Posthumanist/supercomputer darklord?

[HuManBing]

(Note: this thread - like pretty much all my threads - assumes you're okay with tweaks to Ravenloft canon.)

I've been on a posthuman sci-fi reading kick lately.

Consider a consciousness that no longer requires much in the way of material support, and instead values data or processing power and the like. I've read two sci-fi novels by Greg Egan which have given me some food for thought: Permutation City (in which processing power is a global trading commodity and where individuals bid for processing power to sustain their uploaded consciousnesses), and Diaspora (where entirely-virtual human consciousnesses scour the Universe across dimensions of existence, seeking to escape energy death).

Both of these brought up an intriguing possibility - what if the domain's ruler was an abstract, impersonal consciousness spread out across multiple physical locations, gradually withdrawing itself from the physical realm and focusing entirely on cosmological questions? If the ruler was sufficiently preoccupied with higher matters, then his gradual abdication could cause all sorts of problems. For GMs who want the ruler to be a sympathetic patron to the PCs, this could be a source for alarm as his rulership begins to crumble. For GMs who want the ruler to be a villain, his act of withdrawal from his cares and duties could be labeled as his crime of dereliction.

Discussions follow - please feel free to share your thoughts!

[HuManBing]

Virtual realities:

This has come up briefly in the 2E post-GC adventure "When Black Roses Bloom" - Soth was engaged in daydreaming about past mistakes rectified. His domain did start collapsing around him, and the PCs had a motivation to make him "snap out of it" before everything surrendered to the Void.

I'm currently thinking about recasting Azalin as this aloof, indifferent, hugely-powerful posthuman data processor. His background would seem to qualify him for it - he's already spent a huge amount of time throwing his best calculations at escaping the Demiplane's weird physics. Also, the dynamics of Darkon play surprisingly well to a "steal all your memories and greedily consume all your knowledge" type of character - the memory loss at the borders, the Book of Names and Elzarath's library in Avernus, and even the "see all, know all" Kargat secret police. Finally, Azalin's experience during the Shrouded Years, following the Requiem and his attempts to become a demilich, caused him to "merge" his consciousness with all of Darkon for a number of years. It granted him the ability to essentially "mind meld" anybody in his realm, and even to delete their memories or add false ones. (Echoes of The Mule and The Second Foundation, as per Asimov.)

What if "Azalin" is no longer a lich in a lair, or a king on a throne? What if it has become a brooding, omnipresent relentless intellect far beyond the realms of flesh and bone? Its primary goal is to escape the tiny Demiplane and spread its consciousness across dimensions (perhaps Oerth is significant to it as an ancestral interest - but then again perhaps not). Such a vast intellect would chafe at the constraints of a feudal-level tech in a pre-industrial continent.

A computational Azalin also becomes less associated with death (in the sense of controlling undead) and instead becomes more of a body-jumping superconsciousness (perhaps he prefers corpses simply because they have fewer requirements for bodily comforts than living people). As the PCs get closer to disrupting his plans, his modus operandi could shift away from merely sending the mindless undead to outright possessing capable living humans (or free willed undead) to up the ante.

More immediately, Azalin's goal could be to harness as much of the nation's human resources as possible to cracking the Demiplane's "code". This could be anything the GM desires... my current blueprints have it that he needs multiple disciplines of magic (priestly, arcane, necromantic, Vistani, druidic, and so forth) at very high levels of expertise in order to "untie the knot". Either way, Azalin's interest in actually ruling the country would be pretty minimal and would decrease as time goes by - he may not even care if Drakov invades or Death expands the Shroud - as long as neither significantly disrupts his multi-generational calculating plans for the future. His end goal could be something as benign and selfless as quietly vanishing into the ether forever... or it could be as malevolent as disassembling every component atom of the Demiplane in order to construct and power the dimensional catapult. In the meantime, he'll continue endorsing magical research in Il Aluk or Martira Bay, and he'll continue sending Kargat agents to scour and abduct the magical experts he needs, and he'll continue his quest for knowledge and artifacts.

Thematically, Azalin-as-computer could make for a fresh contrast against Drakov (which is a specific dichotomous goal of my current campaign). Azalin is cold, impersonal, delocalized, and aloof - he cares about as much for any of the people in his kingdom as you might "care for" the individual bytes of memory in your hard drive. Drakov is passionate, charismatic, individualistic, and active - he has grudges and friendships, interactions and impulses... and his ultimate goal (however misguided) is to topple Azalin.

