The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release => General UQM Discussion => Topic started by: CrowZone on February 15, 2004, 09:34:55 am



Title: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: CrowZone on February 15, 2004, 09:34:55 am
Note: I posted this in another thread, but it would be lost amid it so I wondered if anyone had any insight into what I'm getting at here.  Anyways, just reposting it for input.

-----------------------
Alright I wanted to reiterate my Orz/Arilou belief's so that people could see where I'm comming from.

First, throw out SC3 -- Its not hard to do heh  Nothing learned from SC3 is valid.

What does Orz tell us about itself? Orz, come from *below* which seems to be a dimension relatively below Realspace. Orz is not *light reflections* meaning that unlike in our universe, we percieve objects through sight by the light that reflects off them -- with Orz this is not so.  Also, Orz is not *many bubbles* or a multicellular organizm even though to us we would THINK Orz is made up of *Tiny bubbles*.  However Orz is probably a projection *finger* into our universe by some form of entity which resides in a dimension relatively beneath our native one.  Remember, we do not *see* Orz bubbles, but we obviously percieve them.

Orz came to our universe because they learned about it because of Androsynth experiments with IDF.  Seemingly, Androsynth learned how to open portals between dimensions, whether or not this facilitated travel for the Androsynth is trivial.  It merely allowed other Denizens of other Dimensions to somehow observe Androsynth.  

Orz was one of the beings that learned of Realspace because of the IDF experiments,  Before this, Orz did not even know Realspace existed!  Concieveably there are probably infinite number of dimensions, with inhabited ones few and far between.  At the same time, however, *they* also learned of the Androsynth.  

Now Orz watched the Androsynth and wants to help Androsynth.  So, Orz does what it feels is best!  It starts pulling Androsynth into Orz's dimension, or another dimension, safe from the *they*.  Orz, not really having comprehension of Death (hence, combat is always *dancing* or something fun) pull every bit of Androsynth they can find, living, dead, decaying -- everything)  After all, Orz wants to help every other *slider* it can find, it probably did so with the Taalo (more on that later).  

So Orz pulls the Androsynth out of Realspace -- The Androsynth probably had no idea what was going on and reacted negatively -- And now Orz is hiding the Androsynth.  To further protect them, Orz does not want to talk about the Androsynth incase *they* finds them again.

Now,  The Arilou are also interdimensional travelers and they frown upon the Orz.  I think because they see Orz as reckless and acts without considering things.  Orz refer's to Arilou as *Quick Babies*, probably simply a reference to the Arilou popping in and out of dimensions, and Also because I think on a time scale, Arilou are more like Us and less like Orz (which may or may not be eternal) therefore even though Arilou are wise and their species ancient, it might be nothing compared to Orz.  

The Arilou tell us that they have been hiding our smell from beings which would hurt us.  I think we can take this at face value, they're making it hard for other inter dimensional beings (or maybe only one particular inter dimensional being) to find us.

When asked, why the Arilou are in realspace again (outside of looking after us) they mention they are here catching *Nggn*.  When pressed about the *Nggn* the Arilou brush humans off and don't really want to explain it.  However, I get the impression that the *Nggn* and Orz's the They or Them are one and the same.  The Arilou are only found in Realspace, near their natural break into Quasispace from Hyperspace, that explains their small sphere of influence, but Technically, Quasi space travel means Arilou can quickly show up ANYWHERE they need to in the galaxy (and probably the entirety of realspace) fairly quickly, so geographically their location is trivial.  The way Arilou describe the *Nggn* is meant to make the captian not really think they're important.  Arilou don't want us to even contemplate looking for the *Nggn* because if we do, then the *Nggn* will find us!  Bad news.

Now, there's some animosity between Orz and the Arilou because they're both trying to do the same thing (protect things from some more evil form of ID being) and have different modalities for doing so. Arilou like to protect and hide beings in their own dimension (and maybe they're exclusive to humans) whereas Orz simply just rip an endangered race or society from where they are and hide them somewhere else.  

As for the Taalo, I dont think the Taalo were pulled into another dimension by Orz in the way the Androsynth are.  I believe the Taalo were more or less ready for IDF travel by the time Orz learned of them.  The Taalo probably left willingly our dimension for other dimensions (to protect themselves from being wiped out) In the time that has passed, the Taalo are probably profficient *sliders* through dimension, but are better then Orz at dealing with issues related to time, which Orz doesn't seem to have much of a grasp of.  So when the Taalo play with Orz, they use this to their advantage.

Now, that all being said, here's the reason WHY I believe all this.  Because its NOT the obvious selection.   There are tons of hints WHY Orz might be evil,  however alot of them come from the Arilou and I don't really think they're 100% trustworthy.  Honestly though, believing Orz are bad is just EASY -- and much of the stories in SC2 are complex and detailed.  If TFB ever made a REAL SC3, they would probably want to surprise people over their incorrect pre-concieved notions about some of the various races, and this is a perfect example of a set up to me.  Anyways, thats my opinion,  if you have any questions about some of the terms, and things I've left out, ask and I shall answer them as best I can about my interpretation.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Defender on February 15, 2004, 10:26:33 am
i had an idea, or more like a look into future, by what was found at the ayndrosynth home world. there cities were hit, from what is best described, as nuclear bombardment from orbit. now the only race with nukes, are... thats right, humans. the orz weapons are more like cannon shells, than nukes. to me this sounds like a set up for time travel, since earth is slave shielded, theres no way a rouge band of humans, could do that handy work. so sometim in the future,  humans go back to stop the ayndrosynth, or protect them, what ever fits your future plot. i perfer protect, it just doesnt settle well that in the end of all that slavery, we should end up enemies. anyways, maybe the TIME humans, find out something bads coming out of the IDF holes, start shooting at the planet, trying to help the synth. only to disapear too...
now maybe its the orz coming through on that day, or something else all together. you decide.

now i know im pulling alot on that one notion about the nukes, but it would fit, regardless.

well thats my take on it. its just to incomplete, to really make anything solid. without pulling ideas out of thin air, to go in right directions of the facts. it needs more TRUE story to REALLY figure out what happened.

~DEFIANT


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: CrowZone on February 15, 2004, 10:38:00 am
Technically, other races likely have nuclear technology -- The Thraddash for sure do.

However, In my theory, the Androsynth are nuking themselves, in an attept to stop the "They" who are acting like ghosts, or poltergeists and thus the nukes are useless against them.  It stands to reason taht the Androsynth would have nukes,  They COME from earth after all.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Ivan Ivanov on February 15, 2004, 07:14:01 pm
Quote
i had an idea, or more like a look into future, by what was found at the ayndrosynth home world. there cities were hit, from what is best described, as nuclear bombardment from orbit. now the only race with nukes, are... thats right, humans


I don't think so. The lander crew says that there is no sign of planetary bombardment, that the cities look like "something appeared out of nowhere and blasted everything with nuclear bazookas". Also there's no sign of any bodies.
So my guess it was something like this:
- The Androsynths start experimenting with IDF
- *They* (Orz in my opinion) notice the Synths
- Synths go crazy (because the knowladge about all the ID things is too much for their fragile little minds)  and proceed to blast everything with nuclear bazookas in order to save themselves from *them*
- It was of course pointless because *they* did not exist in a physical form in our dimension at that *time*
- *They* take over/devour the minds of Synths and change the shape of their bodies (not that hard for a multi-inter-dimenisonal beeing)

And voila what was once an Androsynth is now an Orz.

Fits like a glove to the whole "There are no more Androsynth now. Only Orz." thing


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Defender on February 15, 2004, 08:37:06 pm
nuclear bazookas, i forgot about that. i thought it was from orbit, my bad. so... what race has nuclear bazookas? i dont think there is any evidence that the Orz use that kind of weapon with there Space Marines. there just isnt enough Fact to draw a good conlusion.

i do like the time travel senario. maybe change a few things, like humans and synth fighting ON the planet, together. making up for past travisties.

i guess i just want the humans and synth to be reunited...

~DEFIANT


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Lukipela on February 16, 2004, 01:00:26 am
Thoiugh it bears little relvevance to the discussion, and though I'm not trying to imply that the Traddash were in any way involved in the disappearance of the Synth, a nuclear bazooka does sound like a very Traddash like weapon..


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Defender on February 16, 2004, 07:49:45 am
hmmm...and the plot thickins...

~DEFIANT


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Ivan Ivanov on February 16, 2004, 06:27:39 pm
Quote
i do like the time travel senario. maybe change a few things, like humans and synth fighting ON the planet, together. making up for past travisties.

i guess i just want the humans and synth to be reunited...
~DEFIANT


Well... most of the ideas of bringing back the Androsynth I've seen before remind me too much of the way cheap science fiction series revive dead characters, the only difference is that even the cheapest s-f series didn't go as far as reviving whole species.

I think if the Androsynth were to return, they would have to become something like Arilou. After beeing *pulled* they went through hell in the *below* dimensions, but some of them survived, adapted to the new environment and became inter-dimensional travellers who look after their human cousins (but don't really tell them too much, for their own protection of course).


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: CrowZone on February 16, 2004, 08:58:56 pm
I'd agree that they'd be more "wise" as a race, having learned many interesting secrets about the nature of the Universe -- whether they would be nice or mean to the Humans is another thing.  They don't much like humans -- but perhaps theyve been enlightened by their adventures.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Culture20 on February 17, 2004, 01:23:21 am
I would disagree with some of your assumptions, Crowzone:
1)Orz was laughing about our saying that we see it.  In reality, we see the photons that bounce off of Orz, not Orz.  This is just like every other object: we see photons, not the ocject itself.  Orz was pointing out something funny in the way we speak.
2)Orz is not *Many Bubbles* does not immediately imply that Orz is not multicellular.  In my opinion, this means that Orz is not seperate entities like we are, but is instead a unified being.  We do "see" Orz *fingers* in the sense that we see the photons that bounce off them.
3)Orz lets us investigate the Andosynth Homeworld, something it wouldn't do if it were trying to protect us.  Also, it mentions the Androsynth making the IDF portals (again, something it wouldn't do if it wanted to protect us).
4)*Nggn* have nothing to do with *them* because the Arilou tell us about them.  They would not have even mentioned their *name* if they didn't want us to find out more about them.  The Arliou seem only to be hunting *Nggn* for sport, and explain to us that we can't physically interact with *Nggn*, so it's pointless for us to try their sport/game.

I do agree that Orz is probably not "evil" in that it wants to destroy.  It's acting more like an immature playfull being (close to pure instinct; a quality the Arilou find refreshing in others).  The problem is that its an immature playfull being that's playing at the controls of a tank in the middle of a shopping mall.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: CrowZone on February 17, 2004, 01:47:56 am
Your points 1 and 2 are fine, I see what your saying -- as for point 3 however, Orz isn't protecting US at all,  nor does it want to really.  Its interested in the Androsynth and thats about it.  One track mind and all -- It could care less about what we do, as long as we don't go looking for the Androsynth too much -- what the Synth left on their homeworld doesn't matter anymore so they don't care.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Ivan Ivanov on February 17, 2004, 09:31:50 pm
Quote
what the Synth left on their homeworld doesn't matter anymore so they don't care.


Doesn't matter?
The fact that there are no Androsynth bodies, and that there is no sign of planetary bombardment raises a few interesting question. That + Bukowsky went bananas after seeing what was stored on the Synth's computer. Now if he didn't trash it we'd probably hear from *them* 'REAL SOON'.

Quote
I'd agree that they'd be more "wise" as a race, having learned many interesting secrets about the nature of the Universe -- whether they would be nice or mean to the Humans is another thing.  They don't much like humans -- but perhaps theyve been enlightened by their adventures.


I think that after learning The Nature Of The Universe and seeing how irrelevant our standard 3 - 4 dimensions are when compared to the Universe, the Androsynth would see the years of slavery and overall nastyness as childish and would forgive us... I hope


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Terminator on February 17, 2004, 10:10:56 pm
Quote
By what was found at the ayndrosynth home world. there cities were hit, from what is best described, as nuclear bombardment from orbit. now the only race with nukes, are... thats right, humans.~DEFIANT


Techinically yes, but u reamember the story the "peace vaults" the Earthlings stockpiled all the nukes to prevent them from being used and besides nukes are very primitive compared to other races weapons that have similar effects. Comander Hayes at ur starbase tell u that the Ur-Quan surrounded Earth and blasted all structure over 500 years old with their fusion cannons, and scorched the Earth for 3 whole days, sounds remotely similar to nukes if u ask me.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Culture20 on February 17, 2004, 11:35:03 pm
The 'synth aren't going to have structures that old, nor would the  'Quan blast them; they're not fallow slaves.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: FalconMWC on February 18, 2004, 12:04:56 am
Read the planet report:

---- REPORT FROM SURFACE ----
XENO-HISTORIAN KILGORE HERE, SIR. WE HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THESE RUINS ARE THE REMNANTS OF THE ANDROSYNTH CULTURE. FROM THE MASS DESTRUCTION WE HAVE WITNESSED, WE CAN ONLY ASSUME THAT THERE WAS SOME KIND OF HUGE LAND WAR HERE WITHIN THE PAST FIVE YEARS; HOWEVER, THERE IS NO, REPEAT, NO SIGNS OF ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT OR INVASION FROM SPACE... JUST A WHOLE MESS OF BUILDINGS SHOT TO PIECES. PROBABLY THE WEIRDEST THING WE HAVE SEEN, OR NOT SEEN, ARE CORPSES... THERE AREN'T ANY! IT'S AS THOUGH SOMETHING APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE, BLASTED EVERYTHING WITH NUCLEAR BAZOOKAS, THEN GRABBED ALL THE ANDROSYNTH AND DISAPPEARED.
......

End of Report

Notice it says very clearly - NO signs of orbital bomdbardment?


