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Topic: Don't forget the Mmrnmhrm (Read 10872 times)
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Arne
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Yak!
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Yes, I just noticed and edited my post before your reply rolled in... I think it's an appealing explanation.
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UAF
*Many bubbles*
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Robot in Disguise
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Meh, I prefer the Chenjesu to be naturally evolved.
But if they were not, then we have even more (!) unnatural races around. And ALL of them are attributed to the Precursor? No thanks.
Besides, compared to the Mycon (and Chenjesu and Taalo, if you MUST) the Mrn are not impressive at all.
It is quite possible that the Ur-quan, Melnorme and Arilou all have the technology required to constructed a race such as the Mrn. Therefore it is very plausible that another race of a similar tech level created the Mrn, and not the Precursors.
At the end, none of it is cannon (even the Chenjesu and Taalo origins) so right now it's all a matter of taste and personal preferences.
The only "advantage" I see in having so many unnatural races, is that it explains why space in the SC universe is so teeming with sentient life - other, more ancient races put them there.
Meh, I still don't like it. 
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Arne
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Yak!
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My version of the Chenjesu was not created by the Precursors or anyone. They evolved naturally, but mostly "memetically" with their physical shape not changing much.
In my previous posts I've already addressed the issue of the Mrnrnmhrm appearing recently and being seemingly not-so advanced (it's features incorporated into my story, which depends on them). Also, IIRC, they are the only race definitely built by the Precursors in my story, with the Mycon being an option for another race. So, two canon races tops, and a third non-canon race which probably didn't survive.
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« Last Edit: June 13, 2009, 03:55:56 pm by Arne »
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spinsane
Zebranky food
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I think if you're going to get into creating fan-fiction based on the SC uni, you can't make a claim that MIGHT go against Canon.
As the Captain, we have only the tidbits of information we recieve about different races and what information is provided.
Secrets, huh? You want secrets? OUR SECRETS!?
YOU MADE FATAL MISTAKE, HUMAN!!
... Har! Har! Har! Good joke, eh? Scared you!
Sure! We'll tell our secrets. Now let me see... what ARE secrets?
Oh, yeah!... remember! It about Mycon!
You see, Mycon only other race we know of
that have same kind of biotechincal skills as Umgah.
But amazing thing that they do all with their own bodies, don't need tools.
They just THINK genetic modification, and it happen!
We found that pretty hard understand, so when nobody looking, we clonk one on head
bring it back here to homeworld and slice it up for detailed study.
Those guys not product of ANY natural evolutionary process
they constructs!... some kind of multi-purpose biological tool.
We don't know who made them or for what purpose
but they WAY beyond anything we ever heard of.
We not figure out much more before tissue samples all gross
so guess that pretty much all of big secret.
Oh... do us a favor? Please not tell anybody about clonking Mycon.
It kind of against Ur-Quan Laws, and not want get Mycon mad at us.
Your simple sexual process produces random mosaics of genetic instructions
yet with the simplicity of breath, I modify my own patterns
You humans improve a tool and double your capabilities
We Mycon improve ourselves and increase a thousand-fold.
Between what the Umgah say and what the Mycon say, the Mycon aren't necessarily constructs. The Mycon are only constructs in so far as they can manipulate their own genetics with such a degree of precision that they may appear to be too precise to be natural. It's also possible that the Mycon are created to perpetuate Deep Children. It may not even be so complicated as there is some kind of god-race standing above that made them.
It really gets down to how we can interpret the way FF and PR3 wrote the game. How much information and misinformation they want to reveal, and how deep each bit of information is. IDK if Fwiffo has explicitly stated the Mycon were constructs, but, from the perspective of the Captain, this isn't something that can be ascertained with any degree of certainty.
If you're making Fan-fiction in the SC uni, I think that you can't make too many assumptions without raping the purity of the world. There is only so much fact to work with, so it's a good idea IMO to stay within those boundaries, and let post SC2 events be driven by the characterizations of each race and the actions of the captain, as opposed to some divinely orchestrated plan. Whatever that plan is, FF and PR3 WILL someday have the opportunity to make it a reality, in the meantime, I think it's a good idea not to get too involved in the meaning of everything.