Just a few thoughts, quickly scribbled.

[MichaelTumey]

Haven't actually played, though I purchased and downloaded Eclipse Phase, which is a complex rule system for a 'post apocalyptic-ish' near future sci-fi setting and game. I've only been reading the rules. It's post-apoc in space. Only the solar system has been colonized, but a deteriorating ecosphere and eventual collapse of the earth government, means all the colonies whether self-sufficient or not, are on it's own struggling to survive.

One of it's interesting aspects is, instead of choosing a human, cybernetic, or alien race your character only has mental stats - stuff like 'moxie' as well. Like Avatar the movie, for so many credits you can transfer your mind/soul into memory banks, into organic, cybernetic, alien, robot shell bodies, which determine your physical traits. A character could become a rogue AI with holographic images of your humanoid form.

Using such a premise, you could have a techno-wizard of some type construct hardened fortress with a computer controlled security, life support, defenses systems networked together to a central 'computer'. Your wizard dark lord might have transferred his soul into the computer's memory. If looking at your Azalin example, the computer could be his phylactery. Perhaps his soul controls all systems of the complex, including 'hidden cameras', and control it's inhabitants like a dark lord's palace. Using the example perhaps instead of being trapped and all-powerful in the network system, he is able to transfer his soul into a construct (robot) with limited powers, while an auto-pilot operates the network (less effective), so he can directly interact with residents and invaders such as the PCs on a temporary basis (preferring to exist in the network).

I hadn't purchased a sci-fi game in a while, heard some good reviews, so Eclipse Phase is kind of interesting and tackles the kind of sci-fi found in more recent Sci-fi media - instead of old traveller concepts, stuff like nanobots, rogue AIs, cybernetics, the Avatar concept, etc. Probably won't find a group to play - mine are D&D/Pathfinder pretty much exclusively (sigh).

[HuManBing]

MichaelTumey: One of my players waxes eloquent about Eclipse Phase and really wants to play a game. Would you like to play over email/chat with him? I can send you his details.

Concerning a computerized storage faculty, I had similar thoughts myself. What if the Black Vault mostly held valuable data instead of mere material goods? Imagine Van Richten grabbing the meager material items on his raid, while overlooking the myriad upon myriad silicon quartz crystals that comprise Azalin's true treasure.

The concept of data as treasure also brings up interesting takes on the usual lich or undead attributes. Instead of a chill from beyond the grave, Azalin may carry with him the zero kelvin chill of the void, as most of his supercomputer processes function best near absolute zero and in vacuum without those pesky corroding air molecules to get in the way.

Ebb, instead of being a negative energy dragon, is a manifestation of the void - a space predator, devolved through aeons of orbiting a dying star in the emptiness of vacuum.

Azalin may even undertake the project with altruistic goals - the memory drain gives him a corpus of human memories and personalities to bring with him. He sees himself as the only tool sharp enough to pierce the dimensions and escape... and he's trying hard to bring as many virtual copies of people as he can. Of course, if the escape attempt requires the disassembly and consumption of all matter in the Demiplane, that is a small price to pay for cosmic liberation as a thought form. (The carbon-based people who currently live on the Demiplane might not feel so reassured by this plan, however!)

[MichaelTumey]

I've never run a remote game of anything, though I have VT software, mostly as experiments to create maps specifically for VT applications (virtual terrain tabletop). I usually run a physical game at a table, though I'm not opposed to the idea. It's a matter of finding the time, considering all the many projects and commissions on my plate.

If you want to send me a PM, I'll respond to start the conversation...

mt

[order99]

Soooo...if Toben the Many happens to run across mighty Azalin in this permutation, does that make him/it/they:

a) a potential Resource Upgrade to memory and processing
b) a virus
c) a Denial of Service attack
d) a potential downloadable application possibly still in Alpha test?

[Zilfer]

Soooo...if Toben the Many happens to run across mighty Azalin in this permutation, does that make him/it/they:

a) a potential Resource Upgrade to memory and processing
b) a virus
c) a Denial of Service attack
d) a potential downloadable application possibly still in Alpha test?

Well if Azalin couldn't take control of him as this conscious mind then he could fit the definition of a computer "worm" i believe it was. The basis of the programs are just to duplicate until you literally have no room left in your computer. Heh old school virus.