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Terminator on February 18, 2004, 12:44:23 am
Quote
Read the planet report:

---- REPORT FROM SURFACE ----
XENO-HISTORIAN KILGORE HERE, SIR. WE HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THESE RUINS ARE THE REMNANTS OF THE ANDROSYNTH CULTURE. FROM THE MASS DESTRUCTION WE HAVE WITNESSED, WE CAN ONLY ASSUME THAT THERE WAS SOME KIND OF HUGE LAND WAR HERE WITHIN THE PAST FIVE YEARS; HOWEVER, THERE IS NO, REPEAT, NO SIGNS OF ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT OR INVASION FROM SPACE... JUST A WHOLE MESS OF BUILDINGS SHOT TO PIECES. PROBABLY THE WEIRDEST THING WE HAVE SEEN, OR NOT SEEN, ARE CORPSES... THERE AREN'T ANY! IT'S AS THOUGH SOMETHING APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE, BLASTED EVERYTHING WITH NUCLEAR BAZOOKAS, THEN GRABBED ALL THE ANDROSYNTH AND DISAPPEARED.
......

End of Report

Notice it says very clearly - NO signs of orbital bomdbardment?


Technically yes, but remember the Ur-Quan enslave races for the sole purpose of saving them,  what the andosynth found might have been a bigger threat to this goal and sought to cover it up.  If this assumption holds true the synth are not dead, but mere serving the Ur-Quan Sciences or Serving as crew for their Dreadnoughts.  As to Orbital bombardment  they could have blasted from a very low orbit (say the lower atmosphere) or used robots with self-anniation circuits to nuke the planet.

EDIT: I know I'm pushing the envelope, but at least consider the possibility.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Shiver on February 18, 2004, 01:06:24 am
What may have happened there is that the Orz didn't attack with ships, they used thousands of their marines for a ground operation. I would say that the Orz are probably evil on the basis that they decide to kill you off just for asking what happened to the Androsynth.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on February 18, 2004, 01:58:22 am
Fred said there are no Androsynth -- only Orz. Therefore, we can deduce that there are no Androsynth on Dreadnaughts or in the sciences division of Kzer-Za central.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: FalconMWC on February 18, 2004, 02:06:41 am
Quote
What may have happened there is that the Orz didn't attack with ships, they used thousands of their marines for a ground operation. I would say that the Orz are probably evil on the basis that they decide to kill you off just for asking what happened to the Androsynth.



Are you saying that the Orrz just released the marines in space and let them take over the cities by ground? Well, I really don't think that the marines suits can stadn rentry. I mean, the US lost a shuttle during rentry. So it is farfetched to say that the Orz marines suits could take WHILE being shot at. And besides, some of the androsyn could have hid and escaped and later died. The lander crew would have found their bodies.

Anyhow I just see holes in that theory.




Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Xlorep DarkHelm on February 18, 2004, 02:12:53 am
Or, the Orz could be good, they could have been, as the first poster mentioned, hunting *them* (some unknown ID species).  The 'Synth accidentally release *them* through their experiments with ID travel, and a war happens - the Orz, hot on the trail of *them*, pop out, and see that *they* have gotten pretty close to claiming this world.  Rather than letting *them* spread through this universe (of which the Orz haven't been to before), they send down marines and....sterilize the planet.  They are upset with the 'Synth for attracting *them*, and the species known as *they* might be able to track someone if they know anything about *them*; the Arilou's "Nngh" could be the same species, and the Arilou don't want to reveal anything to us about it, because then we'd be revealed to that race, much like the Orz don't want to talk about the 'Synth, or *them*, for fear that *they* will come and attack us.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on February 18, 2004, 08:09:11 pm
Quote
Are you saying that the Orrz just released the marines in space and let them take over the cities by ground?


If the IDF experiments were on the ground, maybe that's where the marines showed up.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Orz Brain on February 25, 2004, 02:36:52 am
I still prefer my old idea... The sinth became infected with something that came through the portal and the Orz wiped out the sinth to keep it from spreading. And the reason they kill you if you ask about the sinth to much is because you will become infected if you DO find out what happened... like the guy on the sinth homeworld.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: NECRO-99 on February 25, 2004, 03:32:01 am
But you notice that Buwolski isn't *pulled* or "wiped out" by the Orz. If he can see them, they can see him, and yet nothing happens. He just gets cut up bad and screams alot.
If indeed, this idea of yours was true, why would the benevolent (*chuckle* ::)) Orz not end Buwolski's suffering as well?


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Orz Brain on February 25, 2004, 08:06:41 am
There are several possibilitys... (1) You leave the area before the orz notice. (2) Because earthlings are all different they don't all smell alike and the orz detirmine that the infection will not spread because the guy will die first and won't have a chance to pass along the dangerous information. (3) The parisites have learned to mask their *smell* from the orz so the orz don't notice. (4) The orz do notice and kill him later.   (5)He dies before the orz notice. (6) One infection is not enough for the orz to notice. And any number of other possibilitys I haven't thought of yet...


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Shiver on February 25, 2004, 08:30:50 am
I like Brain's/Xlorep's (same person?) theory.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Terminator on February 26, 2004, 01:28:22 pm
I came up with another theory don't immediately ignore it.  Suppose Their experiments in IDF caused an unforeseen result say per chance it accelerated time in the Velpeculae Star Cluster to a spectacular degree and since time is distorted hyperspace travel is impossible with their equipment unless within the range of distortion so relativelly  speaking in what was 10 years to the rest of space could be 10 million years to the androsynth.  The Androsynth evoulved into the Orz and the Orz wiped out the remaining Androsynth as we human proably wiped out the primates.  


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on February 26, 2004, 07:19:47 pm
A) we haven't wiped out the primates.

B) Don't you think some androsynth would want to leave their system some time in the next hundred million years, and be able to do so?

C) it would take a heck of a lot more than a hundred million years to transform a human clone into an ethanol-breathing interdimensional fish.

D) wouldn't the team notice that the weathering on the Androsynth cities was a million times stronger than expected?


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: NECRO-99 on February 27, 2004, 10:35:54 pm
Brain:
Quote
You leave the area before the orz notice

Uh, I thought Buwolski was "noticed" due to the immense amounts of cuts and his inherent screaming about ghosts and "them".

Quote
Because earthlings are all different they don't all smell alike and the orz detirmine that the infection will not spread because the guy will die first and won't have a chance to pass along the dangerous information.

The Orz aren't that stupid. If this theory was true, they would've killed him because they'd know from fighting off the Androsynth that humans are a wee-bit more resilient than to just be slashed up a few times and die.

Quote
The parisites have learned to mask their *smell* from the orz so the orz don't notice.

Then the Orz would probably realize that and try to find a new way to detect this "infection".

Quote
The orz do notice and kill him later.

Why wouldn't they kill him right away? You notice your crew never drops either. Don't try to blame combat deaths for his, either :P

Quote
He dies before the orz notice.

He doesn't. Crew doesn't drop.

Quote
One infection is not enough for the orz to notice.

If the Orz were so "universally minded" as you portray them as, they'd try to wipe out all cases of this 'infection' ASAP. It's like saying, "Oh, one case of the Black Plague isn't anything to worry about." You're eating your own words here.

Quote
And any number of other possibilitys I haven't thought of yet...

You keep 'em comin', I'll keep on gunnin'.

Terminator:
Quote
Suppose Their experiments in IDF caused an unforeseen result say per chance it accelerated time in the Velpeculae Star Cluster to a spectacular degree...

Current theories of IDF show only a tear of space in the time/space continum. Why would it? All you're doing is wormholing two places in *space* together.

Quote
The Androsynth evoulved into the Orz...

Note that this would take a dramatic shift in the planet's geophyiscal makeup. Dramatic changes usually = extinction.

Quote
...and the Orz wiped out the remaining Androsynth...

I don't even believe in evolution, but I know that the concept is that it occurs throughout an entire race simultaneously as the next generation is born. You're saying there'd still be Androsynth when the Orz "evolved".

Quote
...as we human proably wiped out the primates.

Why the hell would we wipe out primates?

I think we need to make a kiddie table like the SC Forum has, and Terminator and Orz Brain need to go sit at it. At least get your arguments into such a position that they do not contradict themselves or seem generally stupid. Until this time, remain at the kiddie table. Thank you.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Terminator on February 28, 2004, 05:35:57 am
Thanks for the support.
At least I keep all the out-landish comments in one place be thankful for that, It least u seriously read it and didn't blow it of.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: theycallmeelp on February 29, 2004, 06:05:03 am
The androsynth did not evolve into the orz.   Speciation does not eliminate the original species, nor is it that abrupt.

The possibilities are:

1.  The Orz have killed/eaten/destroyed the androsynth and taken their place.
2.  Something else from the Orz dimension either killed the androsynth or pulled them into the Orz dimension.   The Orz moved into the empty planets.

Incidentally, I tried pestering the Orz about the androsynth, and wow, that red effect was scary.   Almost wet myself in mortal terror.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Shiver on February 29, 2004, 09:35:04 am
NECRO-99 wrote:
Quote
I think we need to make a kiddie table like the SC Forum has, and Terminator and Orz Brain need to go sit at it. At least get your arguments into such a position that they do not contradict themselves or seem generally stupid. Until this time, remain at the kiddie table. Thank you.


I don't really care for Terminator's posts either, but Orz Brain was merely speculating. What are you getting all hostile for? If it's that time of month for you, don't take it out on random people over the internet.

Quote
You keep 'em comin', I'll keep on gunnin'.


How about instead of acting like an asshat, you state your own ideas about the subject?

FalconMWC wrote:
Quote
Are you saying that the Orrz just released the marines in space and let them take over the cities by ground? Well, I really don't think that the marines suits can stadn rentry. I mean, the US lost a shuttle during rentry. So it is farfetched to say that the Orz marines suits could take WHILE being shot at. And besides, some of the androsyn could have hid and escaped and later died. The lander crew would have found their bodies.  

Anyhow I just see holes in that theory.
 

Not so. The Orz can sense exactly where every Androsynth is by *smell*. It would be impossible for Androsynth to hide from that. Marines could've been launched from within the atmosphere or (D999's idea) the planet is where they first appeared. I tend to lean more towards this as opposed to the "IDF beings ate everything" theory because of the following passages:

Quote
...NO SIGNS OF ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT OR INVASION FROM SPACE... JUST A WHOLE MESS OF BUILDINGS SHOT TO PIECES.

...IT'S AS THOUGH SOMETHING APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE, BLASTED EVERYTHING WITH NUCLEAR BAZOOKAS...


These imply that conventional weapons were used to cause havok. Very un-ghostly. A marine invasion seems most likely to me. Another possibility is that the Androsynth collectively went insane and went around killing each other until reality broke down and swept them all away.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 01, 2004, 01:28:41 pm
As many appear to here, I have my own ideas which are like and not unlike the others but draw on my own personal perception wall to fill in the blanks in the storyline which only the authors truly can but... it's fun to guess anyway!  So I shall theorize and I shall also attempt to summarize and not be too much of a windbag, though I believe at the latter I shall fail horribly, miserably and bore everyone to tears.  And on that note, here we go!

What if the Orz never were the Orz until they were the Androsynth, then after they were the Androsynth which are no more, there are no Androsynth -- there are only Orz.  What I find fascinating is the almost existentialist void-space that exists concurrant to a theorem that only I seem to have.  The theory would follow as thus: The Orz are an abandoned extradimensional technology that was left without all its parts, it exists on a set program it barely managed to scrape together itself, to find the missing pieces.

Upon opening the dimensional doorway, the 'pieces' sniffed out sentience, that which it needed to simply BE (after all, the Orz are suits, suits... I believe the Captain said something to this effect, like Combat-Vac suits).  Yet it couldn't see the sentience without the sentience first seeing it.  The scans penetrate the interdimensional barrier.  'We know this pattern.' think the pieces, in their own basic way.  This is a sign of sentience, we see this sign of sentience.  We understand this particular pattern.  We are drawn!

The Orz are born from the bonding.  The reason everyone went nuts is because the pieces are picotech swarms, designed to take their sentience and then build atop it.  When the Science officer on the surface utilized the computer, he unwittingly activated one of the last remaining IDF holepunchers.  In seeped the swarm, not enough for a conversion but yet enough at the same time to cause him harm, harm which continued because these pieces had neither enough to fix the original form, nor to form that which they so desired.

Therein, the Orz were born from the Androsynth.  And they felt really, REALLY bad about it because they could now feel guilt.  "What have we done?!"  And they knew that they had sacrificed a race for their needs.  The humans they 'allowed' to the surface, they did so because they were incompatible.  They were forced into being incompatible by the Arilouloopylay (yes, I'm aware).  So they had no 'smell', they had no detectable compatability.  But to the Orz, this meant that they had no sentience.  They had no 'soul'.  So they felt sad for them.

At the same time however the Orz were relieved because they knew these 'campers' were safe, they lacked the 'base sentience components' required by the pieces, so they'd probably be left alone.  After all, if the Orz which were once pieces before they were Androsynth which now aren't, which are now only Orz... uh, if they couldn't SMELL them, then they'd be okay.  So that's why the Orz didn't seem bothered.  And that's why I think they feel so awful about the androsynth, this is also why I believe they're so happy and they try to be productive.

They try to fulfil some kind of... inner need to fill a place where the Androsynth was.  There is no Androsynth now, there is only Orz.  And if there is only going to be Orz, then they're going to do a damned good job of being Orz and maybe the sacrifice of the Androsynth race would not be in vain.  Since after all, the Orz cannot reverse this because they are not entirely sure how they caused it, they aren't what they were before the bonding.  So now they wander our Universe and everything is NEW to them.