FF and PR3's writing styles (as per some interviews) are not as meticulous as we may make them out to be. they like leaving things open-ended so that they have more material to work with. They gave each race some degree of ambiguity so that they could do with them whatever they wanted and when. Aside from that, each race, to some degree, is based upon different things and different ideas they had. The Pkunk's perception of the Ilwrath is based upon data-types wrapping around to the negative sign after they get too high (because in binary the 'sign' is determined by the position furthest to the left, this makes it so that if an integer is assigned or increased in value beyond the limitations of the data-type, the MAX_VALUE+1 = MIN_VALUE, or the greatest possible negative number). A lot of the races have some kooky creative designs incorporated in them, and while I personally haven't though too much about Chenjesu, Mrnn or Mycon, in terms of their literary origins, they most definitely share some kind of kooky origin in creativity. Heck, the Androsynth were originally a bunch of..... you get the idea. They all have their own degrees of purity in their origin stories, but they ultimately reflect much more trivial ideas that work as a sort of basis with which the other ideas get drawn around.
If you want to get into biology, geology, and physics as much as possible to explain what they've created is quite a lot of fun. Especially since there are plenty of hints to work with.
Chenjesu: Somehow or another, sentience has to exist in a crystal lattice. What are the limitations of a thing becoming an 'observer'? We definitely don't know. Just as supposedly evolved via a perfectly ideal chemical compositions and electrical storms, it is possible for a similarly randomly generated crystalline structure to possess the natural quantum structure necessary to facilitate observation. Either way, its a lightning storm that strikes the right crystal in the right way that creates thought. After a long period of contemplation and the development of self-awareness, the development of minor telekenetics or some method of manipulation would have to take place. The way that crystals are made vary to great degrees. If the Chenjesu exist in a silicon lattice then they're basically going to be similar in composition to glass. Lightning would need to strike glass in such a way that energy was retained, and that weather was manipulated. IMO- I don't see any progress happening with the Chenjesu's 'evolution' unless they develop an extremely keen awareness of their environment and how to manipulate it via energy discharges stored from lightning. Essentially, they'd be nothing without being able to manipulate weather for a period of time until their 'observer'-state would be existential without thriving off of an external energy source. At which point water/lightning can be used to reproduce to some degree. The main problem with machines is presented quite well in Ghost in the Shell- how do you yield offspring to evolve? Chenjesu communicate, though that doesn't mean that they have individuality. It is still possible to improve, to develop gravitronic manipulation of some kind via an advanced observer state, though their manipulations would most likely be limited to materials that shared similar properties (hence their technology and the broodhome being as it is). Being created or evolving is possible.
we are the chenjesu... we are the mmrnmhrm
WE ARE THE CHMMR.
They are both most likely hive minds. Meaning that when they do communicate, it is the passage of information and that actual 'reproduction' doesn't occur, in so much as communication is only necessary to share information and to provide instructions to their various *fingers*. The Mycon work in an oddly similar way. If the Chenjesu can generate offspring, as opposed to just kind of cloning themselves in crystal lattice and then slight variations occuring over the various experiences of each Chenjesu 'cell', then their generation would require physical construction of additional crystal and what not. IMO, they aren't independent thinkers. Neither of the three are. Though... that doesn't mean that they 'can't' be. Mycon have Purity Monitors to ensure everyone is think the same. The Chenjesu may just as well exist as sort of 'chakra' type beings that rely on the structure of the crystal lattice. In which case there could be a certain degree of individuality... but they definitely don't possess the capability of making 'new' life, like organic observers do. Whether they got jumpstarted by lightning or were electrostatically aligned into the crystal lattice it's hard to say. Either way, they probably all 'think' in a similar way, driven by curiosity to find what is beyond- being as sensitive to 'vibrations' as they are. Taalo would probably function in a similar way- though in my head I imagine them as rocks with legs that kind of shuffle around... they probably didn't do much walking though.
