the solar system and particularly the Terran Megastructure, also known as Earth. Its key feature is its ability to be integrated with biology, allowing for hereditary augmentation, or cybernetics which can be passed down from parent to child and evolve (and be engineered) in the same way biological tissue can. This key facet has allowed for the rise of biomechanical life, augmented beings which combine the powers of biology and machinery to become fearsome creatures which challenge the might of human civilization, along with the rise of transcendent immortals who can breed lineages of hereditary cyborgs. For the vast majority of people, however, nanotechne is simply the base material from which all the technologies of their settlements and personal usage are derived, bred in reactor-incubators to serve the needs of mundane mankind.

To create nanotechne, most civilizations require a "seed" to grow more of it, along with scrap metal, which is abundant. You can't make nanotechne out of nothing, the technology for doing so is lost. It is grown like coral, and so long as you have even a single bar you can produce more of it. But if you have none, you can't make any.  Furthermore, creating nanotechne is now the domain of a new, custom skill/profession, the Nanotechne Breeder, also called the alchemist, and a new workshop, the Nanotechne Incubation Reactor, and the Nanotechne Refinery.

There are multiple kinds of nanotechne:

-Basal nanotechne: the basic kind found everywhere. Used as the seed for all other kinds due to its innate flexibility
-Neurocybernetic nanotechne: a variety with a much better processing power, used for computing and making expensive, delicate things rich people pay good money for
-Refined Nanotechne: an advanced breed used for weapons and armor by most cultures.
-Overcharged Nanotechne: used exclusively for weapons it seems to impart a better edge to bladed weaponry, enough to slice through Refined Nanotechne with relative ease.
-Condensed Nanotechne: used exclusively for weapons it seems to be denser than Refined Nanotechne, making for a good all-around upgrade but especially for blunt weapons.
-Advanced Nanotechne: used by advanced civilizations this is the best of the best and only capable of being reliably countered by firearms, Overcharged or Condensed Nanotechne, other Advanced Nanotechne, or pure, overwhelming strength.
-Ancient Nanotechne: Highly-refined nanotechne created by the Myriad. Due to the computational density and energy required to produce it no longer extant in the Terran Megastructure, it is a finite resource until another great surge of power appears, and is thus highly valuable.

How does armor work in this mod?

Armor works differently in the Long Night. It is the far future, after all. Armor is divided into two basic types, Exo-Armor and Nano-Armor. Nano-Armor is tendrils of flexile, muscle-like nanotechne fibers which perform a function similar to an armored jumpsuit, intended to be lightweight and mobile, with Limb variants not unlike muscled gloves and boots. Exo-Armor is mechanically enhanced hard armor plating which can deflect edged weapons, necessitating better material or blunt weaponry. The armor types are as follows:

-Nanosuit: Comes in light, medium, and heavy variants. It is a flexile armor, like chainmail. Heavy and medium nanosuits are typically worn by melee units, while light variants are typically worn by ranged units. It protects everything but the hands, head, and feet. It replaces a jumpsuit but goes under outer clothing like coats and robes.
-Exo-Frame: Comes in light, medium, and heavy variants. It is a hard armor, like a breastplate. By default light models are worn by melee units, and heavy and medium models by ranged units. It protects everything but the hands, head, and feet. Comes in various visual variants. It replaces outer clothing like coats and robes but goes over a jumpsuit.
-Exo-Mask. A tactical helmet worn by combatants. Visored exo-helmets are worn by melee units, while helmets with distinct eye openings of any number are worn by ranged units.
-Exo-Arm/Leg: Limb protection with the same traits as other Exo armor types. Worn by melee fighters in order to offer additional protection.
-Nano-Arm/Leg: Limb protection with the same traits as other Exo armor types. Worn by ranged fighters, as the greater dexterity and precision offered by nanomechanically-enhanced limb armor is more suited for long-range combat.

While both Nano-Armor and Exo-Armor can be worn on their own, they can also be combined. A fully armored individual wears a Nanosuit below an Exo-Frame, typically something only the soldier of a civilization can afford to be geared up in. Most make do with one or the other. For visualization purposes, exo-armor weight class (light, medium, heavy) dictates how bulky and thick the armor is, but the nanosuit weight class dictates how bulky and muscular the synthetic muscles under it are.


Weapons and Combat:

Combat in the Long Night has evolved to be quite different than what one might expect for such advanced technology. But one must remember this is a barbaric, ignorant age, with only the barest principles of nanotechne being fully understood. Great strides are made in one area while lagging behind in another. Ranged weapons which can reliably penetrate nanotechne armor, for example, require a great deal of energy or massive payloads, making automatic weapons far too expensive to equip infantry with en masse. On the other hand, the muscle-enhancing properties of power armor have allowed for massive weapons which can, with enough blows and no need for limited ammunition, crush, pierce, and slash through an enemy's armor, and tank enough damage from the enemy's ranged weaponry to close the distance. Battles in the Long Night rely on both ranged and melee combat as a result, and soldiers can be divided into four main classes:

Light Melee Specialist: The LMS specializes in melee combat using light, one-handed weapons, ideally alongside a shield. When properly kitted with both weapon and shield they make excellent tanks and vanguard fighters, pushing forward against the enemy and taking territory. They are the backbone and mainstay of any infantry force, the core around which other units revolve.

Heavy Melee Specialist: These units make use of two-handed weapons. However, two-handed weapons in the Long Night are universally massive, far greater than the greatswords and greataxes of the ancient era. These fighters forgo the defense offered by a shield in favor of inflicting as much damage as possible with oversized killing tools, and are vital for breaking through the toughest points of an enemy defense and eliminating particularly dangerous enemies.

Light Ranged Specialist: Light Ranged units rely on combiweapons, which are a mix of small firearms and one-handed melee weapon, allowing for both short and long-ranged combat. They are often equipped with a small amount of ammunition, around five to ten bullets, and when they are expended are expected to rush into melee alongside the other close-range fighters. Due to their light armor and cheap weapons, they have a reputation as being the "grunt unit", the expendable soldiers in light armor deployed to rush and skirmish the enemy to buy time for more heavily armored forces to arrive, but skilled fighters of this specialty are not to be underestimated.

Heavy Ranged Specialists: These units are the ones who carry the bulky rifles, shotguns, cannons, and missile pods carrying lethal payloads beyond the power level of an LRS unit. Equipped with plenty of ammunition, these units hang behind enemy lines and support pushes by melee soldiers, laying down volleys of well-aimed, powerful attacks. But these powerful weapons cost energy as previously mentioned, and they require time to recharge. As a result, they fare poorly if the distance is closed, though many do use under-mounted melee attachements to protect themselves.

In addition, melee weapons now come in multiple categories offering different types of advantages or special attacks:

RCS-equipped weapons allow one to utilize thrusters built into the weapon to unleash a powerful blow in addition to normal attacks. It has a fast strike but a slow recovery, so use caution.
DSE-equipped weapons utilize a Directed Shockwave Emitter to send an opponnent flying, but has a long build-up time.
Saw-bladed weapons are slower and clunkier than normal weapons, but have strong penetration by chewing through a target if they land. Better on soft targets.
Pneumatic weapons utilize an apparatus similar to a captive bolt pistol, but on a much larger and more effective scale. They attack quickly and recover slowly, but are the preferred style of spear upgrade.
High-Frequency weapons are fast and elegant with quick attacks but offer no other advantages.

Different ranged weapons also use different ammunition types:

-bullets and slugs of any kind deal blunt damage, like a hammer.
-rods and flechettes deal stabbing damage, like a spear.
-canisters and missiles deal slashing damage, like an axe.

All light melee weapons use microcanisters, flechettes, and bullets.
Rail-rifles use rifle rods, canisters, and slugs.
Rail-snipers use sniper rods.
Rail-cannons use cannon slugs.
Shard missile pods use shard missiles.

