TiTS Theories, Hypotheses, Shower Thoughts, and Tinfoil Hat Nonsense!
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TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
He mentions that him becoming a merc was a "standard 'boy is pretty strong and not that smart' story", and he certainly doesn't have the same level of intelligence as Anno and Syri. Both the twins were offered scholarships (or something similar) by the Star-King of Ausaril because they're descended from Cyreon Dorna, so if Dane was a Dorna he'd also receive an offer. Also, Syri explicitly blew off that offer to join the military, and Dane also joined the military, so if they were siblings I'd assume at least one of them would mention it. Furthermore, the entire known Dorna family (Anno, Syri, Rylon and Aserra) has a reunion during a Christmas event and not once are any other relatives mentioned. Plus, he's written by Fenoxo rather than Savin. I'd say Dane is not part of the Dorna family.
Still in the works.
Well, I did say this thread was meant for stupid bullshit!
Damn.... ah well. Hope he gets done soon/tm/!
How can I refuse then?
Yeah here's the ultimate conspiracy. Amara Faell is in fact Victor Steele. Now what do we know about them? They have both left a trail of bastards in their wake and are both active during a planet rush. And Victor was always modding himself to the point he never looked the same as he did previously, at least not often. Why would he do that? It's simple. Child support. Victor was the head of a mega corporation and was wealthy af but had a lot of kids. in order to avoid paying the galaxy's highest child support amount, he staged his death and set up the transfer of accounts to a fall guy. A certain heir apparent player character. But it wasn't enough. If he resumed his eccentric playboy behavior then people would get suspicious and try to subpoena the fuck out him. But what was he to do? I'll tell you what he did. He joined the latest planet rush. But if he retread old paths he would be noticed and getting rich again would just give him more assets to lose. So he used his love of modding and skills from the last planet rush to become a pirate. But he couldn't just start his own pirate crew, so he joined the Black Void. But he obviously couldn't just change his name. The only option available was to become a busty hermaphrodite ausar woman. But Victor made one fatal flaw. Even in this new identity, he couldn't keep it in his damn pants. Now as Amara, Victor travels the galaxy and leaving even more bastards while avoiding courts as a sexy pirate who desperately needs more content. But the truth must remained buried. Or else Patreon shall seize the game for violating their wholesome terms of service that discriminate against those who enjoy the incest tag.
Or maybe I'm just crazy. Or both.
On a less tin foil hat based theory, I do think the Black Void is probably planning to make some kind of big move. Personally I'm thinking they intend to consolidate the criminal underworld into one organization under their rule. And that Mirian is leading the charge because it helps her get her big titty kitty smuggler back. I mean come on, Mirian clearly wants to bang Saendra and is just being a butthurt tsundere about it.
TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
The main problems with this are that a) Victor and Amara were both active around the same time (Amara's known kids are 25 (Kaede) and 18 (Astra), Capt. Steele is between those two ages), b) Shade is one of Victor's kids, so if Amara and Victor were the same that'd mean Astra is the result of parent-child incest, and c) anti-aging therapies stopped working on Victor so if he started a new life as Amara it wouldn't be a long one. b) is excusable by way of ignorance, a) isn't a theory-breaker since he could theoretically switch between Victor and Amara when necessary, and it's possible c) could be either a lie or circumvented somehow. I will say that I think my proposed solutions to a) and c) are unlikely, but that's simply my opinion and I've no evidence to support it.
Pretty clearly, if the mess on Myrellion is anything to indicate. In this galaxy, an instant lust chemweapon is the ultimate in killer apps: it lets you exploit the defeated enemy with (more) impunity. The wiki at least says Bragga would be behind something like that to get her rank up.
Gotta agree. Regardless of their end goal, they're clearly up to something. And a super weapon that makes everyone too horny to fight is powerful. It stops the enemy with no collateral and preserves all resources. Though I'm shocked they're not trying to get their hands on the heir to a massive corporation that's in just about every research and market. Maybe Amara would since her bad end has Steele being captured for her personal use, but Mirian doesn't seem to care in the end she shows up in and just ships Steele off to Beth Carver. Guess Miri only cares about getting a certain busty cat back.