They have sensor logs of their old Universe but somehow ours is more real to them, they've never seen things like this like they somehow 'remember' seeing in their old Universe.  And I agree with the person that said the Orz bubbles referred to individuals rather than anything else and the glove with the fingers referred to the race being one, unified whole.  If they were a race of picites then it's possible they all have radio-telepathy and they keep in contact through that, so none of them are really singular.  They're all fingers of the same hand.

And it isn't really their hand, they still acknowledge that to some degree, as best as they are capable of.  So they are not a hand, they are a glove.  A glove that has poked through to our dimension and left an impact, a material that has wrapped around something tangible here.  So indeed, this is my latest theorem and if you actually managed to follow that (I barely did myself) without gross misinterpretations then I'm impressed!  Well done, congratulations and... REJOICE!  And stuff.

And no, I'm not egotistical, I just realize I'm more horribly scatter-brained than any one person has any right to be, on any day of the week.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on March 01, 2004, 09:00:51 pm
I take it that your basic idea is that the Orz were created by an interaction between the Androsynth and *below* or an existing race within *below*, and the rest is just a possible mechanism for this to be the case?


Incidentally, 'picotech', if you mean technology on the length scale of picometers, is impossible if it's supposed to be made of atoms, since the smallest are six hundred picometers across, and are thus more easily considered in nanometers.


Lastly, I don't think orz marines came fully fledged onto the surface of the Androsynth worlds. I think the IDF beings drove the andosynth batty, and they blew each other up. After a time the Orz then emerged.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: NECRO-99 on March 01, 2004, 10:48:03 pm
So the Orz simply watched this happen to the Androsynth, then?


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: FalconMWC on March 01, 2004, 11:13:04 pm
..... and then took over the space once they were exterminated or *pulled*?


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 01:37:11 am
I look at my own writing now that I am fully awake and I realize that writing just before it was time to sleep was perhaps either a bad either or a good one, as I am either somewhat enlightened when I'm tired -- or completely insane.  That of course is the choice of the reader to make.

Oh and I believe that Death is considering too much on scale.  Dust becomes stone, gas becomes mineral and picomachines are able to effect things on an atomic level.  Therein, it would not be hard for them to use any materials they required to effect any changes they required, the eventual effect of this would be their building of hardware onto wetware.

Furthermore, I'm going to wait a little longer because it appears that no one else understood at all.  Yet I shall try and fill in the blanks.  Someone in belowspace built something that spat out endless amounts of picomachines; for some unknown reason.  It went wrong, so they broke it, leaving the picomachines in a state of brokenness.  They locked off that dimensional layer and used it as a prison because by that point, it was already flooded.

The androsynth punch through to this prison dimension, the pieces remaining of the machine/s know from previous encounters what has done this, they read back along the sensor path and they feel intelligence, it raises some desire within them long past and they follow it.  They pour out of the layer as gasseous clouds, clouds which can effect and reshape minerals -- which one would imagine would appear ghostly, they then build things which they bond with the sentience in order to be 'whole' again.

What I believe the Arilou did to the humans was double-pronged, firstly they removed any detectable patterns of sentience, or cloaked them somehow.  So in effect humans would be sentient but to sophisticated scanners looking for certain kinds of sentience, they would not be.  It would be like a pack of hunters following prey by its scent, then the prey taking a dip in a stream.  The prey would still be the same but it would not 'smell' and this is my reasoning.  This is not all I believe the Arilou did, however.

I also believe that for the same reason, the Arilou might've done a little mental reconstruction; this reconstruction has made humans 'iffy' towards any interdimensional weaknesses, it causes them to be 'scared' in a way on an instinctual level of interdimensional breaches.  This might also explain why the humans had not yet discovered quasispace (heavy space) or the higherspace (pretty space) of the pieces [which are not but will be Orz].


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 01:41:47 am
Actually, I meant that someone in upper-space made that 'strange whatever it was', which they broke.  Except I accidnetally said 'belowspace', which is where the Arilou La'leelay live, of course.  So, that's it!  I'm getting an account, I need to edit, I make too many typos that could be picked apart by anyone that doesn't happen to like my theories and wouldn't be able to accept that they are just theories and not confrontations.  But that thought's probably a little too Spathi in nature.  ...  Eh, I still want an account.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 01:46:34 am
Oh and one final point to make to Death; firstly, think of these picomachines as lego, they can bond together to form bigger machine parts but they're only capable of doing basic things, on the picolevel however they're just 'pieces', which is how I believe I always described them.  Furthermore, isn't it slightly... what word should I use, wouldn't it be a little... okay, let's start this setnence over -- How would one know for certain that the upperspace dimensional layer even existed with a set of physics rules that matched our own?  Pico might be quite large by their standards and in theory, it's possible that punching a hole into a dimension might have the effect of the dimension 'washing outwards' back into realspace, carrying the physics of that dimension with it, at least long enough for the pieces to do what they need to do.

Okay, that's it, goin' to get an account now, really!


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Culture20 on March 02, 2004, 03:50:51 am
So in Picowoof's theory, maybe the pre-Orz picobots were a creation of one of the Arilou's enemies?

Maybe the picobots are merely composed of quarks or some unknown matter and thus are super-dense; if a lot of them enter TS at once spot, they instantly create an area of Mosquito-Mange.

As an alternative theory, this one has more merit in my opinion, but it doesn't seem to jive with what TFB said about Orz...


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 03:59:47 am
Look at me, I have an account!  <ahem> Anyway... I digress, and I haven't even started yet.

You understand!  Except there is one thing, not nessescarily by the Arilou's enemy.  Heck, perhaps even made by the Arilou themselves!  Who knows?  I think it was more, "I wonder if we can make a robot THIS small.  It's thinking now?  It's trying to consume us?  WHY?!  Oh nutbunnies.  Run away!  Run away!  Lock the door!  Throw away the key!  We messed up big-time!"

Another passing amusing thought was the Pre-Orz are only so far away from the Precursors.

Of course, not to suggest that the Precursors created the Pre-Orz and that they were seeking a way to escape the Pre-Orz that now desperately wanted to bond with them and knew exactly how to find them.  Oh, no.  Even though the rainbow planets might be a chute back into pretty-space where these Pre-Orz exist and that the Precursors had something to do with the rainbow planets.... no, perish the thought!  ^.^


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Shiver on March 02, 2004, 05:25:45 am
Quote
So in Picowoof's theory, maybe the pre-Orz picobots were a creation of one of the Arilou's enemies?

Maybe the picobots are merely composed of quarks or some unknown matter and thus are super-dense; if a lot of them enter TS at once spot, they instantly create an area of Mosquito-Mange.

As an alternative theory, this one has more merit in my opinion, but it doesn't seem to jive with what TFB said about Orz...


Agreed. Clever, but too far out there.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 06:01:19 am
I'm always too far out here but when you're this far out, you find that others aren't far out enough.  It's all a matter of how open you are to the completely implausible, it makes for a good Scientist I'll tell you that much!  Regardless, I'm not sure on validity as I never can be.  Hence theorem.  I've had my own theories wrung inside-out by the game itself, as well it should!  Yet considering the game itself has managed to put me through the wash-and-dry so many times, I'd say the developers were pretty far out there too.  At least, that's how I see it -- which of course has no relevance to anything else but I thought I'd say it just to be wholly redundant... and perky!  Talking is fun.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 06:56:18 am
I've had a rather constructive experience sitting and thinking about the Orz as I've acquired a few new thoughts upon them.  It's likely that the dimension the Orz come from is acquatic, now that might seem a bit of an obvious statement and indeed it might trigger a well deserved "Duh." or three but it also occurs to me why the Orz might be machine-worked-with-wetware and yet why they'd appear to be simply 'fish'.  If this upper-dimension where they hail from were licquid space then indeed, I would imagine it would be pretty, as our oceans are.

Furthermore, aside from their basic scans as 'pieces' in their home dimension, they really had no other contact with life.  The fish and other 'sea-life' in their home dimension weren't really sentient enough to attract them (as the Androsynth had) but they were still catalogued and collectively remembered by the pre-Orz.  When it came to first building upon the bodies of the Androsynth, they had no base reference to go by -- how they should appear and as their sentience formed, they decided that their visage should be like their homeworld.

And thus their ships were too, because at this point they'd had no prior fields of reference, indeed, they're still new to our Universe so these 'hard World' playgrounds are fascinating to them but for themselves, they'd only seen acquatic life and their appearance -- which strikes me as something between a crab and a fish would likely be acquatic like.  And their metaphors, similarly, would be influenced by the nature of their home dimension.

The Orz knew of themselves as 'pieces', yet they understood that even then they were a whole -- linked by the radio-telepathy of their technology.  Yet to a race that wasn't linked by some form of technology or empathy, they would look like a crowd of people.  And in that, they would appear to be many bubbles.  Even in their Pre-Orz version, they might've appeared to be 'many bubbles' but in fact they were the same acting of one sentience.  Or rather, acting essences of the same sentience.

As a race with radio-telepathy isn't exactly One, per se but more like a hand with fingers, as they'd described it.  It's also likely that the insides of their ships contain some kind of mixture that allows their machine-sides to function, perhaps even something they can filter through to keep the wetware (the once-Androsynth) alive.  The reason for this again is that this kind of energy transferral is all they're used to.  Had Star Control 3 not happened, they might've instead evolved into a race which used solar-absorption; rather than licquid.

Just a few passing-ideas in passing, anyhow.  Of no real importance other than possibly for people to point at and declare, "Ooh, neat!" or, "That's crazy!  You're crazy!"  Either way, I'd be proud of either accomplishment, it might even trigger a yawn or three, that would be sad but again not unexpected.  No matter what your reaction, I can hope that you enjoy my meanderings as much as I enjoy dreaming them up.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Chrispy on March 02, 2004, 05:25:30 pm
The nemasis certainly looks like it belongs in fluidic space.
That looks like a cool topic for a sequel. Truespace, Quasispace, and Aquaspace.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 09:05:28 pm
I'm glad you see that too.  This had occurred to me, in an "Oh golly, their ship is pretty, it's like a Manta Ray!" sort of manner.  So I think their space probably is fluidic and I also had a disturbing revelation earlier.  I was thinking of the Orz again and I remember that 'translation' is one of the earliest words they happen to say.  Translationfish?  Babelfish even?  I believe this was the developers primary intent!  Of course, not Altavista's Babelfish but the true HitchHiker's babelfish.  Of course... Altavista's Babelfish sounds so very much like the Orz when it translates and this brings about much helpless laughter.  It would be absolutely beautiful and poetic if someone created Orz.com and based it upon the Altavista Babelfish technology.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Chrispy on March 02, 2004, 09:30:43 pm
What if all the androsynth drowned???


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on March 02, 2004, 10:09:30 pm
heh... context is pretty important for that one...

Quote
Oh and I believe that Death is considering too much on scale.  Dust becomes stone, gas becomes mineral and picomachines are able to effect things on an atomic level.


You do realize that you are proposing a form of matter which cannot exist within the rules of this universe, right? I mean, such a thing is fairly reasonable in this context of dimension-hopping, but I just wanted to confirm that you realize that basic assumption.

OK. So what you're saying is,
- Orz are made of a form of matter which has coherent structures hundreds of times smaller than atoms
- Their space is 'fluidic', whatever that means. Filled with a fluid? What would the assertion 'space itself is fluid' mean?
- Androsynth experiments in IDF released the Orz into this dimension (few of us will debate that one).
- The Orz thought the Androsynth were something like things in their dimension (despite having a fundamentally different makeup), and tried to remake them into their familiar forms.

Problems:
-- Why would the Androsynth begin seeing Poltergeists?
-- Why would the Androsynth's KNOWLEDGE of this dimension be so dangerous? This was what the Arilou warned us against.
-- Why would the Orz, as described, be upset with the Arilou?
-- more to come.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Chrispy on March 02, 2004, 10:13:39 pm
I think I understand the liquid space. What is space in out dimention, is like the ocean in the orz dimention. Planates drift around in water. Stars would have to be made of liquid of solids to exist, since liquid is denser than gas (which is what stars are in out dimention... I think)

I incorectly dubed with fluidic space. Fluid is both liquid and gas. This space would be pure liquid.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on March 02, 2004, 10:57:48 pm
Well, it sounds like you're just saying that the universe in question is filled with a liquid. This is very different from saying that space itself is liquid.

In our space, the universe is homogeneous on length scales large enough to avoid quantum effects.

In a fluidic space, the universe would have to change nature, just by virtue of differing Reynolds number.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 02, 2004, 11:04:25 pm
Indeed, good Sir Death, that is exactly what I am proposing and I'm aware of the implications.  There is no evidence to the contrary that states that a dimensional breach woudln't wash else-physics into realspace, as this is fiction after all I thought it were fair to make a couple of safe estimates within my theories, that being one of them.  This might not be true of our Universe but again, that is what seperates Science Fiction from Science Fact.  The irony here of course is that it appears that verily, elsedimensional physics washing into our own Universe from other plains is accepted by some Scientific bodies as a valid theory.  It's a funny old Universe, isn't it?  And I say that in a most literary manner.

" - Orz are made of a form of matter which has coherent structures hundreds of times smaller than atoms"

Oh gosh, no!  What I'm saying is that the Pre-Orz were made of a form of matter which has coherent structures hundreds of times smaller than atoms and what I shall henceforth call 'The Transition' involved them rebuilding themselves, in the process (because they are machines and have infinitely superiour intelligence capacities than biosacks and they learn... shall we say, much faster) they rebuilt themselves to the physics of our Universe as solid creatures.  The Orz are now not the Androsynth, the Orz are not the Pre-Orz but the Orz are a symbiotic bonding of what the Androsynth were and what the Pre-Orz built with all the materials around them, considering probably only the brain of each Androsynth valuable enough to keep in its original state.  After all, before the Orz could comprehend conscience or guilt, the Androsynth were just a 'resource', like any other and hence, they 'built' with them.

" - Their space is 'fluidic', whatever that means. Filled with a fluid? What would the assertion 'space itself is fluid' mean?"