A NOTE REGARDING RANGED WEAPONS:

It may be thought that ranged weapons in the Long Night are the primary means of conflict. This is incorrect. Railguns are important, but their long recharge times have relegated them to a role similar to muskets. Unlike the era of musketry, however, there exists armor which can survive multiple direct hits, meaning melee attackers have the ability to close to CQC and inflict massive damage on a line of gunners. What this means in fortress and adventure mode is that ranged soldiers bereft of fortifications cannot be expected to reliably defeat melee fighters without support of either vehicles, which have powerful enough generators for automatic rail-weapons, or melee soldiers, which can bog down the enemy while ranged fighters support.

This especially applies to off-site battles. If you only send a squad of ranged fighters to attack a site, they will almost certainly fail and be captured. They must be supported by melee fighters to avoid the inevitability of enemy melee forces closing the distance and easily dispatching them before they can fire the next volley.

Transcendence and Transcendent Arts:

Transcendence is the term used to define the process of accumulating nanotechne within the body, gaining new abilities and physical capabilities until a critical mass is reached, turning a mere biological being into an long-lived cybernetic life form or even a posthuman existence freed from mortality. The process of transcendence is fraught with peril, with many dead ends and stumbling blocks. For every rising immortal there is a new horror unleashed upon the world, be it from within the depths of the solar system or even, perhaps, from beyond.

It should be noted that in the era of the Long Night, organic life forms exist at the bottom of the food chain. Organic settlements or adventurers are routinely dominated by cybernetic or post-human life forms, with only their large numbers and tools giving them protection. In order to truly thrive, one must master the arts of transcendence and seek immortality and absolute power through nanotechne. Choosing not to do this is more or less choosing to play on hard mode.

NOTE: Due to how the game works, you can only transform ONE TIME post-worldgen. I can't fix this. If you play a mortal adventurer and transform into something, that's it, you don't go any farther. Save scum before reading slabs so you can decide if a given transformation is worth it.

NOTE: Reading is, for reasons outlined below, a VERY IMPORTANT skill to have in adventure mode, invest at least one point into it when making a character to benefit fully from the transcendence system.

NOTE: You will not be able to read what a slab teaches. This is because of a bug where if there are multiple secrets attached to a sphere (or no spheres), the one the slab claims to teach will always be the one lowest in alphabetical order, even if it actually teaches something else. So a slab can either not tell you what it does, tell you something incorrect, or be restricted to one secret per sphere. I have gone with the first option as it allows the widest possible combination of powers which can arise dynamically in the world. There are no "gotcha" slabs that do something bad to you, so there is no need to worry about reading a slab.

There are multiple methods of developing internal nanotechne:

Method One: Coming across relics. Slabs which contain secret techniques can be learned by anyone who reads them, along with any mundane books or scrolls which also outline the method. These are the most reliable. No slab will exist that misleads the user or brings them harm, they are all beneficial. The issue is that due to this reliability, they are closely guarded by those who have obtained them, and for most nascent sects the only reliable method of obtaining them is through theft or conquest. As a result of this, one must already have a significant military on standby if one decides to walk the path of slab accumulation, for there will inevitably be reprisal. Many wars have been fought over slabs, and many more will be fought in the future. But even so, it is considered the most honorable way of gaining knowledge.

Method Two: Communing with Info-Deities. Info-Deities are intelligent non-physical beings dwelling in the Datasphere, from which power can be taken through the hacking of their "bodies" and the wresting of their secrets (a good way to gain their attention for such a duel is to attack their temples through, say, toppling a statue). But be warned, physical life which interfaces directly with the Datasphere is at dire risk of predation by the feral ecology which has blossomed within it. While higher life forms possess the power to withstand such dangers, conventional biological life forms seeking knowledge using this method are at great risk for being subsumed and subverted by Info-Predators, always hungry for new storage space, which use the unfortunate victim as a host into the physical world. Most become warped cybernetic monsters twisted by the Info-Predator's inhuman will, but others are even more insidious, mimicking the original personality perfectly and feeding on other humans from the shadows, converting more victims into gateways for their kind to enter reality from. Such existences must be eradicated at all costs.

Method Three: The consumption of an immortal's blood. Blood infused with nanotechne is a formless vehicle for data as much as chemicals, and as such a crude way of obtaining information from someone with dense nanotechne is through drinking their blood. By doing so one gains access to their techniques, but be warned, this method is highly addictive and while it is a shortcut to power it more often than not leads to horrific serial killers who slaughter entire villages to slake their lust for yet more blood. Such existences are highly feared and for good reason, to walk this path invites persecution from the entire world, but offers great power at little personal cost.

Method Four: The use of tablets. Tablets are condensed packets of nanotechne that can be created in both fortress and adventure mode. By consuming them, you slowly build up your internal nanotechne until a qualitative change occurs. It may take dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of pills for the transformation to happen, but if you keep taking them it eventually will. There is no risk involved in this method besides potentially how you obtain the nanotechne used to make the tablets. However, it is also the slowest process. Furthermore in addition to conventional nanotechne tablets, there are Attainment Tablets. Attainment Tablets are special packets of data which allow a hereditary cyborg to be guaranteed a specialized posthuman form. They are very expensive and require a great deal of resources to produce, but can be a worthwhile investment to any faction.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2022, 08:20:12 am by squamous »
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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.0
« Reply #2 on: December 03, 2018, 01:48:28 am »

Races of the Long Night:

Pan-Humanity:

Pan-Humanity is the collection of biological species descended from the original human race. The Solar Empire, with its peerless knowledge of the human genome, could easily engineer various strains of human to fulfill specific tasks. These could be grouped into three different tiers; the Lo-Caste, expendable workers bred to survive in a particular environment with as little maintenance as possible, the Hi-Caste, bred to fulfill a particular niche within the Solar Empire's system-spanning bureaucracy, and the now-extinct Imperial Caste, or Imperial Clade as there were no subtypes, the undisputed apex of biological human life and hereditary rulers of the empire. Furthermore, a new designation has arisen to account for clades which exist outside these castes, the Un-Caste geneclades.

A note regarding human races:

In the vanilla game, a human reaches full adulthood at 13 years of age. In the Long Night, humans take as long as they do in real life to grow to adulthood, but are not considered children at 13. They reach full adult size at 18. If you conscript a 13 year old into the army or make him work in the mines he'll be the size of an actual 13 year old.

Lo-Caste:

It is widely regarded that normal humans are the stupidest one can make an intelligent being while still keeping them widely useful, and so the Lo-Caste have little in the way of mental modification, for better or worse. They are psychologically normal people just like baseline humanity, with their bodies altered to inhabit various environments in order to cut as much cost as possible on life support and maintenance systems, along with whatever medicine and augmentation might otherwise be required. Due to the majority of the population within the solar system being comprised of the Lo-Caste, many of them have survived the collapse of the Solar Empire and remain the majority population within the Terran Megastructure, even in the face of all manner of adversaries and competition. The simple will to survive and scrappy cunning of these average humans, though they may differ in appearance and ability, seems sufficient to carry them through day after day of the greatest dark age the human race has ever experienced.

Terrans: Baseline humans are those native to the planet who have undergone little genetic modification. They once populated Earth in teeming masses, but after the collapse of the planet have been greatly reduced in number. Even so, they remain one of the most populous clades in existence and continue to be seen as the "typical" human despite the varying forms that exist in the present day. Many take pride in their unbroken lineage to pre-Imperial eras, though few know anything but the basest details of that ancient time, and fewer still truly care.

Aquatics: Humans modified for life underwater, be it the oceans of Earth or Europa. Amphibious due to convenience, most aquatics live near sources of water in the Terran Megastructure, making a living harvesting the artificial seas for their bounty. While most descend from Terran sea-dwellers, a few claim descent from the now-lost colony of the watery moon Europa. Despite odd features like hairlessness and webbed digits, they are considered one of the closest to Terrans due to their similar proportions.

