>>141137
this will prolly be answered more directly but i think from context clues it means "species defined by direct modification and control of the molecular makeup of their bodies". basically if you can patch some software to grow a new arm, youre transcendental. if youre just some robot tooling around in space, you arent. i think the main difference is probably the level of power and capability that amount of self-modification affords.

some more fun questions:

-- when did the shapeless monarch ̶d̶i̶e̶ go on permanent vacation relative to now?

-- are there any kind of sapient rights organizations or do the shapeless treat non-transcendentals as essentially their property

-- What was the most impactful social change/revolution in shapeless society you are aware of?

-- Does Vi.al have a first contact procedure with a totally unknown sapient race? What's the funniest way it's backfired?

-- How do shapeless deal with grief, culturally?

TRI.TI, THE BRUTAL STRATEGIST Lord Tri.ti 2023/11/09(Thu)02:35 No. 141147 ID: 09f667
File 169952612994.png - (9.73MB , 3000x3000 , SHAPELESS MONARCH TRI TI, THE BRUTAL STRATEGIST.png )

This is my own Shapeless Lord fan character, but I was given Cirr's blessing to share it here! The description doesn't conflict with cannon, but I can't say it will be relevant.

LORD TRI.TI, THE BRUTAL STRATEGIST

Lord Tri.ti is an eccentric individual, even by the standards of Shapeless Lords. However, despite their eccentric nature, Lord Tri.ti is also a dangerous general, and as a result, often acts to enforce peaceful relations between Shapeless Lords in the local cluster. Their current interest is in organic weapons, creating living organisms to function as adaptive and regenerative automata. Squadrons of automata, lead by combat constructs, with whole fleets commanded by partitions, form dangerous, unpredictable, strike forces that enforce Lord Tri.ti's military power in the local cluster. For this reason, Lord Tri.ti is often called in to resolve situations that any single Shapeless Lord can no longer control on their own.

Wordplay Lord Tri.ti 2023/11/10(Fri)14:50 No. 141152 ID: 09f667
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Vi.si.mi enjoying a snack with Va.ha.ti.

>>141152
excellent

>>141152
they're secretly best friends

>I am obligated by Maintainer Vi.a to at this point specify that Lord Vi.al does not receive constructs slated for execution for high treason from other Lords in obfuscated trades for the purposes of deniability. Lord Vi.al is above being a glorified executioner for all of the Lords, and no payment is delivered for ensuring secrecy. Lord Vi.al is a friend to all life, synthetic and organic, and is not desperate enough for substrate to be accepting such ignoble deals. The Vi.al substrate economy is healthy despite the presence of the Blot and all rumours to the contrary are exactly that. Rumours.
There's a sweet irony to all that being unironically true. Vi.al is absolutely the type to know when and where that kind of thing happens, among other skeletons in the Substrate closet, and is no stranger to enforcing diplomatically-compelled recitations on his subjects. It's also relatively easy to run an economy under a population deficit (relative to other Lords). That's probably why he over-engineers who or what he does make.

Do Vi.al agents normally have a higher degree of success on missions? Or is it more like a higher satisfaction rate? (Is that why the crazy game master god stacked the odds against us?)

What happened to the first standard design?

>>141157
Va.ha.ti should mention to maintainer Vi.a that unless this is actually a distraction away from Vi.al's actual dark secrets, they're being very poor at propaganda. The stilted way it's stated makes all the entire delivery low-trust, and gives low-trust answers to questions most of the audience weren't even asking.

>>141165
Unless you read it as Vi.al deliberately being the scapegoat for other Lord's dark secrets, through an "I know you know I know" sort of message. Makes sense for a galaxy brain.

Hello readers, I have had a terrible, terrible idea that I think might be fun!