Whatever their origin is, I think it isn't us as fans to decide what it is or why it is, but rather, as they are, what would they do and how would they do it? Throwing in a bunch of new stuff claiming that things exist for a certain purpose makes me feel a little easy. It's taking way too many assumptions. Working within the limitations of what the captain knows and developing on that, or delving into the history of the Coreward Front and other battles, or explaining things that HAVE already happened in a way that is ambiguous and could use characterizations and development to make them more interesting, is what fan-fiction should do. Stepping up and saying 'this is this and that is that' is like betraying the Juffo-Wup! After all, the original SC2 was terribly ambiguous, it would be a crime to destroy that by explaining anything. The only thing we should do is seek to make it more ambiguous.....
Mrn are the only race we can claim to actually have been made. There is no real way for mechanical sentience to exist without being created first (Unless God IS a machine- ftw). Since it is within Mrn's programming to make decisions based upon potentially unknown circumstances, I would say that they were either given a degree of sentience or they got the Bolt of lightning (it's either lightning or a creator race, in basically every isolated instance of evolution that involves any kind of physical shell existing before the development of a sapient observer) and 'liberated' themselves from servitude. Humans call it the Mother Ark (though Mrn don't 'think' of it that way, per se), so as a creative decision FF and PR3 may have wanted to imply that they were a race of machines that evolved sentience from random events within the development of AI and, this AI desiring reproduction, created a 'Mother Ark' to carry her to children to a new world. It is possible that they come from Kohr-Ah death march territory, and that the Mrn are the remnants of a race that wanted their legacy to continue, even though their actual species could not. There are sooo many intangibles with the Mrn, especially since we know essentially NOTHING about them. They possessed enough sentience or enough complex programming to make the decision to merge with the Chenjesu... or the Chenjesu reprogrammed them? The Mrn are pandora's box. If they existed in Kohr-Ah space, that would account for the Kzer-Za never meeting them before (as per their comment regarding them implies that they hadn't run into anything like them before), so, considering that the Kzer-Za and the Kohr-Ah basically dominated every corner of our galaxy, it's likely that the Mrn who joined with the Chenjesu were the last of their kind, just as the Chenjesu had no other homeworlds in which to perpetuate. Doing anything with the Chenjesu or the Mrn is a dead horse- I don't think either are meant to exist in any future context.
Objectively, the only problem I had with that idea for a sequel was the claim that the Melnorme are an IDF race, IIRC there is no indication that they are. In fact, they probably aren't because they know so little about the Orz and the Arilou, who AFAIK are always *dancing*. The idea is well developed, but I think the focus is weighted too heavily on making every race an integral part of the story and explaining every unturned stone. IMO, just make it fun, confusing, hilarious and wierd- going with a story that's just a good story in itself, and not really be concerned about making everything important. The quest in SC2 is pretty simple. Everything else was just ambience. There are only 20 places you have to go to finish the game... for the greatest epic adventure game of all time (with even such a weak plot device as forcing the Ultron onto the player via Supox), IMO that's a much smaller amount than we may even realize. Most of the game is gathering resources and finding enough rainbow worlds to get hellbore cannons and just paying attention to all the little things that made the SC uni soooooo immersive and interesting... there isn't even an easter egg after finding all 10! .
Anyhow, IMO, keep it simple. SC3 really isn't the most terrible game- the plot outline isn't bad, even the whole precursor's being cows to avoid the eternal ones. There was just sooooooo much clearly non-canonical BS. Hyperspace breaks? Hegemonic Crux existing even though Ur-Quan cleansed/enslaved the entire galaxy? The Utwig brought their Ultron on a SINGLE colony ship off of their homeworld? Spathi, what? Arilou's genetic needs? Chmmr origin story? Kzer-Za joining the NAFS? Building a new precursor vessel at Unzervalt (no precursor computer, arguably unnecessary)? These things make SC3 BAD because everything that each of the races does is entirely non-archetypical. The story you've come up with doesn't directly go against canon, but it draws a lot of assumptions that make it likely to break the archetypes, which is the same as going against canon.
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Arne
Enlightened
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Yak!
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I could not tell if you were referring to my story. I've done fan-art, but I rarely, if ever, do fan-fiction. Most of my projects are more like: *By the power of Gray Skull - I have the Power!*, meaning, hypothetical sequels or revisions of the original material.