One would imagine that this were purely logical and easy to grasp.  Let us say you have a singularity which creates a gravity well in a spherical formation, similar to a gas giant but instead of gas, we fill it with fluid.  Now let's say that the physics of pretty-space are different enough that instead of gasses, they have formed licquids.  In this fluidic space, there are young wells which provide a gravitational center against the 'tidal waves' that might be evident in their Universe and that's where pockets of life would be found.  I believe my theory is at least marginally valid because the Orz themselves refer to being overjoyed by the 'hard playgrounds' in our Universe.  Now let's just assume that 'playgrounds' is a mistranslation of 'planets'.  The Orz are overjoyed that indeed, our Universe has 'hard planets'.  No I ask you, good Sir Death, utilizing a little conjecture and logic; what does this tell you about the home-dimension of the Pre-Orz?  At the very least it tells you they have no hard planets, yes?  Moreover, if they don't have hard planets, what do they have?

" - Androsynth experiments in IDF released the Orz into this dimension (few of us will debate that one)."

Almost a wholehearted 'Indeed!' can be issued here but I'd like to make a teensy-weensy minor correction, in my theories the Pre-Orz were released.  A race that very quickly became the bewildered and new Orz, who were immediately wracked with grief over what they'd done but yet had the survival instinct of the Androsynth now, so they were unable to simply suicide over it, they had to get on with their lives and press out into space they did.  I think it's this underlying guilt that leads them to be productive, which helps them in their efforts to be open and giving towards all strangers.  They're trying to add a constructive presence in the place of what they took away, sort of a balancing of the Universe.  If that makes sense to you at all?  I would hope it does.

" - The Orz thought the Androsynth were something like things in their dimension (despite having a fundamentally different makeup), and tried to remake them into their familiar forms."

Afraid not, not in the least.  You're quite a way off the mark with that one.  Read what I'd said and enlightenment will come, or because I'm not lazy and I enjoy repetetive tasks, I will repeat myself again for your benefit!  The Androsynth possess 'scannable intellect'.  If these machines are capable of even partially translating our language, doesn't it stand to reason that they'd also be able to detect our intelligence patterns over an interdimensional rift?  It makes sense to me.  If they weren't able to translate us then indeed, I would have my doubts but since they are and in my theory, they're machines (which learn at an infinitely multiplied rate in comparison to us) then I think it's likely that they could 'smell' the Androsynth.  As I said before, they were disappointed that the humans didn't 'smell' because that would mean that they weren't as intelligent as the Androsynth and unable to grasp things the Orz otherwise would've told them, yet they were relieved they didn't 'smell' because they knew their pre-Orz brothers back in fluidic space wouldn't be able to detect them.  In essence, the Arilou altered the humans so their sentience patterns couldn't be read specifically by these pre-Orz.

" -- Why would the Androsynth begin seeing Poltergeists?"

"Look, minerals, let's break them down into their component parts.  Dust-like on an atomic level where we can rebuild them as we wish." - Pre-Orz

"ACK!  Strange moving clouds!  They're the GHOSTS foretold of in our prophecies.  Run away!  No wait.  We must DESTROY these ghosts!" - Androsynth

" -- Why would the Androsynth's KNOWLEDGE of this dimension be so dangerous? This was what the Arilou warned us against."

I shall repeat again for the sake of clarity!  THEY can only see you when YOU can see them.  As the game tells it.  Here's how I tell it: They can only see you if you find a way to bust through to their Universe and scan them, so they can trace that back and scan (smell) you.  The Science officer found a Dimensional-Breacher (which is why he was forced to blow up the building rather than simply delete the data files) and punched through, he scanned and THEY (the Pre-Orz) remembered the energy signatures of Androsynth scanners, they didn't bother to scan the human because they remembered they'd already done that and it would be inefficient and on some basic level, they were excited by the prospect.  They came through and found that even though the humans didn't 'smell', they could still use them.  This knowledge was a terrifying prospect, the Science Officer knew that they now KNEW this and so they could 'see' the humans even if they couldn't smell them.  They knew they could be used even if they couldn't scan them.  Yes?

" -- Why would the Orz, as described, be upset with the Arilou?"

As I'd said, I believe the Arilou might have been their creators.  If you'd been created, then broken and abandoned and then left to prey on other races because your creator couldn't clean up their messes, wouldn't you be upset?  On some level they might blame the Arilou for what had happened.  That's one theory.  The more likely theory is that the Arilou found fluidic space before the Pre-Orz existed and struck up formal relations with the people there.  It's obvious the Arilou happily share whatever they believe you're capable of understanding and the Orz know that the Arilou can't be blamed for being generous but in the end, this generousity makes them 'more trouble' than they're worth.  I believe, although roughly (due to translation), this is how the Orz described them.  Far too troublesome -- because they butt in, interfere and then share.  Perhaps if not for the Arilou, they wouldn't have been created and they'd have naught to feel guilty over.  They can't really BLAME the Arilou but still... they are trouble.

" -- more to come."

Oh the humanity!  <giggly> My apologies, I couldn't resist.

-- Edit --

Oh and before you ask, since this has just occurred to me (and an interesting thought it is, too); yes.  I believe the Arilou have physics actuators.  What are physics actuators?  Well let's say the Arilou had cracked quantum physics, they were so far beyond us that they could rightfully patronize us like canines, "You opened the door, good Dog, good Dog!  Have a biscuit."  If that were the case then it's likely that they knew how to 'bottle' physics so they could safely travel into other dimensions.  So their ships would have a 'physics bubble' in them which would prevent the physics of another dimension from affecting them, they created this on scans and observations of physics from other Universes washing into our own.

So the humans jump-system has physics actuators too which prevent the physics of other Universes affecting them.  The Arilou also point out that they might've altered themselves to suit other sets of physics because they claimed humans weren't (solid enough) or perhaps 'cohesive enough to bear more than one set of physics'.  If they allowed them to their homeworld unengineered, they might blow up in a fantastic display of "Oh my, THAT shouldn't exist here."

Furthermore, just to be utterly pedantic, it stands to reason that if entry into another dimensional set of physics would be dangerous, the Arilou wanting to pretect their humans so much probably would've left 'actuator drones' near the only natural entryway to protect the ship as long as it was in their dimension.  It all just stands to reason really that if they have the capability of doing one, they also by default have the capability of doing the other which is not dissimilar in its nature.

-- Edit 2 --

An amusing side ponderance occurs (random thought encounter!).  A friend of mine introduced me to the Daktaklakpak.  Now don't consider this as part of my theory and also, I'm aware that SC3 is non-canon but it all ties in in a slightly amusing way.  For example, if fluidic space were a testing grounds for the original Mother Ark, then these pieces might've been the original idea for the drones; hence their latent need for biology to function.  It's just a passing idea that amuses me, that the Precursors might've been using another area of space-time as a sandbox to test ideas, which of course probably went horribly wrong and I'm still not suggesting this horribly wrong thing is what the Precursors might've been running from.  No... of course not.  That would be silly.

-- Edit 3 --

Hopefully this will be the Final Edit <perk>.  I just wished to say that I by no means consider any questioning or picking-apart-thereof of my dreamy theorems to be confrontationalist, nor do I wish to be actively so towards why comrades here at the forums.  Actually, I think you're all really quite neat.  My reasoning behind this is that all theories and ideas grow from friendly interpersonal gestalts, much like sentience works in the brain.  You cannot evolve with someone sitting around who likes to constantly enquire, "Are you sure?  Are you sure?"  There's no real evolution as a species without that and things become mired and stagnant.

So even if my responses aren't all 'yes, you're right' and 'indeed, of course, I agree' or perhaps 'my eyes have opened, why didn't I see that?' it doesn't mean that I would choose to fight your opinions (per se) or do anything of the sort!  Keep them coming!  I like having my theories picked at and I won't get all annoyed over it or anything, it's fun!  Anyway, I just wished to say that because indeed, over the next few days my theories might get picked apart by the best of minds.  Which makes me glad that's all they are; happy, pointless, irrelevant, meandering, dreamy theories.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on March 03, 2004, 12:32:58 am
Wow, your scatterbrainedness seems to have evaporated 100%. Also, 'sir' is unnecessary ;) ... D999 is fine as an abbreviation.

I get how sensible it is that different rules could apply in different universes and how rules from one universe could leak into another one. I read my Arthur C. Clarke.
The whole bit with the scale issue was just making sure we were on the same page, making sure you weren't thinking that this wasn't just ordinary matter. You now clearly don't, but you had not made that clear before.

So, to attempt to re-summarize:
- there was a pre-orz substance in a fluid space contacted by the Androsynth via IDF.
- upon contact, the pre-orz substance made havoc in Androsynth land because of its superior self-assembly abilities and its unseemly attraction to (Androsynth) sentience.
- This took the final form of creating the Orz out of the Androsynth (the Transition).
- after the Transition, the pre-Orz vanished? Else, how are the Orz not made of the pre-orz?
- after the Transition, the Orz had the knowledge of the pre-Orz: Taalo, Arilou, dimensions, etc.

side-points:
- the pre-orz came from a fluid space


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Afraid not, not in the least.  You're quite a way off the mark with that one.  Read what I'd said and enlightenment will come


OK. how about this:
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Upon opening the dimensional doorway, the 'pieces' sniffed out sentience, that which it needed to simply BE (after all, the Orz are suits, suits... I believe the Captain said something to this effect, like Combat-Vac suits).  Yet it couldn't see the sentience without the sentience first seeing it.  The scans penetrate the interdimensional barrier.  'We know this pattern.' think the pieces, in their own basic way.  This is a sign of sentience, we see this sign of sentience.  We understand this particular pattern.  We are drawn!

The Orz are born from the bonding.  The reason everyone went nuts is because the pieces are picotech swarms, designed to take their sentience and then build atop it.  When the Science officer on the surface utilized the computer, he unwittingly activated one of the last remaining IDF holepunchers.  In seeped the swarm, not enough for a conversion but yet enough at the same time to cause him harm, harm which continued because these pieces had neither enough to fix the original form, nor to form that which they so desired.

Therein, the Orz were born from the Androsynth.


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they then build things which they bond with the sentience in order to be 'whole' again.


SO... when I said that the pre-orz thought the androsynth were like something they knew about, I meant, they recognized the sentience and then began tinkering (because they were broken?).

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If these machines are capable of even partially translating our language, doesn't it stand to reason that they'd also be able to detect our intelligence patterns over an interdimensional rift?


the first does not contradict the second, but it does not imply it.

As for the poltergeists part, sorry: I missed your brief reference to that effect. There was a LOT of text going down there.

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I shall repeat again for the sake of clarity!  THEY can only see you when YOU can see them.


While you did literally say this earlier, I figured you meant it poetically.
How is its perceptions literally and actually limited by others perceptions of it? It is not carried out by picotech super abilities, unless the picotech has been elaborately programmed to be willfully blind. The only explanation I can think of is a form of telepathy that can only detect sympathetic thoughts (i.e. thoughts about the one sensing). That seems awfully specific an ability to be built into picotech devices.

Also, the rest of that paragraph is denser than the average Kant epigraph. Try using fewer pronouns.

Physics actuators make sense.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 03, 2004, 01:06:15 am
Yay!  These are good points, I like good points and you seem to be wholly on the same wavelength (though hopefully not 44, we could do without the DOOM) now on all but one aspect.  This one aspect I shall explain below and I believe it can be explained away with relative ease in a way that will be at least relatively pleasing to you.  There is the other matter in fact but I'm not sure on that one but because I like plugging plot-holes, I'll try!

" - after the Transition, the pre-Orz vanished? Else, how are the Orz not made of the pre-orz?"

You've undoubtedly heard the phrase 'Nature abhors a vacuum?'  Well, the way I see it is that the dimension breacher was much like a Stargate, it washed outwards, carrying the physics of itself into our Universe then it washed inwards, closing in on itself and filling its own gap because whenever the Universe has a gap, it seems to do its best to fill it.  This left the Pre-Orz with a limited amount of resources to work with but because they possess radio-telapathy (in my theory, of course) it made it easy for them to split themselves up into groups of resource gatherers which would create 'The Final Product', so to speak.  So only so many Pre-Orz rode the wave in, only so many could and in the resultant clash of physics, even on a picotech level, a great percentage of them were probably destroyed.

" - after the Transition, the Orz had the knowledge of the pre-Orz: Taalo, Arilou, dimensions, etc."

Let's split this up into three happy little bite-size pieces so it'll all make sense and everyone can be happy, rather than highly confused by my mixed up mental-state.

Arilou: They obviously had some idea of their creators, maybe BITS of transmissions they'd picked up that were left floating around (they were radio-telepathic, after all) and they pieced together their history once they were sentient enough to do so.  And they were displeased, upset and generally ill-karma ridden by what they'd found out.  Poor Orz.

Taalo: The Taalo planet wasn't far from Androsynth, now I'm wagering that the Orz have the same scanning abilities as the Pre-Orz so it would've taken them all of ten minutes to learn everything that could possibly be learned about that artefact from every possible angle.  If there were carvings, inscriptions or even some form of hard-drive there, they would've read it and learned of the Taalo.  What I find fascinating is that when they say "The Taalo are playing a time joke on us, it is funny."  I think by 'funny' they might mean 'enlightening and entertaining' and I think by 'time joke' they might mean 'lessons of the past'.  However, everything comes out of the translator with a jubilant slant because the Orz are highly jubilant and child-like creatures themselves.

Etcetera: Radio telepathy explains the rest, they still have it and they've probably adapted it to their new Universe, they can probably snatch any kind of transmission that passes even marginally by their space and have it decrypted in a mere matter of seconds.

" SO... when I said that the pre-orz thought the androsynth were like something they knew about, I meant, they recognized the sentience and then began tinkering (because they were broken?)."