Poor Miri. She just wants her busty pirate step-sis back. Who can blame her? The only way to stop the Black Void is to get Mirian and Saendra together and to bury Amara in child support payments. Or take over the Black Void ourselves. Black Void route when? Please I need an evil route.
TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
I think it's high time I posted some theories of my own rather than just replying to everyone else's. So here's something no-one asked for: sex determination in the various TiTS races!
First off, the trivial cases: races that are 100% one sex (gryvain, slyveren, frostwyrm, zaika, vulkrim) or can't be considered to have proper sexes (the gooey races) don't have any form of sex determination because they don't naturally have different sexes.
Second, we know from real life that humans use the XY chromosomal system of sex determination, wherein males are XY and females are XX and there's an even split between males and females. Presumably, any race that also has a 50-50 sex ratio and whose hybrids with humans (or any other XY race) also have that ratio also use the XY system; that means ausar, kui-tan, ovir, thraggen, leithan, milodan, korgonne, zil, sydian, naleen, essyra, and some other lesser-known (i.e. only one NPC in the entire game) races. (I don't know for certain that some of these races have an even split between their two sexes, but lack of indication otherwise makes me assume they do.)
For races that can't interbreed with any of these ones but also have no indication of a sex ratio other than 50-50, I'd assume they're either XY or its counterparts ZW (ZZ males, ZW females) or XO (the O standing for no chromosome).
Third, two races have an even split between males, females and hermaphrodites; laquine and suula. Unless there's some complicated relationship between the sexes of both parents and children, it's most likely that their sex is determined randomly. Notably, Steele's half-laquine children have an even split between all three sexes while a half-suula Steele can only be male or female; unless the latter is a case of "Steele can only have two options for starting sex", that would mean the two races use different random determinants, with the laquine one being dominant to the XY system and the suula one being recessive to it.
I didn't go over xhelarfog sex determination since their Codex entry already explains it.
First off, the trivial cases: races that are 100% one sex (gryvain, slyveren, frostwyrm, zaika, vulkrim) or can't be considered to have proper sexes (the gooey races) don't have any form of sex determination because they don't naturally have different sexes.
Second, we know from real life that humans use the XY chromosomal system of sex determination, wherein males are XY and females are XX and there's an even split between males and females. Presumably, any race that also has a 50-50 sex ratio and whose hybrids with humans (or any other XY race) also have that ratio also use the XY system; that means ausar, kui-tan, ovir, thraggen, leithan, milodan, korgonne, zil, sydian, naleen, essyra, and some other lesser-known (i.e. only one NPC in the entire game) races. (I don't know for certain that some of these races have an even split between their two sexes, but lack of indication otherwise makes me assume they do.)
For races that can't interbreed with any of these ones but also have no indication of a sex ratio other than 50-50, I'd assume they're either XY or its counterparts ZW (ZZ males, ZW females) or XO (the O standing for no chromosome).
Third, two races have an even split between males, females and hermaphrodites; laquine and suula. Unless there's some complicated relationship between the sexes of both parents and children, it's most likely that their sex is determined randomly. Notably, Steele's half-laquine children have an even split between all three sexes while a half-suula Steele can only be male or female; unless the latter is a case of "Steele can only have two options for starting sex", that would mean the two races use different random determinants, with the laquine one being dominant to the XY system and the suula one being recessive to it.
Both races of myr are 90% female, 10% male. Since they can't be XY and are based on ants, one might assume their sex is determined much like Terran eusocial insects; however, this can't be the case. Excepting XY system species, most real-life insects use the number of chromosomes to determine sex; typically, this is where males have one X chromosome and females have two.
We know both red and gold myr require fertilisation to produce children, so haplo-diploidy (where males come from unfertilised ova and females from fertilised ones) isn't happening; but if they were using number of chromosomes to determine sex, any given child would have a 50% chance of inheriting an X from the father (producing a female) and a 50% chance of not inheriting one (producing a male), resulting in an even split between males and females.
As such, they must use some other, more esoteric, system of sex determination; same goes for the anat (since they're 85% male, 15% female) and matisar (55% female, 40% male, 5% herm). Since we're given hard numbers on their sex ratios, I doubt they're environmentally determined.