Venusians: Venus was a harsh planet to colonize, but at the same time one with a unique advantage. Being roughly the same size as earth, normal Terrans could live on it without the damage low gravity might inflict on their bone structure and other biological features, allowing the Venusian Clade to be manufactured with little deviation from the Terran geneline, though it did develop paler skin and near-albinism due to the nature of Venusian settlements, almost entirely underground and constantly beset by the hideously destructive weather and boiling atmosphere. The hell that was their planet gave rise to a highly collectivist and pragmatic society, with sacrifice, duty, and intermittent cannibalism being the order of the day.

Martians: The first human geneclade with notably distinct proportions to compensate for Mars's lower gravity, Martians had from the very beginning developed a culture of independence and self-reliance, particularly due to the luck of being birthed to colonize a nearly completely terraformed world, where the air was breathable and the land could be walked without an environment suit. Unfortunately, it was always crippled by reliance on Earth in order to ensure no rebellion could succeed, and when the Solar Empire collapsed and the atmospheric generators began to fail, many fled back to the nascent Terran Megastructure while leaving uncounted millions to an uncertain fate on a dying planet.

Lunars: Even more unearthly than the Martians, these tall and spindly figures were the middle ground between space-borne and terrestrial human clades, built to colonize moons and planetoids with low but present gravity. Highly reliant on Earth and other planets for resources, they suffered the most out of all the Lo-Caste geneclades when the empire collapsed. Any which still live on their colonies likely suffer immensely under autocratic regimes which count every ounce of biological matter as a precious, irreplaceable resource.

Spacers: The most heavily derived of the Lo-Caste, they are most noted for their hand-like feet, allowing better maneuverability in zero-gravity habitats and space vessels, along with their towering height. In a similar situation as the Lunar geneclades, most remain in orbital habitats, with only a lucky few possessing the reinforcing nanotechne which is all that allows them to tolerate the crushing gravity of Earth.

Hi-Caste:

The Hi-Caste, derived primarily from Terran stock, differs primarily from the Lo-Caste in three ways. Firstly, Hi-Caste were not bred for a specific environment, but rather for a specific profession. They were specific tools of the Empire, answering only to the imperial court rather than any particular celestial body or other settlement. Secondly, unlike the Lo-Caste, Hi-Caste models have extensive mental changes written into them in order to make them better at their particular role. Lastly, Hi-Caste clades can be further divided by their coloration, which rather than the earthy tones of any Lo-Caste clade are all manner of color combinations, their very flesh modified for purely aesthetic purposes in order to represent whichever particular imperial faction that particular group was pledged to serve. But with the Solar Empire collapsed, the Hi-Caste are like a pack of purebred dogs without masters, designed to serve a clade which no longer exists. A fundamental part of their self-identity, both conscious and sub-conscious, was ripped away with the extinction of the Imperial Clade, and as a result many have developed neurotic behaviors on a civilization-wide level.


Civclade: The Civclade, or Civilian Clade, was bred for the purpose of administration. Polite, refined, bland, and with a sharp mind, the Civclader is the quintessential bureaucrat. Spread across the empire and managing all of it for the benefit of the imperial court, the collapse of Solar Empire in the aftermath of the Techne War led to the Civclade arcologies to go into something of a crisis. The majority if not all of Civclade settlements are focused on wrangling other settlements, with carrot or stick, into something resembling a provisional government until Imperial Clade DNA can be found and restored, at which point everything can go back to normal. But of course, with the evolution of biomechanical life and the process of Transcendence, such a thing is highly unlikely.

Warclade: The Warclade, or Military Clade, was unsurprisingly bred for the purpose of combat. Ferocious, disciplined, and utterly lacking in ambition, the Warclade for a long time represented the peak of infantry power, cold-hearted supermen who effortlessly dispatched any who would seek to defy the mandates of the Solar Empire. But in the end, the Warclade are still biological humans, with all the limitations that implies. Having fought so long against opponents genetically inferior in the areas of killing, they were unprepared to fight an even or perhaps superior foe in the form of Antinirvanist Posthumanity, and while the war ended in mutual destruction the rise of Immortals has forever relegated the Warclade's existence to one of being obselete. Even so, they are still greatly feared, for Transcendence is a journey few see the end of, but the Warclade juntas need only to breed to increase their numbers, and compared to other biological clades, they remain a fearsome foe indeed. In the absence of their masters they have become conquerers, carving territories of their own in the name of their clan's ambition.

Joyclade: Of all the Hi-Caste, perhaps the saddest fate belonged to the Joyclade, or the Courtesan Clade. Like the geishas, jesters, and concubines of old, they served the role of performers and companions, and like the influencers, celebrities, and public personas of the Late Pre-Imperial Era, they were designed as living advertisements and entertainers. What they were not designed for was the collapse of the empire and the fall into barbarism. The pleasure gardens of the Imperial Clade go untended and the Joycladers find themselves subject to the whims of fate by far more brutal and numerous forces.


Sciclade: Working quietly away in the background of Hi-Caste society was the Sci-Clade or Scientific Clade, focused on the maintenance and production of the technologies which sustained the empire. Built for production and socially neutered, the scicaste community was happy to be kept out of the spotlight and left to work in silence. The collapse changed that, of course, and now they find themselves put to work by their peers in addition to those they once deemed inferior, valued more as a commodity than anything else.

Un-Caste:

During the Myriad Era, attempts were made to repopulate the Terran Megastructure using creatures derived from human DNA. These grotesque creatures were partially successful, though few take pleasure in the ecosystems they have formed (though they do appreciate the meat they offer). But in a quirk of fate, one particular branch of this artificial evolutionary tree did not stay as mere animals. Rather, they regained sophoncy, much to the chagrin of the rest of humanity, for their time as animals had warped this breed casteless freaks into brutish and violent creatures, and the availability of high technology allowed for them to form technologically-advanced civilizations at a frightening speed. At the beginning of the Long Night, they have become a thorn in the side of near every other civilized force. Rather than being called human, they are collectively classified as "Aberrant" life, and come in many shapes and sizes.


Cyborgs:

Cyborgs are life forms which comprise both nanotechne an biological tissue. Though the cyborg typically thought of when the term is brought up would be a person using technological prosthetics, this section details those who have integrated nanotechne into their very DNA, and thus can pass on their augmentations to their offspring. Though they have many advantages because of this, they are still at least partially human biologically and represent a transitionary state between normal life forms and posthuman ones.

Hereditary Cyborgs: Any organic life form that accumulates a sufficient amount of nanotechne will transform into a hereditary cyborg. A hereditary cyborg is a broad term encompassing all such transfigured individuals. What is most important regarding this is the fact that all hereditary cyborgs, regardless of original species, are compatible with one another and can produce offspring. These pure-blooded hereditary cyborgs can then seek to go even further, and shed their biology entirely. As of the Long Night, hereditary cyborgs are a relatively common sight among the upper crust of most civilizations. They are close enough to pan-humanity that they are not seen too differently than their lessers, but still demonstrably stronger, smarter, and longer-lived, inspiring the ambitions of many to become like them.

Shells: Shells could be considered one of the earliest forms of hereditary cyborgs, even before nanotechne. As far back as the Solar Empire, there were those who experimented with full-body cybernetic transplantation, leaving only the brain and nerves as a remnant of the original body. With nanotechne this has become even easier, and those individuals who wear "shells" of nanotechne have formed an underculture among many pan-human groups. However, this form of cyberization is inferior to that of a hereditary cyborg in terms of efficiency and optimization compared to cellular integration, and though Shells are typically large in size the materials used to make them are often of Basal quality.