I see!  I see!  Then the fault was wholly mine.  I apologize.  Yes, you are correct in all assumptions there except for broken, they are broken but I'm guessing being broken is the intent of their creators.  The creators were going to give them bio-aspects until they found out how eager the mechanical aspects of the Pre-Orz were by themselves and decided against it, in fact because the Pre-Orz were seeing them as lunch (as resources they could rebuild and nothing more) they thought it would be a good idea to run away and leave the Pre-Orz there in this state instead.

"There was a LOT of text going down there."

This describes my mind on an everyday basis, it's just as confusing to be me as it is to listen to me and it takes a while for things to solidify into a state that could be wholly understandable by more 'default' means.  I believe I should quote Sam and claim that my mind is a "Swirling neosma of scintillating thought and turgid ideas."  Verily.  I'm crazy.

" While you did literally say this earlier, I figured you meant it poetically."

Oh, this old chestnut.  The whole 'Emotion and intent are not carried through the internet's text relays, beware!'.  I really should be more wary and explain my emotion and intent more often.  Though usually my intent is factual whereas my emotion is just silly.  So er... I don't really know!  Make of it what you will.

Oh and don't take my capitalizations as shouting or being ired, this occurs to me too.  It's just that the game uses the 'THEY/THEM' upper-cased-namings and I wanted to carry on the spirit of that.

" How is its perceptions literally and actually limited by others perceptions of it? It is not carried out by picotech super abilities, unless the picotech has been elaborately programmed to be willfully blind. The only explanation I can think of is a form of telepathy that can only detect sympathetic thoughts (i.e. thoughts about the one sensing). That seems awfully specific an ability to be built into picotech devices."

In all honesty, by reading your paragraph you can divine your own answer.  Yet for the sake of it we shall give this answer a name.  Let us call this answer 'A failsafe'.  Why?  We'd have to ask the creators <perk>!  It's a sly and albeit crafty dodge I'm aware, I shall try to dream up a better excuse and therein, reason.

A better answer might be that the failsafe was coded shoddily, after all, both Star Control 2 and the non-canon Star Control 3 show us that bad coding is prevalent within the SC Universe, especially where the Precursors are involved.  Therein, it might be theorized that the creators threw in protective code-loops and such but the Pre-Orz singled out the most important aspect they were searching for (sentience), probed the code thouroughly with their machine intelligence and instead of recoding themselves (which at that point they couldn't do), they found loopholes.

" Also, the rest of that paragraph is denser than the average Kant epigraph. Try using fewer pronouns."

I'd say 'You're no fun.' but that wouldn't be the truth because actually you're lots of fun to tangle with in the realms of theory and idea.  Yet I can't help but call upon my own nature to explain things and my own nature tends to itself lean to caliginous prolixity!  I do try to tone things down but often it's hard, things become grey and dull and then I lose the meaning in the ideas I'd originally had and wished to convey, removing the character adds an equal degree of militation, I find.

"Physics actuators make sense."

I find them fascinating and it's the nature of a great many species to bottle things, it's what they're used to.  Their ships bottle them and even their ships are often in a bottle so bottling a piece of Universe to sit inside doesn't seem outside of the general culture.

-- Edit --

Added a little to the failsafe thing.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Culture20 on March 03, 2004, 01:16:47 am
*smelling* might be a more general type of telepathic sonar, allowing the Orz or pre-orz to sense objects by sending out psychic waves.  It might stand to reason that if something else has this ability (other sentient beings who can send out the wave, but not *hear* them bounce back), that Orz can *smell* them.  The more the Androsynth thought about those reality aberations, the *brighter* they appeared to the pre-orz in contrast to all other matter in TS.

Perhaps the thing that allowed the pre-orz to "escape" wasn't a technological feat on the part of the Androsynth, but instead some Androsynth Scientist thought about the physical laws of the pre-orz universe, making slightly brighter than the rest of the universe.  If the pre-orz perceptions extend beyond planar boundaries, the pre-orz might have *smelled* the way to our universe merely because of a stray academic thought.  Say, what's that ghostly thing over ther....


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 03, 2004, 01:19:09 am
So they're actually looking for esper potential and preying on that?  Then that would mean their loophole was to try and rework their hardware a little to 'ping' sentience that might respond.  Yes, yes I could see this... especially if they already somehow had the capability.  The Taalo playing a time joke might've been more amusing to them because the Taalo device was a 'reverse-ping', the opposite of what the Orz had figured out how to do (but never pursued out of lack of need).


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Shiver on March 03, 2004, 03:42:05 am
Picowoof wrote:
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Indeed, good Sir Death, that is exactly what I am proposing and I'm aware of the implications.  There is no evidence to the contrary that states that a dimensional breach woudln't wash else-physics into realspace, as this is fiction after all I thought it were fair to make a couple of safe estimates within my theories, that being one of them.  This might not be true of our Universe but again, that is what seperates Science Fiction from Science Fact.  The irony here of course is that it appears that verily, elsedimensional physics washing into our own Universe from other plains is accepted by some Scientific bodies as a valid theory.  It's a funny old Universe, isn't it?  And I say that in a most literary manner.

" - Orz are made of a form of matter which has coherent structures hundreds of times smaller than atoms"

Oh gosh, no!  What I'm saying is that the Pre-Orz were made of a form of matter which has coherent structures hundreds of times smaller than atoms and what I shall henceforth call 'The Transition' involved them rebuilding themselves, in the process (because they are machines and have infinitely superiour intelligence capacities than biosacks and they learn... shall we say, much faster) they rebuilt themselves to the physics of our Universe as solid creatures.  The Orz are now not the Androsynth, the Orz are not the Pre-Orz but the Orz are a symbiotic bonding of what the Androsynth were and what the Pre-Orz built with all the materials around them, considering probably only the brain of each Androsynth valuable enough to keep in its original state.  After all, before the Orz could comprehend conscience or guilt, the Androsynth were just a 'resource', like any other and hence, they 'built' with them.

" - Their space is 'fluidic', whatever that means. Filled with a fluid? What would the assertion 'space itself is fluid' mean?"

One would imagine that this were purely logical and easy to grasp.  Let us say you have a singularity which creates a gravity well in a spherical formation, similar to a gas giant but instead of gas, we fill it with fluid.  Now let's say that the physics of pretty-space are different enough that instead of gasses, they have formed licquids.  In this fluidic space, there are young wells which provide a gravitational center against the 'tidal waves' that might be evident in their Universe and that's where pockets of life would be found.  I believe my theory is at least marginally valid because the Orz themselves refer to being overjoyed by the 'hard playgrounds' in our Universe.  Now let's just assume that 'playgrounds' is a mistranslation of 'planets'.  The Orz are overjoyed that indeed, our Universe has 'hard planets'.  No I ask you, good Sir Death, utilizing a little conjecture and logic; what does this tell you about the home-dimension of the Pre-Orz?  At the very least it tells you they have no hard planets, yes?  Moreover, if they don't have hard planets, what do they have?

" - Androsynth experiments in IDF released the Orz into this dimension (few of us will debate that one)."

Almost a wholehearted 'Indeed!' can be issued here but I'd like to make a teensy-weensy minor correction, in my theories the Pre-Orz were released.  A race that very quickly became the bewildered and new Orz, who were immediately wracked with grief over what they'd done but yet had the survival instinct of the Androsynth now, so they were unable to simply suicide over it, they had to get on with their lives and press out into space they did.  I think it's this underlying guilt that leads them to be productive, which helps them in their efforts to be open and giving towards all strangers.  They're trying to add a constructive presence in the place of what they took away, sort of a balancing of the Universe.  If that makes sense to you at all?  I would hope it does.

" - The Orz thought the Androsynth were something like things in their dimension (despite having a fundamentally different makeup), and tried to remake them into their familiar forms."

Afraid not, not in the least.  You're quite a way off the mark with that one.  Read what I'd said and enlightenment will come, or because I'm not lazy and I enjoy repetetive tasks, I will repeat myself again for your benefit!  The Androsynth possess 'scannable intellect'.  If these machines are capable of even partially translating our language, doesn't it stand to reason that they'd also be able to detect our intelligence patterns over an interdimensional rift?  It makes sense to me.  If they weren't able to translate us then indeed, I would have my doubts but since they are and in my theory, they're machines (which learn at an infinitely multiplied rate in comparison to us) then I think it's likely that they could 'smell' the Androsynth.  As I said before, they were disappointed that the humans didn't 'smell' because that would mean that they weren't as intelligent as the Androsynth and unable to grasp things the Orz otherwise would've told them, yet they were relieved they didn't 'smell' because they knew their pre-Orz brothers back in fluidic space wouldn't be able to detect them.  In essence, the Arilou altered the humans so their sentience patterns couldn't be read specifically by these pre-Orz.

" -- Why would the Androsynth begin seeing Poltergeists?"

"Look, minerals, let's break them down into their component parts.  Dust-like on an atomic level where we can rebuild them as we wish." - Pre-Orz

"ACK!  Strange moving clouds!  They're the GHOSTS foretold of in our prophecies.  Run away!  No wait.  We must DESTROY these ghosts!" - Androsynth

" -- Why would the Androsynth's KNOWLEDGE of this dimension be so dangerous? This was what the Arilou warned us against."

I shall repeat again for the sake of clarity!  THEY can only see you when YOU can see them.  As the game tells it.  Here's how I tell it: They can only see you if you find a way to bust through to their Universe and scan them, so they can trace that back and scan (smell) you.  The Science officer found a Dimensional-Breacher (which is why he was forced to blow up the building rather than simply delete the data files) and punched through, he scanned and THEY (the Pre-Orz) remembered the energy signatures of Androsynth scanners, they didn't bother to scan the human because they remembered they'd already done that and it would be inefficient and on some basic level, they were excited by the prospect.  They came through and found that even though the humans didn't 'smell', they could still use them.  This knowledge was a terrifying prospect, the Science Officer knew that they now KNEW this and so they could 'see' the humans even if they couldn't smell them.  They knew they could be used even if they couldn't scan them.  Yes?

" -- Why would the Orz, as described, be upset with the Arilou?"

As I'd said, I believe the Arilou might have been their creators.  If you'd been created, then broken and abandoned and then left to prey on other races because your creator couldn't clean up their messes, wouldn't you be upset?  On some level they might blame the Arilou for what had happened.  That's one theory.  The more likely theory is that the Arilou found fluidic space before the Pre-Orz existed and struck up formal relations with the people there.  It's obvious the Arilou happily share whatever they believe you're capable of understanding and the Orz know that the Arilou can't be blamed for being generous but in the end, this generousity makes them 'more trouble' than they're worth.  I believe, although roughly (due to translation), this is how the Orz described them.  Far too troublesome -- because they butt in, interfere and then share.  Perhaps if not for the Arilou, they wouldn't have been created and they'd have naught to feel guilty over.  They can't really BLAME the Arilou but still... they are trouble.

" -- more to come."

Oh the humanity!  <giggly> My apologies, I couldn't resist.

-- Edit --

Oh and before you ask, since this has just occurred to me (and an interesting thought it is, too); yes.  I believe the Arilou have physics actuators.  What are physics actuators?  Well let's say the Arilou had cracked quantum physics, they were so far beyond us that they could rightfully patronize us like canines, "You opened the door, good Dog, good Dog!  Have a biscuit."  If that were the case then it's likely that they knew how to 'bottle' physics so they could safely travel into other dimensions.  So their ships would have a 'physics bubble' in them which would prevent the physics of another dimension from affecting them, they created this on scans and observations of physics from other Universes washing into our own.

So the humans jump-system has physics actuators too which prevent the physics of other Universes affecting them.  The Arilou also point out that they might've altered themselves to suit other sets of physics because they claimed humans weren't (solid enough) or perhaps 'cohesive enough to bear more than one set of physics'.  If they allowed them to their homeworld unengineered, they might blow up in a fantastic display of "Oh my, THAT shouldn't exist here."

Furthermore, just to be utterly pedantic, it stands to reason that if entry into another dimensional set of physics would be dangerous, the Arilou wanting to pretect their humans so much probably would've left 'actuator drones' near the only natural entryway to protect the ship as long as it was in their dimension.  It all just stands to reason really that if they have the capability of doing one, they also by default have the capability of doing the other which is not dissimilar in its nature.

-- Edit 2 --

An amusing side ponderance occurs (random thought encounter!).  A friend of mine introduced me to the Daktaklakpak.  Now don't consider this as part of my theory and also, I'm aware that SC3 is non-canon but it all ties in in a slightly amusing way.  For example, if fluidic space were a testing grounds for the original Mother Ark, then these pieces might've been the original idea for the drones; hence their latent need for biology to function.  It's just a passing idea that amuses me, that the Precursors might've been using another area of space-time as a sandbox to test ideas, which of course probably went horribly wrong and I'm still not suggesting this horribly wrong thing is what the Precursors might've been running from.  No... of course not.  That would be silly.

-- Edit 3 --

Hopefully this will be the Final Edit <perk>.  I just wished to say that I by no means consider any questioning or picking-apart-thereof of my dreamy theorems to be confrontationalist, nor do I wish to be actively so towards why comrades here at the forums.  Actually, I think you're all really quite neat.  My reasoning behind this is that all theories and ideas grow from friendly interpersonal gestalts, much like sentience works in the brain.  You cannot evolve with someone sitting around who likes to constantly enquire, "Are you sure?  Are you sure?"  There's no real evolution as a species without that and things become mired and stagnant.

So even if my responses aren't all 'yes, you're right' and 'indeed, of course, I agree' or perhaps 'my eyes have opened, why didn't I see that?' it doesn't mean that I would choose to fight your opinions (per se) or do anything of the sort!  Keep them coming!  I like having my theories picked at and I won't get all annoyed over it or anything, it's fun!  Anyway, I just wished to say that because indeed, over the next few days my theories might get picked apart by the best of minds.  Which makes me glad that's all they are; happy, pointless, irrelevant, meandering, dreamy theories.