Somethings else to note are that Steele's half-red myr children are 50-50 male-female, and both other examples of half-red myr (one half-nyrea, one half-gold myr) are hermaphrodites. The latter indicates that red and gold use different sex determination systems such that their hybrids can be herms, and the former indicates that the red's system is recessive to the XY system. There's currently no way for Steele to produce any pure half-gold myr or half-nyrean offspring (Renvra's kids are 25% red myr), so any further speculation would just be guessing wildly.
We know both red and gold myr require fertilisation to produce children, so haplo-diploidy (where males come from unfertilised ova and females from fertilised ones) isn't happening; but if they were using number of chromosomes to determine sex, any given child would have a 50% chance of inheriting an X from the father (producing a female) and a 50% chance of not inheriting one (producing a male), resulting in an even split between males and females.
As such, they must use some other, more esoteric, system of sex determination; same goes for the anat (since they're 85% male, 15% female) and matisar (55% female, 40% male, 5% herm). Since we're given hard numbers on their sex ratios, I doubt they're environmentally determined.
Somethings else to note are that Steele's half-red myr children are 50-50 male-female, and both other examples of half-red myr (one half-nyrea, one half-gold myr) are hermaphrodites. The latter indicates that red and gold use different sex determination systems such that their hybrids can be herms, and the former indicates that the red's system is recessive to the XY system. There's currently no way for Steele to produce any pure half-gold myr or half-nyrean offspring (Renvra's kids are 25% red myr), so any further speculation would just be guessing wildly.
Kaithrit. We know they (and their hybrids, if Steele's half-kaithrit kids are a good indicator) have a 10% chance of being herms, but apart from that we're not gien anything about their sex determination. One might be tempted to assume the remaining 90% are XY; after all, Steele's half-kaithrit kids are evenly split between male and female, so the second point above would apply. However:
The only possible lead I can think of - and it's very tenuous, given that it's a sample size of two - is that Erika and Lerris are both male (or were, if Lerris is given a pussy), and both were presumably conceived on their homeworld, Ausaril. Ausaril is a desert world and is thus much drier than a jungle world like Rosha, so maybe drier environments promote more males being born; this is only the most glaring difference, however, and other factors like average temperature, daily/seasonal temperature variations and atmospheric composition (to name but a few) could also be responsible - and that's assuming Erika and Lerris both being male isn't a statistical fluke and that being from Ausaril really does impact the kaithrit male-to-female ratio.
There's also the fact that some colonies (like Kara's homeworld, Tarilia) have such severe shortages of males that herms are treated like them, indicating that the ratio between males and females isn't fixed and is thus most likely due not to genetics, but rather the environment. As for what environmental factors affect the kaithrit male-to-female ratio, we're given little-to-nothing to work with as environmental and population information about various locations inhabited by kaithrit are unavailable. (Steele's half-kaithrit kids being 45-45 male-female might be this system being recessive to XY but the 10% chance to be a herm being dominant to it.)Kaithrit Codex entry said:
The only possible lead I can think of - and it's very tenuous, given that it's a sample size of two - is that Erika and Lerris are both male (or were, if Lerris is given a pussy), and both were presumably conceived on their homeworld, Ausaril. Ausaril is a desert world and is thus much drier than a jungle world like Rosha, so maybe drier environments promote more males being born; this is only the most glaring difference, however, and other factors like average temperature, daily/seasonal temperature variations and atmospheric composition (to name but a few) could also be responsible - and that's assuming Erika and Lerris both being male isn't a statistical fluke and that being from Ausaril really does impact the kaithrit male-to-female ratio.
Half-human half-gryvain can be herm or female, assuming Steele's creation is reliable in this regard. Since gryvain don't have a sex determination system (see the first point above), that means it must be the human half i.e. the X or Y chromosome that determines sex. Assuming a human's sperm is always 50-50 X-Y and their ova are 100% X regardless of the genes the human was born with, this would mean that if a gryvain impregnated a human, the resulting child would always have an X chromosome and thus be of a single sex, while if a human impregnated a gryvain the child would be 50-50 female-herm.