Posthumans:

Posthumans, in the context of the current era, are life forms which are comprised entirely of hypertechnological synthetic tissue and nanotechne. These clades are considerably more durable, both against direct damage and the elements, along with having greater learning capabilities and an effectively unlimited lifespan unless brought down in combat. However, reaching this state is very difficult, requiring one to already be a hereditary cyborg, so it is only just now that a significant number of new posthuman clades are beginning to emerge. These days, the typical classifications for them are based on their most prominent qualities which distinguish them as a clade.

All posthumans can be distinguished by a total lack of carbon-based biology, immunity to high temperatures and the void of space, and reproduction via the mixing of personality data and recombining it into a new adult form, skipping the childhood and adolescent phases entirely.

Adaptive Variants: The "Adaptive" clade is the formal term for those posthumans which descended from the Antinirvanist movement. Also called Asura, ogres, feral posthumans, and other such titles, Adaptive posthumans are characterized by tenacity, survivability, and amoral pragmatism. The oldest extant posthuman lineage, they have had the longest time to diverge psychologically and physiologically, and have thus earned the title of being most "adapted" to the current wildly dangerous wastelands of the Terran Megastructure. Desiring personal strength and freedom above all else, many have even found themselves leaving even their ego behind as they transform into unthinking hyperpredatory life forms in the quest for power.
 
Immortal Variants: "Immortal" is certainly a fancy term, but in truth it simply designates the most common posthuman clade, that which is adapted for survivability and longevity while exhibiting no particular adaptations. Effectively, they are improved and iterated Hereditary Cyborgs. These more common immortals are the least discriminated against by pan-human society on account of their lack of psychological divergence. They are often embedded in biosophont societies rather than existing as independent groups, though some small sects do exist which are separate from other polities.

Collective Variants: The Collective clade, also known as Devas, Restorationists, and Uploads, are posthumans with a very unusual origin. Allegedly, they are the copies of stored minds uploaded into the datasphere during the reign of the Solar Empire and safeguarded from info-predators. Their origin is claimed to be members of the Philosophy of Harmonious Bliss, a philosopher-cult dedicated to bringing about a perfect heavenly existence for all mankind at any cost, provided it was eventually brought to fruition. Though their long-term goals give many a sense of trepidation there is no denying their fixation on order and harmony makes them tempting patrons for perpetually-beleaguered pan-human settlements.

Parasitic Variants: If Adaptive life forms are the maggots thriving in the corpse of the Solar Empire, the Parasitic clades are the leeches feeding on those still alive. Parasitic variants are another highly-divergent strain. As is known, the Datasphere became immensely dangerous following the end of the Myriad Era, with the fragmented minds of the Myriad disintegrating into a diverse ecosystem of digital life ruthlessly competing for storage space. Any info-predator is always on the lookout for a way into the physical world, hijacking minds and consuming them from within to bring more of their kind with it. A parasitic posthuman is what happens when such a puppet forcibly transcends a near-death Hereditary Cyborg, forming a symbiotic relationship with them in which they feed in the nanotechne and data within the minds of other sophonts to grow at an incredible rate, provided they continue to Transcend further victims. Of all posthumans, Parasites are most commonly marked as kill on sight.

Specialist Variants: While those listed above are the most well-known synth-clades to exist, there exist innumerable niches in this era, and more than one posthuman exists to exploit them. Specialist variants are those who optimize a specific trait or traits at the expense of others to attain an innate advantage. They are rare breeds indeed, but not unheard of, and the collective population of specialized posthumans in general may well match the Immortal clade's population in some areas. Settlements and city states looking to gain an edge may well invest in the creation of a specialist dynasty.

General Lore:

Hypertechnology:

Hypertechnology is any technology which makes use of sophistication and scientific principles which cannot or can only barely be understood by conventional pre-collapse science, produced through the mindless evolutionary process of the Antinirvanist nanomachine life forms, reverse-engineered and transformed into programmable matter and cloud-transmitted energy. It is what has allowed for nanotechne to proliferate across the globe, for energy to be compressed, stored, and utilized with an efficiency never before seen, for humans to transcend the limitations of their flesh into immortal demigods of synthetic biology. It is to modern technology what modern technology is to paleolithic technology, and its practitioners are equally as superstitious, ignorant, and frail as the first men who sought to master their environment rather than be subject to it. The inefficiencies and oddities of the Long Night era are simply the result of societies who are doing their best to utilize a science they poorly understand, making do with an imbalanced and unoptimized set of tools that even so are far more dangerous than anything which has previously existed.

Eras of History:

The Pre-Imperial Era:

In human history books, all of human civilization before the Solar Empire is referred to as the Pre-Imperial Era. The Early Pre-Imperial era is before the establishment of the internet but after the industrial revolution, the Middle Pre-Imperial Era is after that but before the first extraplanetary colonies, and the Late Pre-Imperial Era marks the brief period of time in which humanity dwelt among the heavenly spheres without the guiding hand of the Imperial Clade, punctuated by brutal resource wars and limited nuclear exchanges. This time is widely ignored by common people as irrelevant and unimportant, full of outmoded ideologies and barbaric primitivism, even as it admittedly formed the foundation of pan-human culture. It is as distant to them as the most ancient civilizations were to the Middle Pre-Imperial Era, and equally as misunderstood.

The Imperial Era:

This era marks the millennia-long reign of the Clade-Emperors and their genetic caste system, a highly stable if stagnant society where social advancement through conventional means was near-impossible past a certain point, due to the fact that if you were of a lower caste there would always be higher caste individuals genetically engineered to be superior to you, and if you were of the higher caste your role was defined by the caste you were born into. While the Solar Empire did face its fair share of challenges, its ruthless enforcement through its genetically-engineered soldiers and tacticians ensured that the only truly threatening rebellions were nothing more than skirmishes between members of the Imperial Clade feuding from the shadows. It was only during the Techne War that the empire faced a truly outside-context problem in the form of Posthuman Antinirvanism. The Imperial Era's close is marked by the genocide of the Imperial Clade, the virulent spread of nanotechne, synthetic life, and biomechanical life, the rise of the Myriad, and the beginning stages of the Terran Megastructure.

The Myriad Era:

A short lived era of some few centuries in which rampant nanotechne growth allowed for individuals to harness unprecedented amounts of both energy and raw materials, allowing them to rule as veritable sorcerer kings in an era of violence and anarchy. It was during this time that artificial life forms fusing machinery and flesh, such as bioframes, were engineered and used in world-spanning wars across the Earth, and when nanotechne was cultivated and tamed to form the foundation of post-collapse technology, allowing even the lowliest of tribes to construct advanced machinery and weaponry. Furthermore, the constant renovation and expansion of the Myriad and their sprawling megacity-states led to the near-total urbanization of the planet, at which point the phenomenon, which continues to this day, was dubbed the Terran Megastructure, for it could no longer be said to be a mundane celestial body but rather a rampant construct of endlessly expanding cityscape built by long-dead madmen. The Myriad Era is the primary cause of the ignorance of modern pan-humanity, as so much was shuffled about and destroyed in the feuds of the Myriad, millions upon millions slaughtered and megacities flattened only to be reconstructed and repopulated by vat-grown replacements, that the steady march of history was shattered and fragmented, entire peoples coming into being knowing nothing of anything save their servitude. This era came to a close when the Megastructure stabilized and the chaotic flow of energy dwindled, leading to the collapse of the grand works of the Myriad and the ushering in of the great dark age. Most notable of these effects was the corruption of the Datasphere by now-feral fragments of Myriad thought programs, which evolved, diversified, and competed for storage space until the entire internet of that time became a writhing ecosystem of intensely dangerous digital organisms, resulting in its quarantine.