When the thread ends, which is coming closer than you might think*, I am torn between launching directly into thread 2 or doing a little interlude. This interlude will involve EITHER cycling through different semi-disposable perspectives to give more context for the world at large OR picking a faction (which will be put up to a vote) and doing a Day In The Life Of Some Random Mook because my brain is bursting from ideas of this setting we will probably never get to see otherwise for actual literal years oh my god why are quests such an undertaking (well at least it's not gamedev)

However I am acutely aware that this runs into the risk of things like "reduced audience investment" and "unclear contradictory goals" and "becoming a confusing incoherent mess only the unhinged author can parse", so before I dive into this madness I thought I'd at least ask if people were interested either in "Cirr saw someone play The New War once and thought that was a really neat sequence to flesh out different perspectives in the setting" or "hey I vaguely remember when we got to be an arkot in Salikai (when are you updating Salikai Cirr bring Salikai back :C**) and that was pretty fun/tolerable/not actively causing me a migraine"

I should hasten to add that the goal for such an interlude would be to be significantly shorter than thread one of Flockload of Problems, but, well, many things should be shorter than thread one of Flockload of Problems, I never know when to make the first thread split, and I've been at this on and off for ten years so I suspect I will never know!

Anyway I am rambling again as always (Vi.si.mi is the easiest character to write) so I'll clarify the actual call to action here.
Decide time!

1: No interlude - go straight into the eternal problem grind that is Vi.si.mi's life
2: Interlude type A - a grand tour of perspectives, not lingering too long on any
3: Interlude type B - a day in the life of [faction choice goes here] on some sort of task targeting not the lepi and not Vi.si.mi

*point and laugh at me when this ends up being way off the mark, as usual

**look I sort of miss Salikai too but it turned into way too much of an unmanageable jumble, whereas Flockload of Problems is a slightly more manageable jumble that at least has a protagonist with a motivation to be in the scenario instead of trying to escape it at all times, and I took a personal vow never to do perspective swaps in the main quest itself again, oy. also i mean if i bring back salikai that means flockload of problems has to go on the bench and i definitely prefer flockload a lot more setting-wise, structure-wise, character-wise, so, uhm, i dunno, maybe i'll figure out a way to recycle salikai into it too like all the other cancelled projects it's had shoved into it

I support interlude type B, followed by switching my support to interlude type A when my faction of choice loses.

I'm fine with either A or B, whichever works better.

Type A sounds best, but I'm interested in whatever you write.

I vote for choice II.

Ooooh, Type B sounds like a good way to help show us what's going on elsewhere so we get to see more of the setting!

Interlude A

Interlude type A Sounds interesting but I’m good with B should it win.

>>141172
Type B sounds fun.

Type A!

>>141172
type A works as a diversion and teaser with probably the least potential for ballooning into a whooe big thread again.

I want to see A but I think B would be better audience-interaction-wise.

okay it's looking like interlude type A is winning 2 to 1 so I think the writing is on the wall

prepare for the Carousel of Conundrums soon

I'm torn because Interlude A is a series of brief glimpses into the whole array of things the setting has to offer not unlike channel surfing, which is what I want; but Interlude B is a short, concise story with a clear argument and set of characters, which is what I need.

While type B would be more useful for knowing what's up in local area... And honestly I really want to know more about the Rain stuff...

I think A would give much more general stuff to chew on for people. Personally it would be pretty interesting, but dunno about others ^^"

Either way it should be pretty interesting, as it's clear there's a lot of neat stuff all over the place

P.S. I really, really can't stop thinking of Rain World (especially FP and the song RG) half the time anything is happening. But the relevant part is deep deep spoiler territory, so it's a bit difficult to hope for any reply on that

A type B intermission would leave me hungry for more of them, which is not good for the quest

"I'll just write a day in the life of [faction choice goes here]"
"the goal for such an interlude would be to be significantly shorter"
"what could possibly go wrong?"

thanks for rubbing salt on where a wound is going to be a few months from now

>>141199
if you lick it up before a wound is inflicted it will just be tasty.

Type A is a good writing challenge. If you have an update limit, quest scenes have to be impactful, and also have a decent excuse to limit influence from suggestions.

As an aside, I do think the neutonos can be redeemed if they can learn to chill. Their primative culture seem to stem from their over-developed fear response, but Four Strokes wouldn't have a base of outcasts to work with if everyone accepted it.

giving myself an out right now: if things are dragging on too long, we'll look at three choices now, and then the interlude ends, we go to Flockload thread 2, and then the other 3 can get their turn then

hey cirr thanks for making this i like it

>>141201
>As an aside, I do think the neutonos can be redeemed if they can learn to chill. Their primative culture seem to stem from their over-developed fear response, but Four Strokes wouldn't have a base of outcasts to work with if everyone accepted it.