I initially assumed that X would result in a female and Y in a herm since humans have genes that suppress testicular formation in the absence of the SRY gene (which is the most important gene for determining maleness in humans), and those genes would prevent a half-human half-gryvain from forming male genitalia. But Fenoxo recently changed Steele's half-gryvain pregnancy to always result in hermaphrodite children; with the above assumption, that means these children must have X chromosomes; thus, a half-human half-gryvain with an X chromosome will be a herm, while one with a Y will be female. Perhaps some interaction between Y-exclusive genes and gryvain genes causes male genitalia to not form?
I initially assumed that X would result in a female and Y in a herm since humans have genes that suppress testicular formation in the absence of the SRY gene (which is the most important gene for determining maleness in humans), and those genes would prevent a half-human half-gryvain from forming male genitalia. But Fenoxo recently changed Steele's half-gryvain pregnancy to always result in hermaphrodite children; with the above assumption, that means these children must have X chromosomes; thus, a half-human half-gryvain with an X chromosome will be a herm, while one with a Y will be female. Perhaps some interaction between Y-exclusive genes and gryvain genes causes male genitalia to not form?
Shepard, you are right up my alley with these sex determination systems! Not a geneticist, but I playact as one in my spare time, when writing about future humans of a specific sex.
But my watsonian instincts lead me to see suula sex determination as being overwritten by the human one. We won't know unless laquines become a starting character option.
I would definitely be interested in finding out about the sex determination for the species with one sex that is an overwhelming majority independent of environment. Same for what causes alphas to be so rare among the dzaan, though we don't have hard numbers on them either. The below is from the codex.
Gryvain sex determination does seem to have been warped by that decision of the supreme god of the TiTS-Doylist pantheon. The only thing readily coming to my mind to explain why a Y-endowed half-gryvain would be female is something akin to complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, which, if I am remembering correctly at this late hour, is caused by inactivating mutations in the androgen receptor gene. Only here, it, by whatever means, knocks out the androgenic genes of both species while permitting the unaffected gryvain female component to develop unhindered. And that would require something going wrong with transcription of both the "phallus determining region" of the gryvain genome, and SRY.
Okay, that's an interesting conclusion. Not one I'd come up with on my own. But an even split between three constituents can only be fitted into a punnett square if what we're seeing is survivors of a prenatal culling process of some kind where having a combination of some specific alleles is fatal, and I'm not sure how that would work out. Would be interesting though.
Hmm, I would wonder if there's a boolean at work in limiting the half-suula options, from the Doylist POV. Was mildly disappointed to find out my first nonhuman Steele would have to choose between one of the two flavors of gonochorism.
But my watsonian instincts lead me to see suula sex determination as being overwritten by the human one. We won't know unless laquines become a starting character option.
I would definitely be interested in finding out about the sex determination for the species with one sex that is an overwhelming majority independent of environment. Same for what causes alphas to be so rare among the dzaan, though we don't have hard numbers on them either. The below is from the codex.
As for the kaithrit, that is a cool hypothesis about their sex determination being environmentally focused. Reminds me of turtles, who are the only species or group of species I can remember with a similar determination system- quite a surprise coming from (apparent) xenomammalians! I would assume, going off our pitifully small sample size, that what Ausaril has today, even after industrialization and post-industrialization and superluminal travel, is a similarity to evolutionarily-influential environments in which the kaithrit and their ancestors found it more beneficial to the population group to make the male-female ratio more equal. Assuming, of course, that these xenofelines from a jungle-loaded (perhaps superhabitable if not [super]greenhouse?) planet would even be in a position to inherit such an evolutionary legacy.
Gryvain sex determination does seem to have been warped by that decision of the supreme god of the TiTS-Doylist pantheon. The only thing readily coming to my mind to explain why a Y-endowed half-gryvain would be female is something akin to complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, which, if I am remembering correctly at this late hour, is caused by inactivating mutations in the androgen receptor gene. Only here, it, by whatever means, knocks out the androgenic genes of both species while permitting the unaffected gryvain female component to develop unhindered. And that would require something going wrong with transcription of both the "phallus determining region" of the gryvain genome, and SRY.
Well, Steele Tech only appears to be involved in consumable biocosmetics, mining and transportation. It is interesting that Bragga doesn't decide to exploit Steele for herself in that bad end whereas Amara does. Maybe the wiles of youth and her hunger for Saen have made Miri less thorough.