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Yay!  These are good points, I like good points and you seem to be wholly on the same wavelength (though hopefully not 44, we could do without the DOOM) now on all but one aspect.  This one aspect I shall explain below and I believe it can be explained away with relative ease in a way that will be at least relatively pleasing to you.  There is the other matter in fact but I'm not sure on that one but because I like plugging plot-holes, I'll try!

" - after the Transition, the pre-Orz vanished? Else, how are the Orz not made of the pre-orz?"

You've undoubtedly heard the phrase 'Nature abhors a vacuum?'  Well, the way I see it is that the dimension breacher was much like a Stargate, it washed outwards, carrying the physics of itself into our Universe then it washed inwards, closing in on itself and filling its own gap because whenever the Universe has a gap, it seems to do its best to fill it.  This left the Pre-Orz with a limited amount of resources to work with but because they possess radio-telapathy (in my theory, of course) it made it easy for them to split themselves up into groups of resource gatherers which would create 'The Final Product', so to speak.  So only so many Pre-Orz rode the wave in, only so many could and in the resultant clash of physics, even on a picotech level, a great percentage of them were probably destroyed.

" - after the Transition, the Orz had the knowledge of the pre-Orz: Taalo, Arilou, dimensions, etc."

Let's split this up into three happy little bite-size pieces so it'll all make sense and everyone can be happy, rather than highly confused by my mixed up mental-state.

Arilou: They obviously had some idea of their creators, maybe BITS of transmissions they'd picked up that were left floating around (they were radio-telepathic, after all) and they pieced together their history once they were sentient enough to do so.  And they were displeased, upset and generally ill-karma ridden by what they'd found out.  Poor Orz.

Taalo: The Taalo planet wasn't far from Androsynth, now I'm wagering that the Orz have the same scanning abilities as the Pre-Orz so it would've taken them all of ten minutes to learn everything that could possibly be learned about that artefact from every possible angle.  If there were carvings, inscriptions or even some form of hard-drive there, they would've read it and learned of the Taalo.  What I find fascinating is that when they say "The Taalo are playing a time joke on us, it is funny."  I think by 'funny' they might mean 'enlightening and entertaining' and I think by 'time joke' they might mean 'lessons of the past'.  However, everything comes out of the translator with a jubilant slant because the Orz are highly jubilant and child-like creatures themselves.

Etcetera: Radio telepathy explains the rest, they still have it and they've probably adapted it to their new Universe, they can probably snatch any kind of transmission that passes even marginally by their space and have it decrypted in a mere matter of seconds.

" SO... when I said that the pre-orz thought the androsynth were like something they knew about, I meant, they recognized the sentience and then began tinkering (because they were broken?)."

I see!  I see!  Then the fault was wholly mine.  I apologize.  Yes, you are correct in all assumptions there except for broken, they are broken but I'm guessing being broken is the intent of their creators.  The creators were going to give them bio-aspects until they found out how eager the mechanical aspects of the Pre-Orz were by themselves and decided against it, in fact because the Pre-Orz were seeing them as lunch (as resources they could rebuild and nothing more) they thought it would be a good idea to run away and leave the Pre-Orz there in this state instead.

"There was a LOT of text going down there."

This describes my mind on an everyday basis, it's just as confusing to be me as it is to listen to me and it takes a while for things to solidify into a state that could be wholly understandable by more 'default' means.  I believe I should quote Sam and claim that my mind is a "Swirling neosma of scintillating thought and turgid ideas."  Verily.  I'm crazy.

" While you did literally say this earlier, I figured you meant it poetically."

Oh, this old chestnut.  The whole 'Emotion and intent are not carried through the internet's text relays, beware!'.  I really should be more wary and explain my emotion and intent more often.  Though usually my intent is factual whereas my emotion is just silly.  So er... I don't really know!  Make of it what you will.

Oh and don't take my capitalizations as shouting or being ired, this occurs to me too.  It's just that the game uses the 'THEY/THEM' upper-cased-namings and I wanted to carry on the spirit of that.

" How is its perceptions literally and actually limited by others perceptions of it? It is not carried out by picotech super abilities, unless the picotech has been elaborately programmed to be willfully blind. The only explanation I can think of is a form of telepathy that can only detect sympathetic thoughts (i.e. thoughts about the one sensing). That seems awfully specific an ability to be built into picotech devices."

In all honesty, by reading your paragraph you can divine your own answer.  Yet for the sake of it we shall give this answer a name.  Let us call this answer 'A failsafe'.  Why?  We'd have to ask the creators <perk>!  It's a sly and albeit crafty dodge I'm aware, I shall try to dream up a better excuse and therein, reason.

A better answer might be that the failsafe was coded shoddily, after all, both Star Control 2 and the non-canon Star Control 3 show us that bad coding is prevalent within the SC Universe, especially where the Precursors are involved.  Therein, it might be theorized that the creators threw in protective code-loops and such but the Pre-Orz singled out the most important aspect they were searching for (sentience), probed the code thouroughly with their machine intelligence and instead of recoding themselves (which at that point they couldn't do), they found loopholes.

" Also, the rest of that paragraph is denser than the average Kant epigraph. Try using fewer pronouns."

I'd say 'You're no fun.' but that wouldn't be the truth because actually you're lots of fun to tangle with in the realms of theory and idea.  Yet I can't help but call upon my own nature to explain things and my own nature tends to itself lean to caliginous prolixity!  I do try to tone things down but often it's hard, things become grey and dull and then I lose the meaning in the ideas I'd originally had and wished to convey, removing the character adds an equal degree of militation, I find.

"Physics actuators make sense."

I find them fascinating and it's the nature of a great many species to bottle things, it's what they're used to.  Their ships bottle them and even their ships are often in a bottle so bottling a piece of Universe to sit inside doesn't seem outside of the general culture.

-- Edit --

Added a little to the failsafe thing.


HOLY FUCKING SHIT!! I mean, uh, Picowoof, your avatar isn't working. Why don't you take your hands off the keyboard for a sec and fix it? I have a new theory: Picowoof is not a human being (proof: no human would have the free time to write that), but rather a living manifestation of pure hatred. I think he already has myself and possibly even Lukipela beat in pure text mass.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: NECRO-99 on March 03, 2004, 03:45:23 am
Methinks that this is getting far too in-depth. A few things from a simpler perspective:

The Nemesis itself - It's a ship that looks like a manta ray because fish-people fly it. It's also quite aesthetically pleasing to the player's eye.

Being *seen* - Probably some inherent problem with 3 dimention optics and that us hunams and Androsynth alike have. Once the eye can *see* 4 dimentions, or however many, they can also be *seen* themselves. The Orz probably had some kind of blindness to this plane, as they can *see* Arilou just fine.

Being *smelled* - I believe this has something to do with spiritual matter. The Orz can only *pull* those they can *smell*, or detect by the presence of their soul. People with unique *smells* (hunams) would not be easy to *pull* en-masse; they all smell different. Clones don't.

Couple other little notes:
The Orz don't find "hard" *playground*, they find *heavy* *playgrounds* in *heavy* space. This is why I don't understand all this 'fluidspace' rattle.

I'm simply failing to see how our 'logical' science can be put into play on this strange, often illogical topic. Perhaps they are something that defies our modern science.

I almost think I'd like to hear that.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 03, 2004, 04:21:27 am
To Shiver I say with earnest near-acquiescence...

"HOLY *SPICY SAUCE* [Translation Glitch]!!"

A desired effect, how utterly pleasing <claps>!  This is always something I like to see, I aim for three things in my posts; A) no small amount of humour, wit and perhaps even a little friendly snyde, B) to be wholly entertaining to myself and collectively the 'Others' around me, whomever they might be, C) to rearrange minds in fascinating ways (it's all part of some subliminal plot, probably!).

"I mean, uh, Picowoof, your avatar isn't working."

Really?  I thought the Gods of karma were against me and that avatars weren't allowed for people under a certain post-count, I shall look into it post-haste and I think you for your informational statement which will allow me to project even more selfness into this forum.

"but rather a living manifestation of pure hatred."

It cannot be!  For alas if it were, all my attempts to be passive and simply 'An Artefact Of Nature Or Random Construction Which People Point And Ooh At In Passing But One That Leaves No Lingering Effect On Their Culture' have failed!  Oh the effort I've expended in being kind and giving when I could just be Sharkey or Toastyfrog-like and claim to hate you all.  But I can't do that because I genuinely LIKE you all and there's the conflict at the crux of the matter!  I can only conclude that you must be incorrect, a fact of which I am greatful.

To Necro I say with mild discomfiture...

"Methinks that this is getting far too in-depth. "

One would wonder, aren't we bringing relativity into the affair here?  By this; I mean that the words 'in-depth' are irrelevant when used on their own standing, they only have meaning when in relevance or measured by some other standard.  I never was capable of comprehending how things could be 'too simple' or 'too complex' by no standards.  'More complex than I'd care to deal with.' would be understood but 'More in-depth than [?]' leaves me in a state of perplexed incognizance.

I personally believe that each item can be as in-depth or as simple as the person that wants them to be and that anything else is casting a person's own perceptions on them.  So I ask for your forgiveness in advance for I forsee naught but further depth in the immediate future.  Depth to me is fun, it's an opposite to shallow and equates to diversity.  So I gravitate around it, as most things in the Universe seem to do, curiously enough.  So um... I'm sorry?

I could try to summarize every now and then I suppose but that might end up looking like those hopeless recaps in webcomics which even the characters themselves end up poking fun at and travestying.

Your takes on seen and smell are valid as the other forum-posters here, as valid; not more or less so and in that, I am sure that they are welcomed by everyone here.  If I see something you've theorized that truly perks my dreamstate-theorytrigger or whatever it is, then I shall eagerly comment on it in my merry little way.  Equity is Good and Fun after all and I wholly support its existance in day to day life.

" The Orz don't find "hard" *playground*"

Are you sure?  It doesn't matter much however as heavy equates to density, does it not?  It is gravity that causes weight and the more dense something is, the heavier it is.  Singularities are superdense so they have WOOOSHBangEvil (tm) levels of gravitational pull.  At least, that's how I remember it and I'm sure I'll be hastily corrected by Death if I am incorrect and I would welcome such a correction.  So heavy == hard and your point... was... ?  I'm afraid I got kind of lost.  It happens.

"I don't understand all this 'fluidspace' rattle."

This seems to happen a lot, it might have something to do however with this being such a wholly alien concept but since Star Control deals with flying around and dealing with aliens in a fiction setting, I don't believe it's so inconceivable.  Especially since the theories are mostly sound-ish...ish... mostly.  I'm sure a Science boffin could turn up and make them sound if he so truly desired anyway.  It appears that physics are a most malleable and claylike thing.  And fun to play with!  Like clay.

"I'm simply failing to see how our 'logical' science can be put into play on this strange, often illogical topic."

I have stared at this sentence from many angles, I have prodded it with the many lingual centers of my brain and it took me a few minutes to truly grasp the levity of its meaning.  I shall try to answer; it all has to do with perception and the way each of us understands all which is around us.  I call it the 'Perception Wall', each of us is going to use our own tools to even begin to understand any Universe, fictional or real.  My tools happen to be logic and abstract-creativity which often somehow seem to work as one.  Not everyone will use such a system of perception but to each their own, difference breeds adaption and life.  Yay difference!

So ends this particular jaunt into forum-postery.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: NECRO-99 on March 03, 2004, 05:01:17 am
Quote
'More in-depth than [?]'

...than any of us really seek to delve? I think your use of eruditely crafted words and, well, seemingly ostentatious terminology, as well as your sheer mass of text ebbs at the lucidity of your meaning. Its well thought out, and eloquently written, but a bit thick.

(I'm sure you hate to read this, but you're probably going to have to laymenize it down a notch, you may be Blinding Some With Science, and just scaring the rest. :P)

As for the hard/=heavy...
Quoth the Orz:
Quote
My *fingers* reach through into *heavy space* and you *see* *Orz bubbles*...

I know it's some screwy liquid-ethanol breathing creature's words being badly translated through the computer, but it's what they say. They don't mention *hard* at all.

Liquidspace:
I get what you're saying about it, but would the Androsynth have left a *splash* (some of aforementioned liquid) when they were *pulled*? Would the *under space* have leaked onto Realspace when IDF holes were ripped? Or would there be some sort of universal cohesion to hold it all together, even when faced with a wormhole?

Quote
My tools happen to be logic and abstract-creativity...

You're either quite gifted, or you're terminally insane.  ;)


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Orz Brain on March 03, 2004, 05:24:00 am
Quote
Brain:
Quote:You leave the area before the orz notice  


Uh, I thought Buwolski was "noticed" due to the immense amounts of cuts and his inherent screaming about ghosts and "them".

Quote:Because earthlings are all different they don't all smell alike and the orz detirmine that the infection will not spread because the guy will die first and won't have a chance to pass along the dangerous information.  


The Orz aren't that stupid. If this theory was true, they would've killed him because they'd know from fighting off the Androsynth that humans are a wee-bit more resilient than to just be slashed up a few times and die.

Quote:The parisites have learned to mask their *smell* from the orz so the orz don't notice.  


Then the Orz would probably realize that and try to find a new way to detect this "infection".

Quote:The orz do notice and kill him later.  


Why wouldn't they kill him right away? You notice your crew never drops either. Don't try to blame combat deaths for his, either  

Quote:He dies before the orz notice.  


He doesn't. Crew doesn't drop.

Quote:One infection is not enough for the orz to notice.  


If the Orz were so "universally minded" as you portray them as, they'd try to wipe out all cases of this 'infection' ASAP. It's like saying, "Oh, one case of the Black Plague isn't anything to worry about." You're eating your own words here.