Honestly I'm pretty sure we could get them to work with us if we can just remove their current leadership (unless the lepi are pissed enough at them that such a thing would only cause more problems then it would solve). I mean from what we've seen and been told they are miserable, fractured and seem to only be banding together because of how fucked the world is right now. Take out either the hedonistic and narcissistic king, or the short sighted and emotional alien and they'd probably flock to the other for protection, take out both and they'd either scatter or join out of fear of facing the world alone. Hell from what I'm seeing we could probably recruit or at least ally with most races by taking out their leader (assuming said leader[s] can't be reasoned with) since most seem to follow their alien overlord out of fear. Either fear of said leader or fear of how they'd fair without them there to use their powers to aid them against the other factions.

>>141202
That kindof sounds like a good idea regardless.

>Salikai
Guh. Stop tempting me to do totally-non-canon Salikai continuation FFS. Don't even have any drawing skills (even if just making icons outta existing images might be good enough)! Way too much of a flake to do it too!

I for one long for the return of our glorious leader Typhon.

>>141204
>Hell from what I'm seeing we could probably recruit or at least ally with most races by taking out their leader (assuming said leader[s] can't be reasoned with) since most seem to follow their alien overlord out of fear. Either fear of said leader or fear of how they'd fair without them there to use their powers to aid them against the other factions.
Indeed.

I name-dropped SMAC, so sorry if I repeat myself, but it seems our faction's closest analogue is Gaia's Stepdaughters, not the Peacekeepers. (Not being big fans of democracy should've been my first clue.) The big difference is the planet's defenses evolved decentralized and independent rather than as one central system, that could be fixed ad-hoc by strong leadership. The mind worm analogues are Shapeless-built, after all.

>>141209
Totally Still Waiting for what the life-god/reanimated-statue fox will do to the chaos fetus.

>>141209
I'm still holding out hope that defective might get updated again one day.

>>141212
That's a deep cut.

>>141213
it was the first cirr quest I read when I found this sight. it wormed it's way into my heart.

>>141216
Same for me. Our precious mismatched little mess will always have a place in my heart.

>>141216
>>141219
Oh yeah, I think it was mine too. Though, in all seriousness, I don't think it's fair ask the author pick it back up when they would've moved on by now, personally and/or artistically. I think I see the similar concepts being worked in with this quest, anyway. And the work ethic has been much improved.

Anyway, I like the current guy. Among other things, he's, like, juggling 3 different love interests, unintentionally. My pet theory is he's being groomed to be his Lord's successor, is in denial over it because of what it implies (why does an immortal being need a successor?), but everyone either knows or could make an accurate guess of that.

>>141220
Oh I doubt anyone was saying Cirr should stop what he’s doing and immediately revive any of his old quest, just remembering some of his past quests that stuck with them over the years.

>Anyway, I like the current guy. Among other things, he's, like, juggling 3 different love interests, unintentionally. My pet theory is he's being groomed to be his Lord's successor, is in denial over it because of what it implies (why does an immortal being need a successor?), but everyone either knows or could make an accurate guess of that.

As for this, my personal theory is our little bird is actually a shapeless lord youth that is being raised in secret for some reason only the lord of secrets knows. That’s why they also seem to get special treatment over their peers. I have no evidence to back this up but it’s what my gut is telling me.

I like a bunch of Cirr's old quests but Flockload is more important right now.

>>141220
three, huh?

someone pointed out I never linked the interlude thread in this discussion thread so here it is:

https://questden.org/kusaba/quest/res/1077498.html

donated blood, felt bad for a few days, got insomnia, felt bad for a couple days, felt better, disrupted by going to a convention in London, get back home, RSI flareup

how do I stop falling down these goddamn stairs

Damn, that's a tall staircase, hope you get a moment to rest and get well!

>>141349
Fluids and cultivating your qi, I guess.

You should probably take a couple of you days. And I don’t mean from the quest I mean in general. Set some time aside to just relax for a couple days. Play video games, watch some movies, hell just sleep all day if you need to. Just give yourself some time to relax and destress.