I'd say just take out Watson's distributed computer network and round up the dread lords...but that's easier said than done. And if Amara can be pinned down by child support and Miri and Saen get together, there's some hope for these marginally tainted worlds still!
While being part of the Black Void would certainly net Steele Tech some underworld assets that could be used to up their power, I have my suspicions that trying that will more practically be rewarded with the Void's insides getting x-rayed and shown to the UGC. Then again, who, after all, speaks of the (failed with massive losses on all sides) coup of the Camarilla?
True but thanks to Victor's eccentricities, Steele Tech is involved in various areas to some degree like a certain pop group for example. Controlling Steele Tech would give access to resources and R&D stuff that an aspiring conqueror would love. Even then, the company's shareholders would probably pay a huge ransom for the heir just to make sure their share becoming unpredictable doesn't cause problems.
Even if it's not her intent keeping Steele gives Amara the opportunity to learn their identity if not already known, which everyone seems to know, and exploit that connection. Having the heir apparent to a massive mining and biotech company as a slave would give Amara, and by extension the Black Void, access to all that aforementioned good shit and a way to get a bunch of future Steele heirs with red hair. Bragga not doing so and giving a golden ticket to Carver's company instead, where Beth herself probably won't even find out until the damage is done and Steele disappears like in several bad ends, just screams single-mindedness. Or she's so petty and focused on Saendra that she's only thinking about that biggy titty kitty. Can't say I can fully hold that against her though.
I can think of a few things being at least on friendly terms with a pirate fleet could net. Betrayal could happen and Steele could end up on the UGC's shit list, but the pros outweigh the cons. Besides, I want more Amara and doing jobs for her and the pirates sounds like a great way to get that and interesting quests and as a way to knock Jack/Jill's smug smile off. Plus they have cool red and black armor. Except Amara. She's all red. Red hair, red armor, red flames, a red rocket.
TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
I did think up something about this, but I wasn't sure how it would work on a biological level, and it relies on the fact that you can get one-third from an infinite number of one-quarters. Basically, for each embryo there'd be a 50% chance for it to have male genitals, and a 50% chance for it to have female genitals, and these chances are independent of both each other and the parents so the total chances are 25% each for male, female, herm and neuter. Except neuter won't result in viable offspring, so embryos that roll neuter would either fail to develop, or repeat the roll until they get one of the other three sexes; either way would result in an even split between the three non-neuter sexes.
Alternatively, there might be enough factors involved that a Punnett square isn't enough to explain what's going on, much like how Punnett squares can't explain intersex conditions in humans.
That's what I meant when I said the suula's system was recessive to the human one.
Rosha's description paints it as similar to Earth during the Jurassic or possibly the Carboniferous. There have been periods in Earth's history (e.g. the Permian) where most of the landmass was covered in desert, so depending on how broadly you define 'desert planet' it could reasonably be considered one during those periods. And I haven't seen any confirmation on whether Ausaril is that type of desert planet, or the more traditional Tatooine-style "no bodies of water at all" desert planet (which has implications I'll save for another theory), or something in between. So yes, it is possible that Rosha's environment was once similar to Ausaril's modern environment, which would enable this conclusion.
The diversification efforts Victor did launch would make control of his heir and the company a major asset to possess, for sure. No disagreement on Miri being overly single-minded. Such is the magic of youth and ambition! Amara can presumably afford some more circumspection.
Yeah, I'm sure the Camarilla could think of positives too. (I mention them because in the backstory of the Roravans, the Void was given aid by the Camarilla in weakening the rest of the UGC so that the Camarilla could take it over with Roravan "peacekeepers".)
Though those credit black holes in wacko bird form wouldn't be able to think up anything as cool as getting the aid of a private army and beating the shit out of a snobby little snot that dares to besmirch the good name of the Steeles!
Complex, but definitely fitting, with either that complex set of rolls for sex determination or a bunch of factors that a simplistic square can't capture being intriguing answers in their own right.
Hot and carbon dioxide (and presumably oxygen as well)-heavy. Quite the world Rosha is. I wouldn't put it past the planet to have major swings even within a few tens of thousands of years between land cover types' proportions, given Earth's trends, between more forests and more deserts, and agree with you on it being possible for Rosha to be more desertified in the past.