Quote:And any number of other possibilities I haven't thought of yet...  


You keep 'em comin', I'll keep on gunnin'.




Lets take this one at a time...
Quote
Brain:
Quote:You leave the area before the orz notice  


Uh, I thought Buwolski was "noticed" due to the immense amounts of cuts and his inherent screaming about ghosts and "them".  


He was noticed by the Orz? How do you know? Were they looking in and saw and heard him?

Quote
Because earthlings are all different they don't all smell alike and the orz determine that the infection will not spread because the guy will die first and won't have a chance to pass along the dangerous information.  


The Orz aren't that stupid. If this theory was true, they would've killed him because they'd know from fighting off the Androsynth that humans are a wee-bit more resilient than to just be slashed up a few times and die.  


Uh in my theory the Orz didn't fight off the Androsynth... They wiped em out because the Sinth were all infected... I guess you missed that bit.

Quote
The parasites have learned to mask their *smell* from the Orz so the Orz don't notice.  


Then the Orz would probably realize that and try to find a new way to detect this "infection".


Wow. That was the most stunningly logical refutation of a point I have ever seen. I mean really... "Then the Orz would PROBABLY realize that".... How do you know? Did the Orz tell you? How do you know that they succeeded? How do you know that the Orz know that the parasites have "adapted"?... Since you appear to be completely unable to offer a coherent refutation of this suggestion I take it that you agree with me... Right?

Quote
The Orz do notice and kill him later.  


Why wouldn't they kill him right away? You notice your crew never drops either. Don't try to blame combat deaths for his, either


Pray tell WHAT do you think happens to him afterwards? He takes a quick trip to sickbay and then it's back to active duty? No one questions him about what happens? None of the cuts also have internal counterparts? He suffers from aminisia afterwards? Please... I want to know... according to you what happens to him afterwards?

Quote
One infection is not enough for the Orz to notice.  


If the Orz were so "universally minded" as you portray them as, they'd try to wipe out all cases of this 'infection' ASAP. It's like saying, "Oh, one case of the Black Plague isn't anything to worry about." You're eating your own words here. [


I gather that you don't fully understand the English language.... Keeping that in mind I will attempt to rephrase: Perhaps one infection is not a strong enough *smell* for the Orz to *smell* it. Perhaps their sensory apparatus isn't that sensitive.

Quote
And any number of other possibilities I haven't thought of yet...  


You keep 'em comin', I'll keep on gunnin'.


Oh PLEASE do! I can't wait for another display of your ahem... "Reasoning" abilities.

And in that vane I will share another idea I have had. It Is possible to PROVE logically that the Orz were not responsible for what happened to Bukowski on the planet. First of all lets make a list of the things we do agree on. (1) Bukowski was attacked by something unseen on the planets surface. (2) He was attacked because something he saw in the computers memory banks made it possible for *something* to *smell him. Assuming we agree on those points it is possible to prove with the data provided by the game that the Orz were not responsible accept in one possible circumstance... That the Orz were forcible removing the infecting organism from Bukowski and that the damage was caused by the organism "holding on".
OK what could the data that he saw in the Sinth computer be? It can't be about the existence of the Orz... He already knew. It can't be about the hostile intent of the Orz because even if you question the Orz about the Androsynth enough to make them hostile to you and then go back and land on the planet nothing happens. I rather doubt it was technical specifications on the IDF device. I would welcome any other suggestions so I can disprove them. Anyway it seems to me that the only possibility is that the computer contained data about something else... As in another IDF organism. Something that no one on the ship knows about or imagined or THEY would have been attacked....


Quote
I think we need to make a kiddie table like the SC Forum has, and Terminator and Orz Brain need to go sit at it. At least get your arguments into such a position that they do not contradict themselves or seem generally stupid. Until this time, remain at the kiddie table. Thank you.


I rather doubt a "kiddie table" would be effective due to the fact that morons like you would probably not confine themselves to posting there.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 03, 2004, 05:25:54 am
"...than any of us really seek to delve?"

You can speak for the collective all?  You must be more in touch with the true nature of One than I am, that is for certain.  I know my humble woofian self could certainly never even begin to assume the cranial goings on of my fellows without even a passing enquiry, I must be unenlightened and thus I bow down to your knowledge.  Summaries it shall be then.  Despite strong urges to the contrary which cry out that simplicity isn't any means to an end, I shall try!

"My *fingers* reach through into *heavy space* and you *see* *Orz bubbles*..."

Yes I am aware the Orz said this but I do not believe we are on the same page here, allow me to help but fingering through your proverbial book to the place you need to be; which if I remember with correctness is the Androsynth homeworld, I'm not entirely sure (as I never am) but I believe they stated at least once 'hard playground'.  Now unless my age is robbing me of my sight along with my sanity and perspicacity, there's no mention of playground in your quote yet every time I mentioned this, I did indeed mention playground, I am also wholly certain I am not in err about that.  You may feel free to check.

"...a *splash* (some of aforementioned liquid)..."

Here's where we get to apply household physics!  And these are always fun but even though I'm going to describe this, I still feel compelled to add; 'Don't try this at home, kids!' as the Melnorme inside me yells for me to do.  After all, I don't wish to be sued and I really wouldn't be able to deal with the sheer guilt of someone harming themselves.  ButthisisALLbesidethepiont... take a glass of water and apply a flat surface to it, then make a large hole in that surface and apply an absolute vaccuum.  Since we don't have an absolute vaccuum a vaccuum cleaner will have to do.  What happens? SSHH-LOOOOP!  All the licquid finds itself returning from whence it came.  The Pre-Orz possessing some level of cleverness managed to avoid being sucked back in after the wave blew outwards, and was then sucked back in as the Universe apparently hates 'gaps' and fills them with anything as quickly as it's able, even with surrounding space!

And I never claimed the Androsynth were pulled anywhere, I just realized this sentence at the back of my mind, at some remote region which picks up on these little things and in a small voice points me to them with a "Hey, look, oddity..."  So I must assume you're talking about someone else in that sentence?  I hope my assumption is correct and if it isn't, my apologies and could you explain?

"Or would there be some sort of universal cohesion to hold it all together, even when faced with a wormhole?"

The cohesion would exist in part as it were happening and wholly as it were fixed.  I think of the Universe as not like paper but more like clingfilm.  Have you ever seen this strange material?  It's amazing!  It stretches like gum for a while before it eventually breaks but with the merest of shakes it sticks back to itself, closing its own gaps.  Admittedly it sticks to you and wraps around just about anything but the 'fabric' of the Universe might just be like that.  This is an absolute guess, a theory one would certainly say, on my part but that's what this all is and it doesn't hurt to help explain one theory with another; after all, Scientists have been doing it for years and remarkably well.  I couldn't hope for that kind of professionalism but I can aspire.

" You're either quite gifted, or you're terminally insane."

I wouldn't like to assume I were either or both.  Yet in being insane I might have an edge on understanding what the Orz are actually saying!  Either that or all those years of reading Babelfish-translated pages paid off, I'm not entirely sure...

-- Edit --

No, I believe I am incorrect.  I believe it was the World where the Taalo thingumapsychicdevice was.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Shiver on March 03, 2004, 06:27:25 am
Quote

I rather doubt a "kiddie table" would be effective due to the fact that morons like you would probably not confine themselves to posting there.


He's been scolded already. Please don't pick fights.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Rib Rdb on March 03, 2004, 10:57:06 am
Quote
Here's where we get to apply household physics!  And these are always fun but even though I'm going to describe this, I still feel compelled to add; 'Don't try this at home, kids!' as the Melnorme inside me yells for me to do.  After all, I don't wish to be sued and I really wouldn't be able to deal with the sheer guilt of someone harming themselves.  ButthisisALLbesidethepiont... take a glass of water and apply a flat surface to it, then make a large hole in that surface and apply an absolute vaccuum.  Since we don't have an absolute vaccuum a vaccuum cleaner will have to do.  What happens? SSHH-LOOOOP!  All the licquid finds itself returning from whence it came.  The Pre-Orz possessing some level of cleverness managed to avoid being sucked back in after the wave blew outwards, and was then sucked back in as the Universe apparently hates 'gaps' and fills them with anything as quickly as it's able, even with surrounding space!

I'm not sure what you mean by "apply a flat surface to it," but when I attached the high school vacuum pump to a flask of water, it just boiled until the vacuum petered out and the water cooled enough.  And on TV when Hewitt did it with a big vacuum it boiled till it froze.  So I guess you're talking about something else.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 03, 2004, 06:01:33 pm
My only guess is that American vaccuum cleaners work via severely different means than British vaccuum cleaners, perhaps you steam clean your work to death.  Indeed, now I shall be stuck with the imagine of a steampunk mecha vacuum cleaner robot for the rest of the day, without doubt!


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on March 03, 2004, 09:44:20 pm
OK, you two are talking about different effects.

If you use a vacuum cleaner to suck air out of a flask (i.e. a depressurizer setup), that will cause the effects Rib rdb described.

If you stick the hose of a vacuum cleaner into water which has contact with unaffected atmosphere so its overall pressure is maintained (i.e. a wet-vac setup) you get the effect that Picowoof described.

Which of these is more like the situation at hand?
Rib rdb's principal result relies on adiabatic cooling, which I think would be pretty unimportant given the strong thermal contact between the picobots and ordinary matter which is not being sucked in.
Picowoof's water analogy relies on air on the other side of the water to maintain atmospheric pressure; but I do not see any analogue to air here.
I think it would end up being rather complicated and different because of the strong pico-nano-matter interactions, with only the pico-matter being attracted. Probably a good portion of it would stick around, being stuck inside the other matter.

BTW, Picowoof, denser does mean more massive, if you are holding the volume constant.

Lastly, to question a point made earlier -- I don't see why there wouldn't be dense planets in a space entirely filled with fluid.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 03, 2004, 10:27:30 pm
"BTW, Picowoof, denser does mean more massive, if you are holding the volume constant."

Indeed, I'm not entirely sure but wouldn't (by the standards of 'RealSpace') such a dense/massive body also bring about a gravitic 'weight' (as in, heavy)?

"Lastly, to question a point made earlier -- I don't see why there wouldn't be dense planets in a space entirely filled with fluid."

Don't get me wrong, not at all.  I wouldn't deny this fact.  'Tis true, I am one of those folks who would happily believe that anything is possible.  I like believing that all things are possible and then making wholly silly comments about them.  As a matter of fact, this is the regards with which I hold myself and the entirety of the Universe around me.  It's all but a curiousity to poke, ponder about and then offer up silly ideas in regards to.  It's fun.  Not altogether taken in utmost seriousness but believed nonetheless.

So I am in vehement agreement that any kind of fluidic space could have solid planets, verily.  Yet let's work with the cohesion of my theory for a moment.  Let's say that perhaps the licquid nature of their dimension somehow didn't allow for truly hard planets and that things 'licquified' before they truly solidified, perhaps the gravities of their dimension were 'off' somehow, I don't really know (I haven't given it too much thought).  If that were true then 'heavy'/'hard' 'playgrounds' dense supermasses such as planets might be new to them.

It would be a curiousity, "Look, a... SOLID thing, we've never seen something this dense before.  It draws us!  We've never felt this pull."  It could all literally refer back to the same idea, that in their space, things were rarely 'heavy or hard' but indeed, their space might've been 'lightweight' after a fashion.

I also realize that the Orz might've been a biological virus, naturally occurring or made but it seems more likely for the speed in which the Orz created things, they were probably machines.  I'm talking within the confines of my theory now, not the actual game.  I'm also trying to see this from other points of view.  Whilst my theories about the Orz utilizing the Androsynth are far-fetched by most standards though, I don't believe my theories of fluidic space would be.  I think they're quite happily believable.

But then, this of course comes from an entity that usually considers all things believable.  So I'm not exactly the best person to be working with such things.

Nonetheless, thanks for your Scientific input Death (and I still push back the urge to call you Sir Death because it seems more frivolous and not unlike Terry Pratchett's Death when I do), it's an appreciated, respected, refreshing and ironically 'solid' addition to this thread of dreamers.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: ikcizok on March 04, 2004, 01:00:38 am
My theory is that the Orz are some type of ID beings that
were attracted to the Androsynth because they were synthetic
beings, and not human. They had a different smell than humans,
something the Orz desired. This might be why the Orz are in
suits... maybe there's some connection between them and
technology, which seems to be a great theme in the SC
universe (the Mrnhmrnmmm, oh whatever). The Orz obviously
wanted the Synth for some purpose.  Nefarious or not, we do
not know, but we can assume it may be innocent to the Orz,
but perhaps detrimental to the Synth.  As for the battle on
the Synth home planet, I would guess that they fought with
the Orz (or some other ID race), but their weapons were
ineffective being that they were trans-dimensional--"ghosts"
or "phantoms" to the Synth. So the Synth did what they
thought would save them--use nukes, which obviously didn't
work.  After the dust settled (they might not have been
nukes, since the game says "within the last 5 years," and
it wouldn't be safe for anyone to walk around a 5 year-old
nuke site), the Orz stole or borrowed or assimilated the
Synth.  I think "below" refers to their dimension, perhaps
sinister (humans would interpret "below" as maybe Hell,
whereas Quasi-Space would be "above", or heavenly... just
a notion from a linguists POV).

What my question is, though, is why did the Ur-Quan
eliminate all those historical sites, and does it have
anything to do with the Arilou and their visiting Earth?
I think this concept was borne out of people thinking the
Pyramids or Stonehenge are of cosmic significance, maybe
beacons for other creatures or a source of power, divine
or otherwise.