The Long Night:

The present era of history, the dark age in which scattered populations and feuding city-states squabble for food, energy, and living space atop a constantly changing and danger-filled megastructure far beyond anyone's ability to control. Hypertechnological miracles exist side by side with starvation, war, and barbarism. Power belongs to those who follow the path of immortality and seize it, becoming living gods of synthetic flesh and living metal. It is unknown how long this chaotic period will last. Perhaps decades, perhaps centuries, perhaps millennia. But many regard it as the transitional period which will eventually give way to the rise of something far more beautiful and terrible than even the grandest age of the Solar Empire, if only the world and beyond may once more be united under a single power.

The New Dawn:

The name for the era to come, in which whatever species, ideology, or other form of victor stands triumphant above a unified solar system. It is an era many pray for but few expect to live to see. None can even begin to imagine what it might be like, but many see it in the same way as ancient humans viewed their religious apocalypses. Always looming on the horizon but never quite manifesting, and some, in the quiet of the night, hope it will never come to pass. Most believe it is an era in that biological life has no place in, incentivizing the pursuit of immortality through nanotechne to secure a place in that distant future, while others regard them as fools blinded by ambition or simply doomed to fail in the face of overwhelming odds.



« Last Edit: March 03, 2022, 07:20:08 am by squamous »
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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.0
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2018, 01:50:00 am »

Deep Lore (Optional Reading):


A History of the Solar Empire:

The Solar Empire was far and away the greatest civilization produced by biological humanity, this fact is indisputable. But even so, it could not withstand the chaos brought by the coming of biomechanical and synthetic life forms. Despite all its glory, spanning the entirety of man's home system and its many celestial bodies, the empire has fallen. Transcribed below is a story of its beginning, and its end.


As with most things before the rise of the empire, it's origins are shrouded in mystery. What is known, or rather theorized and pieced together, is that the origins of the empire lay in the very beginnings of the Late Pre-Imperial era. Rising from some part of the largest continent of that heady time, it would utilize its knowledge of genetic engineering to selectively breed countless physiological advantages into its citizenry and eventually its ruling class, slowly intermixing both socially and genetically with the world's elite. Drawing it's strings tighter over the course of the remaining centuries of this era it would unify the globe and institute the beginnings of the gene-caste system, bringing to heel with it the many nascent extraplanetary colonies that had formed during this time.

It cannot be overstated the extent to which genetic modification impacted mankind during this time. Many were afraid of precisely what was occurring, the growing presence of a neo-aristocracy which was not superior merely through wealth or influence, but down to the very core of their biology. In such a world, why would a baseline human ever be considered for a role applied for by one of these improved individuals? Anyone who deliberately excluded improved humans over baseline ones or otherwise attempted to practice some manner of equity was simply outcompeted by the ones that didn't. The idea of all men being equal perished with the empire's rise, and as it continued to institute species-wide genetic stratification it would only continue to divide humanity into various cogs in its bureaucratic machine. There were those who resisted, of course. Who rejected what the empire sought to impose over them and fought valiantly against it, though just as many degenerated into terrorist reactionaries, indiscriminately sowing chaos and violence and providing a pretext for further crackdowns against political dissidents. While many were suppressed, some few went deep, deep underground, hiding amongst the teeming billions of humanity's homeworld, and they waited.

But overall, the empire's success was near total. Imperial records speaking of this time, what few are still preserved, primarily speak of the prior era as a barbaric period gently corrected and brought to heel by the empire's valiant ancestors. It was during the Imperial Era itself that the nation truly came into its own. Devoid of competition the imperial elite, though it had yet to call itself such during the early centuries of its existence, could languidly expand at their own pace, tweaking and refining the newly-formed strains of humanity as one plucks the strings of a guitar to tune it to perfection. From this era came the Hi-Caste, the system-spanning governmental organization comprising everything from paper-pushers to elite soldiers to manufactured celebrities which would dominate all aspects of imperial culture. Further still would have the Lo-Caste, once merely common Earth stock with minor alterations, be changed to suit the planet they were grown to colonize. Grown in vats, of course. Conventional reproduction was far too messy to utilize in bulk when filling an empty planet, much less filling it with humans built specifically for that atmosphere, this level of gravity, and so forth.

For certain, it was not an entirely cruel time. Many humans of all castes existed in a level of comfort which even Middle Pre-Imperial era humans would find enviable. Many others did not, of course, but even they could typically find their most basic needs attended to. A place to sleep, food to eat, even if it was just a cramped pod and processed sludge. The empire existed for thousands of years, its sprawling infrastructure could handle most needs of its carefully regulated population. But while it was generous to the body, it was crushing to the spirit. It was an era in which social mobility was almost entirely stagnant. The science of tuning both mind and body towards a specific role or environment was all but perfected. Few if any of the Lo-Caste could ever be as efficient and timely as an individual of the Hi-Caste's Civilian Clade, and the most skilled of Lo-Caste soldiers were outmatched by the lethal fighting prowess of the Military Clade when it came down to the statistics. At best, a Lo-Caste individual of significant renown or skill could look forward to having their genes sampled and used to marginally improve the next generation of Hi-Caste individuals, or even more rarely be permitted to claim father or mother-hood of a particular individual. This practice was notorious for being championed as a great opportunity for social and financial advancement through one's offspring, but in practice many such lower caste parents were rarely contacted by their higher caste children once they were put through the empire's training program. Exceptions always existed, but they were few and far between. The empire knew much of how to alter a mind in ways they found desirable, both through genes and through the power of propaganda.

At the center of this churning machine of humanity was the Imperial Clade, or the Imperial Caste as it was also called, for there was only one clade within that highest rank of imperial society. The Imperial Clade received a mixture of genetic material from all the different strains of the Hi-Caste, each one a veritable chimera of implanted DNA taken from the best of the best below their station. Physical prowess, mental acumen, beauty and charisma, longevity and health, all such things were built into their masterfully-grown bodies, which due to their complexity took decades to grow in expensive, elaborate artificial wombs. A sprawling, ever-growing family, they were the core around which life in the empire revolved, insulated from the resentment of the lower castes by their bureaucracy of finely-tuned, slavishly loyal high caste servants. It should be unsurprising then that they were obsessed with the perfection of their ideal bodies and ideal lives. Almost becoming a cult within the family itself, which was well into the tens of thousands, was the principle of attaining the perfect human existence. This principle would play into the beliefs of the empire at large as it filtered down into the masses.

Contrary to some expectations, faith did not perish in the empire's era. It certainly flourished. With the advent of space travel, all manner of new myths emerged, new saints were canonized, new superstitions developed. Countless mystery cults existed in all layers of the empire's society. But most prominent of the lot was the Philosophy of Harmonious Bliss (it went by many names, but this is the one which appears the most often in records), a system-spanning mega-religion which incorporated various syncretic elements from multiple old-world faiths. In short, its doctrine was that humanity was born mortal and flawed. However, mankind was given the tools to both shape himself and the environment into new, more beneficial iterations which brought greater happiness. The empire has the greatest of these tools, and the purpose of all of this is to elevate mankind into the state of perfect bliss, where no desire goes unfulfilled and no unwanted suffering can exist. All toil goes toward this goal, all current suffering is for its sake. To turn against the empire is to turn against heaven and perfection itself, and is the greatest of sins. Naturally it was heavily patronized by the imperial family, and was a vital tool in placating the many individuals who craved meaning greater than the material in their lives. Yet to others, it was an even greater cause for discontent.

It should be noted that for all the advancement of the empire, one place it lagged in was computation. Certainly its computers were respectable, far more advanced than the ones prior to its existence, but for thousands of years little progress had been made beyond the first initial leaps. This was by design. For above all the threat of artificial intelligence, or something like it, loomed over the imperial clade. As things stood, they were the ultimate life forms. All of the solar system existed solely to please their whims. Should an existence appear which was more intelligent than all of them combined, that was alien to mankind, or even simply a rogue calculator intent on maximizing paperclips, the delicate system of human lives upon which their power rested would be thrown into turmoil. The closest the empire ever came to true AI was tentative experiments in mind uploading, abandoned out of paranoia. No, better to move slowly and carefully in such matters, never taking a risk or advancing too quickly. The empire was devoid of competition, after all. They could afford a sedate pace.