(An aside. I want to hear what you've got to say on Ausaril being bereft of surface waterbodies or not!)
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I made this thread for tinfoil hat bullshit, but yall are talking legit science, lol!
Yeah but I'm dumb as hell and don't understand anything being typed. So it may as well be tinfoil hat bullshit to my eyes.
What can I say? I'm something of a worldbuilder myself and can't help but indulge in bringing that skill wherever I go.
TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
If you didn't want us to, then you shouldn't have included both 'theories' and 'hypotheses' in the title. A hypothesis is an evidence-based attempt to explain something rationally and scientifically (which is what most non-scientists mean when they say 'theory' without 'conspiracy' in front of it) and makes testable predictions. A theory is the hypothesis that has the most compelling evidence supporting it (compared to competing hypotheses on the same subject) and is most widely accepted by the relevant portions of the scientific community. The inclusion of both in the title invites us scientifically-inclined individuals to theorise and hypothesise in this thread.
That's a damn fine skill to have friend. There's nothing I love better than to tell and hear stories, fiction or nonfiction.
Hey, I'm not complaining! I'm just surprised! It's like when you buy a lotto ticket for shits and giggles but you end up winning like 3 grand.
Okokokokokokokokokok. This is actually a pretty good one.
I remembered out of the blue an earlier theory about Victor still being alive and is actually Max, which is why our cousin is able to open the probes, cuz it's kinda an oversight on his part that they are able to do that.
But.... what if it wasn't? What if that is in fact exactly what he intended?
What if Victor purposefully made it so our relatives would be able to open the probes, and maybe also leaked the details to Max and our cousin, knowing full well they would try and take it for themselves?
Why would he do that, though, you may ask?
Easy. Conflict.
The whole reason Victor did the thing with the probes is cuz he wants us to be able to carve out and earn our own legacy, our own legend, not just have it handed down to us. His last gift to us was the opportunity and setup for it, as he wasn't able to give it to us when he was still alive.
And what better way to spice up an adventure and give motivation for aiming higher than with a race to outdo an archrival?
I remembered out of the blue an earlier theory about Victor still being alive and is actually Max, which is why our cousin is able to open the probes, cuz it's kinda an oversight on his part that they are able to do that.
But.... what if it wasn't? What if that is in fact exactly what he intended?
What if Victor purposefully made it so our relatives would be able to open the probes, and maybe also leaked the details to Max and our cousin, knowing full well they would try and take it for themselves?
Why would he do that, though, you may ask?
Easy. Conflict.
The whole reason Victor did the thing with the probes is cuz he wants us to be able to carve out and earn our own legacy, our own legend, not just have it handed down to us. His last gift to us was the opportunity and setup for it, as he wasn't able to give it to us when he was still alive.
And what better way to spice up an adventure and give motivation for aiming higher than with a race to outdo an archrival?
Well, there's one way to incorporate the Doylist and the Watsonian: even Tricky Vic knows the best way forward for his heir is through a triumph against a driven enemy. And who else can be so good a challenger as someone who descends from his own worst enemy Max?
The who and the what now?
But yeah, I can definitely see Victor doing something like that. Hed want his kid to be their own person, just like he was.
Or it's Vic's final middle finger to his brother. Either Steele wins and cousin and uncle end up on their shit list and have burned all bridges from their attitude, or Jill wins and gets hostile takeovered because no one likes Max and his kid. I can genuinely see every Steele Tech employee and subsidiary uniting to get rid of them. Hell, Jill would probably make every pirate and mercenary mad enough to come after her. Because if there's one thing everyone in the galaxy can agree on, It's that Jack/Jill sucks.
That does make sense. But since he brings up Max and his kid in the intro and with how dangerous these planets get, I'd wager that was a design oversight that he left in for reasons only Victor Steele would know. Or maybe the codex houses an A.I. based on his brain scan and this whole thing is so he can have one last adventure in some way. Dangerous and exotic locales and locals, an easily hateable rival, the ability to influence the galaxy, and all experienced through nanomachines and the codex. Talk about living through your kids. Vic does seem crazy enough to try that. If that ends up being the twist, I think everyone would just say "Yeah that sounds like Vic."