I guess to bottom-line my theories, I think the Arilou and
the Orz have more of a connection than just being from ID
realms. I think it's obvious by reading between the lines
that the Orz are sinister and the Arilou are benevolent.
Or that the Arilou are what humanity evolves into in the
future and the Orz are what the Androsynth evolve/hybrid
into in the future.  Once upon a time I had a Star Control
II hint book that came with a big starmap and details on
every race, including the Taalo and the Gg (does anyone
else realize on a kindergarten letter chart that Gg is
just the example of how to write an uppercase/lowercase
"g"?).

Again... all theories... but fun to speculate. The best
forms of fiction are when we DON'T know the real answers,
or there are 1,000 possible explanations but all seem
to contradict, leading to an unexplained mystery. Hey,
it worked with The Matrix movies and The Sandman comics.

Oh yeah, and Picowoof needs to chill out. You DON'T know
because you didn't write the story and therefore everything
in this forum is all theory and suppositions. There are
no facts in fiction. It's just a game, and this is just
a message board. Show some maturity and stop attacking
other people.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Orz Brain on March 04, 2004, 02:15:12 am
Ahem the Orz are wearing suits because they use liquid ethanol as their gas exchange medium and as far as I know most other ships don't have aquatic enviroments of liquid ethanol... Hence they kinda have to wear the suits. Also their going out into space and most races probably wear suits while in space...


Title: , IRe: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: 3DO_Guy on March 04, 2004, 03:21:10 am
Quote

What my question is, though, is why did the Ur-Quan
eliminate all those historical sites, and does it have
anything to do with the Arilou and their visiting Earth?
I think this concept was borne out of people thinking the
Pyramids or Stonehenge are of cosmic significance, maybe
beacons for other creatures or a source of power, divine
or otherwise.


Actually, I'm wondering what they blasted deep below the polar ice cap (I don't remember if it was the north or south one). What do you suppose could have been hidden there? I'll bet those sneaky Arilou know.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on March 04, 2004, 07:50:05 pm
Quote
Oh yeah, and Picowoof needs to chill out. You DON'T know because you didn't write the story and therefore everything in this forum is all theory and suppositions. There are no facts in fiction. It's just a game, and this is just
a message board. Show some maturity and stop attacking other people.


First of all, he knows he doesn't know. The very first thing he said was that he was speculating and positing a plausible explanation that is amusing. This sounds like the very definition of a discussion board conversation.

Second, I can only find two vaguely offensive things that he said. The first was basically telling me to reread what he had written. Given what he had written, my misinterpreting it and his thinking he had put it all in there were both reasonable.
The second was implying that Rib Rdb was making an absurd assertion when he had not (and in fact Pico had gotten it wrong, under the system description he provided).

Certainly I cannot think of ANYTHING to justify, say, Shiver's calling him an avatar of hatred (perhaps a lesser elemental of prolixity)...

But I might advise him thus: the backspace key can be your friend; also, designing your statements to be more fault-tolerant would be wise.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 05, 2004, 06:52:29 am
At ikcizok, I sigh... but it's probably a happy sigh full of bouncing rabbits, who knows?

I thank (Sir) Death (sorry!) for pointing out that I would would have in more wordier terms.  That indeed I proposed no knowledge on anything and that my ideas are rooted in fun and silly.  I wish people to not take me so seriously, they can believe me me and my ideas if they like.  They can throw them around and have silly dreams about them, they can form their own copylefted or copyrighted stories or visions from them if they so desire.  But don't take me seriously, whatever you do.  It can only lead to spasms and aneurysms.  I'm not mature, no but nor am I foolhardy or arrogant.  I wouldn't even begin to presume I knew anything about this game, I only have ideas, the kinds of ideas which are classified as "Ooh, fun, look at this idea.  It's neat, probably!" and so on.  So there you have it and facts?  Who in the ninety-nine levels of psychic-advancement (and beyond there by just a tad) was talking about facts?  Of course, I might not understand because my ideologies tend to shy from such labels.  I might have used these facts but I don't recall it, at least not as far as I know.  Nonetheless with second-helpings of regardless, sorry if I did!

I suppose I might have made a jab or two but they weren't in anger.  They were just me being... assininely silly.  "Go back, read it again.  Go on.  Again.  And three more times.  It's there, really!  But I'll say it again anyway!"  Of course, it came over as worse than I'd actually intended but I find this happens to me a lot.  The more posts I've made the more careful I've been as I try to tailor myself to those around me.  It's wise to walk into unknown territory with at least some defenses, so I wholeheartedly admit that I might have... what is that strange old term?  Leaping firearms and whatnot, I did something to that end anyway.  To this I admit.  So there's that you can pin to my behind if you so desire.

Regardless, if we wish to speak of maturity then this really shouldn't be as public as it is, should it?  If ikcizok really wishes to continue this then he's welcome to either contact me personally (I'm rather sure I provided lots of contact information) or use the board's own personal-message-relaying-system-thingy.

And once more, I have to say with utmost humility that Mr. Death (?) is absolutely correct!  I've made a few mistakes and indeed, I'm trying to tone down my ability to be... creative.  Yet since I like it, sometimes I'm just going to go overboard with words or ideas.  It's fun!  That's really all there is to it.

Oh and backspace?  I speak in honesty when I tell all now that I rarely use it, I believe if someone originally had something to say then it should probably be said and the consequences dealt with, in reality one doesn't have a backspace key in conversation so I shun using such things to correct my mistakes in other walks of life (including the digital, as wondrous as it is) too.  Why, certainly I'll correct typos or little misnomers I've made but generally, what I've said I have said and the ramifications... I shall deal with with probably further amounts of silly when they happen to wander in my general direction.

Short version (summary): They were theories, theories are fun, I'm a tad defensive and my writings weren't always as eloquent as I'd intended (sometimes verging on callous, curse my inabilities to express via text) but I never outright attacked anyone.  I only stood my ground when I was told that there was a certain way that I, as a being, should act or be.  I don't take kindly to authoritarians.  People are able to just ignore me after all if they don't happen to like what I'm saying.

-- Edit --

And here I am, correcting typos!  If I'm going to say something, I might aswell say it properly.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Mitrovarr on March 05, 2004, 01:33:22 pm
Here's my idea as to what happened:

The Androsynth, while experimenting with IDF, explored both *higher* and *lower* dimensions.  While exploring lower dimensions (purely for scientific reasons, they are useless for travel) they caused the Orz, a single intelligence with a completely different form then the fish-Orz in SC2, to notice them and to notice the dimension they came from.  The Orz, having some difficulty surviving due to something (possibly the IDF predator mentioned later) immediately set off to develop technology to colonize this dimension.

While the Androsynth were exploring higher dimensions, they discovered a dimension higher then true-space but lower then hyperspace.  This dimension has a unique property - it is close enough to true-space that if a sentient with sufficient *sliding* potential (humans and Androsynth qualify) knows enough about the dimension or observes it, they will instinctively *slide* partway into that space and operate multidimensionally to a slight degree, able to observe that space and be observed from it.

Unfortunately, this dimension was also occupied by some sort of race of strange extradimensional predators.   If these predators senses any sentient energy, they immediately flock to the source and attacks, trying to consume what the Orz term *people energy*.  Alternately, they may simply feed on the organic matter.  No one knows, or even knows if the predators are sentient.

The Androsynth's discovery of this dimension and subsequent expansion into it were enough to allow the predators to sense them, and they immediately started stalking them, but not attacking them wholesale yet - mostly observing.

After the predators started stalking the Androsynth, the Androsynth understandably freaked out, and started arming the population wholesale with the best weapons they could design - micro-nuclear rocket launchers and other, stranger weapons.  They recalled all of their ships to assist in the defense of their homeworld.

At this point the Orz succeeded in punching through the dimensional fabric and focused its *people energy* into a pre-sentient race of fish-like creatures which lived on what they later termed their *house*.  Unable to maintain a single intelligence in this dimension and facing death in its native plane, it instead set up a hive-mind, although this caused severe distress for the Orz and caused some mental and personality irregularities.  The hive-mind immediately started developing technology for this dimension.

The Orz made contact with the Androsynth once they had successfully adapted their technology to true-space.  Observing what was about to happen, they searched for a solution.  When the creatures finally attacked, dragging the Androsynth into the higher plane they originated in (and the Androsynth destroyed their cities trying unsuccessfully to kill them) , the Orz did the only thing they could think of and used their technology to drag some surviving Androsynth back into their dimension, hoping they would survive but unwilling to follow.

The predators dispersed in the face of the Androsynth disappearance.  Fortunately, they did not detect the Orz during this attack - the Orz are far better *sliders* then Human or Androsynth, and are able to prevent from appearing on predator's plane.

At this point, the Arilou appeared in this space, having detected the Orz pushing up into this dimension.  Seeing the Androsynth gone and their homeworld surrounded by Orz, they assumed the obvious.  The fact that when they tried to communicate with the Orz, they recieved bizarre and incomprehensible responses from the newly fragmented hive-mind, didn't help.

This brings us to the beginning of the game in SC2.

Explanations:

The Arilou are distrustful of the Orz because they believe they destroyed the Androsynth.  They didn't, but the Arilou don't know that (while the Arilou are aware of the predators, they blamed it on the most obvious threat, and were not allowed to approach the system for close examination.)  The Orz are irritated at the Arilou because they foil their attempts to get up into higher dimensions - because of this, the Orz lack hyperspace or quasispace technology.  This explains their tiny sphere of influence - although they have superior sublight engines, their intersteller technology is much inferior to hyperspace travel.

The Orz are not multiple organisms, but one connected mind among many bodies, hence the talk of not being 'many bubbles' but just being Orz with 'many fingers'.  The fragmenting of the central Orz personality to the many bodies of its new hivemind has caused a lot of personality strangeness and behavior issues.

The Orz are TERRIFIED of the predators, and are therefore unwilling to discuss them or the Androsynth (they also know that we will be attacked if we know about them, or their dimension.)  The reason they attack if asked about the Androsynth is partly because of this fear, partly because of some lingering guilt and worry about the Androsynth, and partely because the Orz hivemind is very immature (either because it was to begin with or because it was damaged in the conversion to a hive-mind.)  Also, the Orz have a little trouble understanding the concept of a non-hive-mind, and don't really see anything too terribly wrong with destroying a single ship.

Although most of the predators have dispersed from the Androsynth homeworld, there are still a few left picking over the ruins which will attack anyone they detect (Bukowski.)  He is not attacked later, in space, because in space, a single mind is insufficient for them to notice.

Regarding the theory that the Orz destroyed the Androsynth, it doesn't really make sense that the Orz did, because Bukowski is only attacked after researching on the planet, and he says that just knowing about them is enough for them to be able to detect you.  You can know about the Orz, though, and you don't get attacked until you research that specific facility.  It's pretty clear that the thing that attacks Bukowski is whatever destroyed the Androsynth.

The nature of the space the Orz come from is like 'true space', only more so - it's vast and empty, so travelling is harder (the speed of light is far lower for one thing, and inertias and masses are higher.)  Energy is more like matter here, and matter there is like matter here, only much more so.  I would speculate that the Orz was not a matter being in this plane, but an energy one, perhaps a cloud of ionized plasma the size of a large planetoid, or something.  They talk of 'smelling' because their native energy-senses were more akin to our sense of smell than anything else.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Culture20 on March 05, 2004, 10:28:28 pm
Except that Orz does have hyperspace capabilities, and it can also **HYUIVBHJHG**, which Orz implies is faster than HS travel (and possibly QS if it knows you have the spawner):
Quote
Busy is because Orz have reason. It is secret for *campers*.
You must going quickly to my *house*.
It is too bad you cannot **HYUIVBHJHG** there
but flying the *heavy* ship is okay.
Perhaps next we will show you our toys. But do not look!!!
Now you will go to my *house*.


I'm still partial to my idea that "THEM" on the planet is a part of Orz that it does not have any control over (perhaps it can't even sense it), like its psychic-stomache or intestines, or maybe its psychic-immune system (If someone knows about the Orz, destroy them).


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Death 999 on March 05, 2004, 11:21:20 pm
Mitrovarr, you speak so casually of the Orz, which had been one entity, deciding to set itself up as a hive-mind. This isn't exactly something that you can just go out and do.

Designing a set of micro-rules so as to have the desired macro-effect is much harder than you might think... and attempting to re-implement your own mind in completely different hardware is much harder still.

I suspect that the orz are not a hive-mind in the sense of bees or ants, but they could be a centralized psychically-governed collective of a different sort.


Title: Re: The Orz, the Arilou and perhaps a New Idea.
Post by: Picowoof on March 05, 2004, 11:55:44 pm
I wholeheartedly support Death in his theories on this; in fact, being no small fan of psychology, the Orz psychology is one of those aspects that I've given much thought to.  With all assumptions on the physical laid aside, and concentrating on their mental state alone.  Their words give a clue to how their intelligence might work.  What their words say to me personally (and verily, this is the path that I trod along to the final realization that the Orz might be mechanical, after a fashion -- but that's merely just a theory of mine) is that their intelligence is distributed.

They're not bubbles but they are fingers of a hand.  So let's suppose for a moment that the campers they speak of (us) are individuals and they aren't, at least we can't see them as the kind of individuals they are.  They often accuse the humans of a lack of perception, as I understand it.  What I think the Orz might have as intelligence isn't a hive or anything like that but if you've ever seen a distributed computer network, this is what I believe the Orz to be like.

So I'd wager that they're not only not many bubbles, as they claimed but they're not one large bubble either.  They're many bubbles interconnected with the intelligenci (integrated intelligences) working together as a whole in an integrated fashion.  It almost reminds me of a mindship theory I heard once, a mindship of integrated memetic-sets.

This is how I believe the Orz to be, perhaps not a single intelligence but subsets of intelligenci (which I call them for reasons I know not why) which interact in an integrated fashion over a distributed system of 'fingers'.

Regardless of whatever they might be, all I really know is that they're happy little fishfellows and I like them.  Hopefully if there's a future Star Control game, we'll learn much more about this all too fascinating race.