I'm sure there are some exceptions, but I think a sequel needs to expand on the source material (using interpolations and extrapolations) and sometimes take a stand when the source material contradicts itself. I also believe it's permissible to nudge a few of the loose details a little, especially if it was the Spemin (a race of untrustworthy creatures from Starflight) told you about something 
Also, I don't know if I wrote this on particular project page, but I usually over-explain everything when I write a design doc. Not doing it would be poor design. The idea is to later delicately remove pieces but still hint at the structure (perhaps even having multiple functional structures). A story is much more powerful if it's a bit fuzzy, especially if you nudge reader come up with 'their own' theories.
In conclusion, I obviously don't think that I've made the races act out of character. While you may frown upon frivolous extrapolations in fan-fics, I think you may agree that official sequels are a different story. Of course, I'm not actually doing an official sequel, I'm just pretending to. It amuses me to no end.
Edit: Most of the art on that intro story page is outdated, btw. Here's some newer stuff. I always try my hardest to keep the visuals faithful. In the case of the Thraddash I think managed to patch up a contradiction in the source material - the comm pic and pilot portrait having a different design. Sometimes a choice doesn't have to be made.
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« Last Edit: June 20, 2009, 06:45:21 am by Arne »
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spinsane
Zebranky food
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Your syreens are just... wonderful... very good artwork! I always find the most demoralizing part of designing/writing indie games is not having any decent skills with art... Ilwrath Puppet ROFL, that's genius.
interesting- I was first thinking that bringing back the Zebranky would lie in the realm of silliness, but there's a lot of strong potential, especially since the ZFP are nothing but silliness. It's a bit of a stretch though, given the Zebranky were defeated by the ZFP before the wheel of fire, without religion there are no canopic jars! Zebranky also aren't a space fairing race on their own, so what the Umgah actually make versus what the Zebranky actually were, and how the ZFP respond to that could be hilarious. "I've come for my revenge!" *blank stare* (springy dude) "Do we know you? I don't recall you at the frungy nationals last year... I mean, it's hardly revenge if you got knocked out in the preliminary rounds... they don't even broadcast those and no respectably frungy player gloats over defeating weaker helpless opponents! I mean, I can't help it if I defeated someone in the preliminaries and don't remember them- I mean, not that I'm soooo used to attention that I wouldn't possibly remember... but there have been so many... or was this revenge for something else? I can't imagine it being for anything else..." and shortly afterwards there's a ZFP in Rigel.
Ya, I think I just had to jump on that 'system' idea though. Mycon and Mmrn with preintended synergy is quite a stretch. However Hayes acquires the information that the Mother-Ark was a vessel in the first place (and not some latent factory that just turned on after a time) can't really be thrown into question. The sources of information would either be the Mmrn or the Chenjesu... Chenjesu would have been able to detect the arrival of the Mother-Ark if it DID arrive, in which case they may have shared that information with Earthlings, but I'm not even so sure that the Mmrn would've told anybody had they come on an Ark, so where the information comes from could be sketch. If the Chenjesu told Earth AND knew it came from space because they detected it in Hyperspace (they do that I hear), then it's most likely to be true, as Hayes's source is pretty reliable. The main problem is that the Mmrn are a very new race and are probably non-existent.
The idea and drive to 'create' or manipulate other races is incredibly common. The Arilou manipulate Humans who created the Androsynth who were absorbed by the Orz. The Yehat uplifted the Shofixti. Chenjesu/Taalo/Mycon/Mmrn are possibly constructs. Even the Umgah are so far gone they may not even know what they are. I think it's a compelling mystery that so many of the races are so similar... some people prefer Chenjesu being naturally evolved, it doesn't matter as long as it's a good story. Precursor super race making other races all over the place is completely reasonable and interesting.
I just stumbled across these forums and read through some articles and just had to post, but they aren't really targeted at anybody. I had to point out 'the system' though, as most others already outlined how it'd be difficult to argue. I think that my opinion on the realm of fan-fic isn't really important. All that matters is whether a game is interesting and the story is good, even if you go against canon it isn't really that important-- but it does take something away from it. I think if I played SC3 with an open mind I wouldn't feel like my soul was dead. Building on top of the SC legacy is a daunting task.
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