Or so they thought. For while the empire did not dare meddle with such things, there was another group that did.

For evolving alongside the empire, for all those millennia, was its shadow. After all, no human institution could be perfect. It could not see everywhere, there were places its arm could not reach. In these places dwelt the incubators of a process that had begun during the early days of the empire's conception. During its nascent phase, those who had resisted its rule had gone to ground and escaped the pogroms and purges that marked that brutal era. A mixture of the disgruntled rich (but not rich enough) and poor alike, a loose collective of those who found the future of genetic castes they saw to be intolerable, they would over the following centuries perpetuate a quiet counterculture which retained that disdain for a world in which they would always be limited, even if the original reason for doing so was long forgotten. All that truly carried over, like the shockwaves from an impact, was the desire to overturn a society which was so fundamentally stifling. Across generations there would always be those who felt that way, who looked at the castes higher above them and thought to themselves, why am I here and not with them? Is this really as far as my ambition will take me? These individuals would be scouted out and co-opted by organizations within the counterculture, added to their ranks and pool of knowledge. Over time, awareness of this persistent counterculture would reach the ears of the imperial elite. Along with its name, Antinirvanism. The refusal to accept the bliss offered by the release of personal desire and ambition and submission to the great work. Rather, they were utterly determined to upend the society which stifled their ambitions, be they for good or ill, and many otherwise opposed individuals found themselves united under this paradigm.

It was these individuals, or at least the most competent of them, who would ever seek to devise a means to counter the caste system and create individuals who could compete with th Hi-Caste bureaucracy which conspired to maintain order. It was openly acknowledged among their ranks that baseline humanity stood no chance against the elite soldiers and tacticians of the imperial military, so their only hope was some manner of new discovery which could provide the advantage the Antinirvanist movement sorely needed. And indeed, such an advantage was discovered, though its ramifications would echo far beyond its initial intent.

It was devised by a group of Antinirvanist geneticists touched by brilliance, or mania. Cybernetics and implants existed during this time, but highly regulated due to fears of them being used by Lo-Caste groups to compete with members of the Hi-Caste. As such, the idea of purchasing or manufacturing cybernetic augmentations to build a half-machine army of rebels was simply impossible, such an endeavor would attract far too much attention. But what if one could hide machinery within their very body, machinery which would prove to be as much of a boon as any sort of mechanical limb or chip in one's brain? Nanotechnology had always been used as a means to tweak the bodies of fetuses in cloning vats and maintain health, but it went unused in the bodies of adults for the same reason there were limitations on cybernetics and AI, a fear of something which would upset the gene-caste system. And that is precisely what was occurring in this isolated laboratory below the tens of billions of humans who lived on earth. Though the mechanisms for how this was achieved were lost, the group managed to devise a manner of hereditary nanomachine system over the course of countless years of struggling. Those who were injected with it would find themselves in better health, but what truly would change would be their offspring. The primary ability of the nanotechnology was that it carried with it a basic set of pseudo-DNA managed by a distributed computer network comprising the whole of the microscopic machinery within an individual's body, which was geared towards increasing complexity and greater efficacy over generational evolution, taking its best aspects developed over a lifetime and implementing them in full within a gestating fetus. Someone who constantly worked out and tore their muscles would have nanomachines which would have a greater understanding of how to repair and improve musculature, and so their children would have a greater degree of nanomachine density within their muscular system that would improve their strength, for example. Someone with a failing liver supplemented by nanomachines would bear or sire children with far better livers than themselves. One suffering from heart disease ameliorated by these nanomachines would produce children with stronger hearts. Over the course of dozens, hundreds of generations, a secret lineage of augmented humans began to emerge, not born in vats and designed with intent, but the product of natural evolution happening at an unimaginably faster pace. Much like the goals of the proto-Antinirvanists, the knowledge of the origins of this lineage and its nature would be repeatedly forgotten and rediscovered, slowly distributed amongst Antinirvanist organizations across the system through smuggled sperm and egg cells implanted in willing hosts, spreading nanomachine-aided humanity across countless celestial bodies.

For a long time, nanomechanically-enhanced humanity was simply a half-known oddity that existed on the periphery of civilization. Imperial authorities cracked down on cells which overreached, and they were certainly quick to crack down on illegal nanomechanical augmentation, but much of the broader implications simply escaped the bureaucracy due to the rarity of such incidents. The empire comprised hundreds of celestial bodies and hundreds of billions of people, the fact was the entirety of the Antinirvanist movement was just a drop in the ocean and its struggle just one oddity among many the empire was quite certain it was capable of stifling. And for all of its vitriol and disgust towards the very existence of the empire it would have remained such were it not for the unfathomable monster gestating in each and every individual who carried the Antinirvanist lineage.

In a turn not predicted even by the original devisers of the technology, the nanomechanically-augmented humans would eventually accumulate such densities of nanotechne that it would appear visibly on their bodies. The first such specimens were the product of careful breeding programs in the most isolated and hidden parts of the empire, the significance of them recognized and carefully hidden away by those few cells who could bring such things to fruition. Through additional generations and training they managed to create the first macroscopic hereditary cybernetics, mechanical augmentation which not only improved human traits but allowed for new traits to be obtained, such as personal computer interfacing, internal weapon implants, and so on. This new iteration of humanity was precisely what the Antinirvanists had been looking for, yet it was still not enough. Greater numbers were needed, and greater strength. But such a breakthrough could not be concealed forever, and it was eventually brought to the attention of the Imperial Clade.

The existence of such entities was horrifying to the Hi-Caste and its imperial masters. For a society so rigidly bound by genetic stratification, the existence of individuals who could transcend the caste barriers in a single lifetime, without the blessing of the imperial bureaucracy, would greatly upset the delicate balance they had maintained for hundreds of years. They simply could not be allowed to exist. For the first time in as far as anyone alive could remember, the empire mobilized to seriously deal with a threat. Unfortunately, its efforts came too late. By that point, the first hereditary cyborgs had accumulated sufficient capabilities that they could survive some of the harshest conditions imaginable, including the wastelands of Venus or the outer reaches of Mars, the rings of Saturn and the asteroid belt, the deepest pits of polluted Earth. Like maggots they proliferated across the wounds of the empire, waging a quiet war of survival with their hunters for yet more generations. It was this war which would begin the process of the empire's undoing.

The brutality of the Antinirvanist suppression effort was legendary. No one was spared, for if a single mated pair of hereditary cyborgs continued to exist they could eventually beget entire clans of the things, which would once again threaten the empire. Time and time again the Antinirvanists were nearly eradicated only to spring up elsewhere, each generation more advanced than the last. But this constant pressure was playing havoc on the Antinirvanists themselves. After all, their hereditary nanomachines selected for traits manifested by the user, and by now, even what the user themselves desired, consciously or otherwise. The most ruthless, pragmatic, survival-oriented individuals survived to not only pass down their augmentations, but their personalities to their offspring, their cybernetic subconscious echoing their need to produce more like their kind to ensure survival. Over time they would develop into beings of alien morality, unconcerned with the issues of right and wrong and purely focused on their desires and how to fulfill them. Driven not by a pursuit of glory, or justice, or a desire for revenge, but absolute power and immortality. To rest at the pinnacle of existence. Unlike the Philosophy of Harmonious Bliss, the Antinirvanist creed preached a life of perpetual conflict, self-improvement, and egoistic pursuit of one's own desires, whatever they may be. If something stood in your way, crush it. If an obstacle existed, tear it down. What united them was a mutual need for cooperation in the face of an overwhelmingly powerful opponent that would stop at nothing to see them eradicated, a selective pressure which may well have been the only reason they retained the desire to socialize and seek companionship at all. And eventually, their cat and mouse game with the empire reached its crescendo. After so long, a second breakthrough was reached. A child was born which had fully shed its carbon biology, existing fully as the product of synthetic biology far superior to organic life born of earth's primordial soup, shaped not by blind evolution but the fury of a thousand generations denied their potential. The first posthuman clade had been fully realized.


Suffice to say, the Techne War as it came to be called was unimaginably destructive. The Antinirvanist forces, spearheaded by their posthuman exemplars, struck like lightning across a thousand locations at once, plunging the empire into screaming chaos in the face of a true outside-context problem. The empire was not composed of fools, however, and was quick to respond, bombarding entire colonies from space rather than have them overtaken by the enemy, fighting viciously on the ground in whatever places were too precious to flatten. But posthumans did not need life support, nor did they need much in the way of supplies, nor did they need external tools to survive in space. Even the crudest of vessels was acceptable for them so long as they could escape the gravity well, allowing Antinirvanist forces to rapidly proliferate across the solar system. Furthermore, with the aid of their revered posthuman elites, factories and refineries could be subverted through electronic warfare of previously unseen complexity, turned to the side of Antinirvanism and equipping its soldiers with the best weapons they could devise, and much more beyond that. Given the Antinirvanists were a legion of self-interested independents, it was not long before the first drones would appear on the scene, mindless constructs loyal to their posthuman masters who would fight en masse only to be replaced by another wave. It was a war of total obliteration for the Antinirvanists, for at this point it was clear to simply allow them to live would eventually lead to the proliferation of their technology and the inevitable collapse of the empire even if the empire itself emerged victorious.

The empire was, however, quick to study the phenomenon of hypertechnology with the rare specimens it managed to capture alive. As hesitant as they were to study the phenomenon, they could not help but admit that conventional technology was insufficient to fully contend with Antinirvanist forces. Extracting the base essence of the posthuman makeup, they would, through the power of the countless brilliant minds bred for this exact purpose, develop the first breed of independent "programmable matter", which could allow the empire to grow rather than manufacture all manner of devices, negating many of the tedious steps of construction which slowed them in the war effort. This substance, dubbed nanotechne, was utterly revolutionary, allowing even the most isolated settlements to breed formless factories which could be coaxed into manufacturing whatever was required. Had it not been for the war, it would have ushered the empire into untold prosperity, perhaps. As it was, it was hastily used to augment the power of the military and industrial capabilities of the empire in the face of an existential threat. Collectively, nanotechne, synthetic life, and the advanced machineries it had produced had come to be called "hypertechnology", the repurposed flesh and bone of synthetic humanoids, cultured in a lab and stripped of its animal drive to become a sessile tool.

Though nanotechne was originally utilized by the empire it was not long before the Antinirvanists recognized it for what it was and utilized it for themselves, being far more familiar with hypertechnology than the empire. But even so, they were unable to deny its use to the enemy. Augmented by hypertechnological equipment the Warclades of the empire were now on far more even ground with the now-teeming masses of posthuman enemies they faced. Though they were but organic beings, they were now supported by the armor and weapons made from the reverse-engineered processes of their enemies, and writ within their genome was several thousand years of progress in the arts of war. The conflict stalled as both sides finally reached the apex of their strength.

It was during this time that nanotechne proliferated across both sides of the war, which had become a constant looming shadow over areas under Antirnivanist occupation and Imperial rule. It could be envisioned as a lake consisting of raw "manufacturing". One could interface with this material through a computer, and program it to produce machinery, infrastructure, or just about anything else that was once the domain of a conventional factory. Furthermore, it could be used to repair pre-existing objects in sufficient quantities. All one needed was to take a sample, and then feed it raw materials, such as scrap metal, to increase your quantity of the stuff. Both sides guarded it zealously, but in the end curiosity and experimentation would lead to events rapidly spiraling out of control.

With how much life relied on nanotechne in the last centuries of the Techne War for which it was named, it might come as surprising that people had forgotten its origins. It was, after all, a quasi-alive liquid computer reverse-engineered from millennia of nanomechanical evolution, and life, as it is said, finds a way.

The original outbreak has long been lost to history, but what is known is that at some point nanotechne began expanding by itself, developing in ways never intended by the Solar Empire or Antinirvanists. In some places entire cities with no one living in them sprung up like weeds. In others amorphous masses of nanomachines slithered like great amoebas from some primordial soup. Chaos reigned even in places the Antinirvanists never touched, and nowhere was this felt more than Earth, with its sprawling megacities the perfect target of assimilation by feral nanotechne colonies. The war spiked in intensity as both sides sought to annihilate the other before the entire solar system collapsed into chaos.

In the end, the Techne War was punctuated by two things. Firstly, a desperate attack by Antinirvanist forces penetrated the heart of Earth and, as far as anyone today knows, completely eliminated the cloistered Imperial Clade in a day of unmitigated slaughter. Headless and reeling, the empire fired back with all the power at its disposal, breaking the back of the broader Antinirvanist offensive. With both sides exhausted, the solar system could do little but fall apart, littered with wonders and horrors of a centuries long conflict between two great opponents. As nanotechne continued to consume the solar system, some select individuals who were experts in its understanding would eventually wrest control of the thrashing leviathan that it had become, wreaking an even greater havoc in their short-lived reign.

What remains of the era are the original posthumans themselves, their mortal progenitors all long-dead, their own kind surviving in the harsh wasteland of the Terran Megastructure, and the varying castes of humanity, the Hi-Caste bereft of their masters and clinging on to power through their genetic heritage and hoarded technologies, while the Lo-Caste, their minds the same as their baseline ancestors if not their bodies, have simply started anew, carving out new domains of their own and establishing new cultures, new identities, while following the path carved out by the Antinirvanists; the pursuit of immortality through hypertechnology.



A History of the Myriad Era:

The Myriad Era was known for its impossible horrors and indescribable wonders. Over 90% of intelligent beings on Earth alone perished during these centuries of transhuman rule, and many of the technologies used today are but the scattered fragments of the most unimaginable sciences utilized by the masters of nanotechne, the collective of transcendent individuals known as the Myriad.

Though it should be stressed that this collective referred to a group of unique life forms of similar capability, not a cohesive organization. In many ways they differed entirely from one another in terms of goals, desires, and castes of origin. The Myriad were a select group of geniuses who grasped the immense power unleashed by rampaging nanotechne megastructures and made use of them before any others. In the brief moment of time where this power was available, those few who mastered it could control unimaginable amounts of matter and energy with their vastly enhanced bodies. Each of the Myriad was an un-replicateable anomaly, their origins and growth to their known state wiped from history by their own design.

The most commonly accepted theory regarding the rise of the Myriad was simply that, in a solar system housing billions upon billions of pan-human life forms, there would inevitably be a select few who would fully understand the implications of an out-of-control nanotechne infrastructure and moved to take advantage of it before anyone else. Hundreds if not thousands of people, each individually seizing the opportunities offered to them, became the nexuses for this power by establishing control over portions of nanotechne environments and reshaping them to their own wills. As both the remnants of the Solar Empire and Antinirvanist movement were fragmented and exhausted, it was the optimal time for third-party interests who had been studying the phenomena of hypertechne on their own to make their own power plays. Utilizing the immense material and energetic resources that coursed through the solar system during this period of planetary-scale restructuring, the Myriad could assert their dominance with a speed and strength that saw the Hi-Caste and Antinirvanism both caught on the back foot.

Following this establishment, the Myriad seemed to go completely berserk.

The Myriad Era was defined by the absolute power of the Myriad exploding onto the scene, asserting near total control of the Terran Megastructure's surface save for the highly-fortified Imperial enclaves and migratory posthuman warbands. The Myriad utilized biomechanical weaponry on a previously unseen scale, developing terrifying war machines such as the bioframe. Indeed, the nomenclature of bio-[name] has come to mean 'a biomechanical life form created by the Myriad' moreso than anything else. While life in the Solar Empire was cheap, it became moreso under the rule of the Myriad. These mad demiurges would casually obliterate entire cities off the map for the resources they held, simply re-growing the population in cloning vats once the original populace was wiped out. No attempt was made to placate the masses, for the difference between common folk and the Myriad was simply too great. With their armies of loyal biomachines which would never think to rebel, the Myriad's power was unchallengeable by most.

The history of the Myriad more or less defies comprehension. To us mortals on the ground, the battles between members of the Myriad were incomprehensibly complex games played across centuries by hyper-advanced intelligences. What can be stated is how other groups reacted to it.

The Imperial Provisional Government, led by Hi-Caste survivors of the war, secured swathes of highly fortified territory that let nothing in or out, fighting a desperate prolonged siege against an unimaginable enemy. Even so, with the resources at their disposal they managed to weather the storm to an extent, but earned the ire of the Lo-Castes for seemingly abandoning them, if indeed they were not already disliked for their high status. Only during the era of the Long Night have they once again begun exerting their power.

The Antinirvanists were dealing with their own issues, a new internal danger rearing its head. Since the war, large numbers of posthumans had been growing increasingly violent and distant, eventually outright preying on their fellows and ignoring all attempts at reason. This phenomenon was deemed a hyperpredatory personality cascade, a situation in which an individual which evolved itself for combat devoted so much of itself to subconscious sub-routines and inhuman thought patterns that an ego as we understood it was snuffed out, leaving only a bundle of instinctual programs in the body of a synthetic killing machine. Hyperpredators exist to this day as one of the greatest dangers in the wastelands, the term itself coming to define the concept of a non-sapient life form that preyed on civilizations and civilized beings in general, but at the time the Antinirvanists themselves were nearly wiped out by their degenerated cousins. The ones that exist today are descended from those who retained enough mental discipline to maintain their egos, and as a result have become somewhat more reasonable.  Even among posthumans not of the Antinirvanist clades, there exists a deep taboo regarding straying too far from the human base in either mind or body, but especially the former. This often manifests in the form immortals take, a human one. Even among the Anitnirvanists, the understanding is that their ancestors sought immortality so it could be enjoyed as a human would enjoy it, disregarding the idea of handing it off to some further link in the evolutionary chain, a widely popular mode of thought even outside their own species.

Lastly, the Lo-Caste groups suffered the worst. As stated, their lives were cheap, with millions dying and being grown every year as the Myriad created and destroyed human lives on a whim or as part of some greater scheme. It is estimated that over 50% of the Lo-Caste population across the entire solar system was rendered extinct, and much of Pre-Imperial cultural and national heritages were erased or forgotten, even those that had survived the Imperial repression of such antiquated sentiments. A high percentage of Lo-Caste alive today likely descend from cloned populations made up from whole cloth, devoid of any Pre-Imperial or even Imperial ethnic lineage.

Furthermore, among all these individuals would emerge the first of what the modern world would consider "transcendent" individuals, those who upgrade themselves to move far beyond their baseline through the use of nanotechne, but do not change themselves so much as to be incomprehensible to their inferiors. Using the evolution of the Asura as a base, the first of the hereditary cyborgs would appear, often pledging themselves to the Myriad or simply being wiped out by them, only coming into their own during the Long Night.

So, with such incredible power at their disposal, why was the Myriad Era so short lived? The truth is that for all their power, the Myriad were coasting off of a highly unstable burst of energy and computing power produced by the rapid evolution of nanotechne. They were the masters of what was effectively the Cambrian Explosion of biomechanical life, and it was not a period that could last forever. Eventually the great clashing and restructuring of the solar system by nanotechne run rampant stabilized and dwindled, and the Myriad found themselves cut off from their energy and much of their minds. They fell not through the actions of the rest of the Solar System but through famine and deprivation, leaving a shattered wreck in their wake. Their broken and separated digital subsystems would evolve into independent entities within the Datasphere, existing entirely as data and eventually developing an entirely alien ecology which beings of the material world are hesitant to tamper with.

It was from this ruin that civilization would once more claw itself into existence, ushering in the current era.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2022, 07:23:31 am by squamous »
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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.0
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2018, 11:08:57 am »

sounds interesting - waiting for a linux compatible version.
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Death Dragon

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.0
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2018, 11:22:15 am »

I think all you'd have to do to play the mod on linux is to take the mod's "raw" and "data" folders and replace the ones in your normal DF installation with them.
Normally you only need "raw", but this mod also changes some other stuff like music, which is why you'd need the "data" folder, too. If it doesn't work, try without the modded data folder.
Use a new DF installation just to be sure.
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Pvt. Pirate

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.0
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2018, 12:37:45 pm »

i never have ingame music active anyway... would the raws be compatible with overrides for a twbt-tileset?
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squamous

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.4
« Reply #7 on: December 21, 2018, 07:33:55 pm »

bumping because some big updates came out
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squamous

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.7
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2019, 03:50:17 am »

Bumping because major update.

Honestly, for awhile I felt like this mod didn't have any direction, but I'm slowly settling on an atmosphere and setting that I'm happy with, so I have a better idea about what to add for future updates.
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squamous

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.0
« Reply #10 on: April 14, 2019, 03:56:45 am »

i never have ingame music active anyway... would the raws be compatible with overrides for a twbt-tileset?

Also sorry, I didn't notice your question until now and uh I really don't know, I don't use DFhack or the noob pack.
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squamous

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.91
« Reply #11 on: August 09, 2019, 05:33:26 pm »

time for more update
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The Dorfmeister

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.91
« Reply #12 on: August 19, 2019, 09:49:21 am »

Hello. I just downloaded this mod to give it a try, because that setting seems quite interesting to me, but I didnīt get to play it because for some reason it always crashes when I try to play Adventurer mode. Sometimes it crashes just after finishing adventurer creation, sometimes it allows me to wander a bit before the crash happens. I didnīt alter anything of the mod files and the error log spams things like " Nush Zarionjagren, Melee specialist: site walker could not find walkable area".

Maybe someone has an idea why that crashes occur and maybe can help me out.

Thanks, The Dorfmeister.
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GORLAK: A small, round humanoid found wandering the caves deep underground. Most of its body is taken up by a huge tusked mouth. Its skin is goldenrod, its eyes are red.

Dwarves admire Gorlaks for their impressive tusks, stimulating conversations and helpful guidances.

squamous

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.91
« Reply #13 on: August 19, 2019, 11:26:06 am »

Hello. I just downloaded this mod to give it a try, because that setting seems quite interesting to me, but I didnīt get to play it because for some reason it always crashes when I try to play Adventurer mode. Sometimes it crashes just after finishing adventurer creation, sometimes it allows me to wander a bit before the crash happens. I didnīt alter anything of the mod files and the error log spams things like " Nush Zarionjagren, Melee specialist: site walker could not find walkable area".

Maybe someone has an idea why that crashes occur and maybe can help me out.

Thanks, The Dorfmeister.

Have you tried installing dfhack or other utilities onto the mod?
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https://www.patreon.com/themodsmith
Have questions? Need to report bugs? Post them in the discord:  https://discord.gg/dGzGr5svS2

The Dorfmeister

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Re: Dwarf Fortress: Dying Earth 1.91
« Reply #14 on: August 19, 2019, 11:56:37 am »

No, I just ran the mod just like it was at download. Maybe I just re-download and re-install it, then.
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GORLAK: A small, round humanoid found wandering the caves deep underground. Most of its body is taken up by a huge tusked mouth. Its skin is goldenrod, its eyes are red.

Dwarves admire Gorlaks for their impressive tusks, stimulating conversations and helpful guidances.
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