One of the reasons Steeletech is able to compete with the larger megacorps is cuz of its employees. Steeletech is a magnet for the best and brightest because of how well it treats the people working there. It may not be the biggest or the most profitable, but it more than makes up for that with sheer gusto and drive.
I doubt he's inside the codex. I mean, what if it got lost, stolen, or hacked? As for being inside the nanomachines... idk.... I don't think he'd go for that. All the prep work he put into his kid was for the sake of securing their future. If he could just put himself into a digital body, why didn't he just do that and cheat death?
Plus there's all the bullshittery around the whole digital transference thing. There's only one instance of it that im aware of, with syris friend who's name I forgot, and that was only cuz of a freak accident iirc, and one that didn't happen too too long before Victor kicked the bucket and the whole galactic tour thing kicked off.
An adventure. That's what
1. Victor Steele is eccentricity given form.
I mean like Gianna when she says she's based off of someone's brain scan or like Nick Valentine from Fallout 4 or SOMA. Not actual Vic, but a copy based on his memories and personality at the time of the scan.
TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
A concept named after the Sherlock Holmes books. The Doylist explanation is the one used by the author (Arthur Conan Doyle), while the Watsonian explanation is what the point-of-view character (John Watson) sees; more generally, they refer to out-of-universe and in-universe explanations, respectively.
In this case, the Watsonian view would be... whatever reason Victor decided to make the probes accessible by NPC Steeles; the Doylist view would be that in order to generate narrative tension, the PC needs a credible threat to them obtaining all the probes, and having a cousin who can also access the probes fits that need (at least on paper. Jack/Jill's threat stems almost entirely from their hired muscle).
That actually reminds me of something; no matter how long Steele takes to get there, the rival has apparently only just gotten to the Mhen'ga probe. Given how he/she's condescending towards Steele and isn't very smart, I think it's entirely possible that he/she could have gotten to the probe significantly earlier and decided to wait, just so he/she could gloat at Steele for beating them there.
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TheShepard256
Well-Known Member
Past time I elaborated on this. From what I know, having oceans is kind of necessary for Earth-style plate tectonics, so a planet with no oceans would lack continental drift; without continental drift, I doubt climate changes would occur at the same rate they do on Earth. As such, I'm pretty sure a Tatooine-style "no bodies of water at all" desert planet would be that way for most of its existence. For these implications, I'll be focusing on Ausaril, but they're applicable to any Tatooine-style desert planets both in and out of TiTS (except in cases like, ironically, Tatooine itself, which became that way due to non-natural forces). I'll also be assuming that intelligent life could arise on them in the first place.
The first implication I thought of, and the one I've considered most, would be the fact that such environments are not conducive to the formation of fossil fuels due to how dry they are. As such, fossil fuels would likely form either not at all, or in very limited quantities; if Ausaril were such a planet, it would have a significant impact on the development of ausar technology as they would be unable to achieve a human-like Industrial Revolution. (This would, at the same time, also prevent an equivalent to modern human activity-induced rapid climate change.)
The only solution I could think of would be for them to instead discover uranium, skipping coal/petrol power and going straight to nuclear power. After some research into the history of uranium ores, I believe that the discovery of uranium in sufficient quantities for this would indeed be possible because a) there are sources of uranium ores that don't require non-desert environments and b) of the sources that do require water, at least some of them are possible with groundwater; I think it's reasonable to assume Ausaril has groundwater as real-life deserts also have it.
After this, the main problems would be figuring out how to 1. refine U-235, Pu-239 and/or Pu-241 from the ores and 2. extract energy from them i.e. make nuclear reactors, both using only pre-Industrial-equivalent tech, then 3. getting enough water for the reactors to work. IMO, 3. is actually the least of these hurdles as Ausaril still has water, and the reactors are a closed system in that regard and thus don't require a constant supply of the stuff. I'm not sure how possible 1. and 2. are, though.
The only solution I could think of would be for them to instead discover uranium, skipping coal/petrol power and going straight to nuclear power. After some research into the history of uranium ores, I believe that the discovery of uranium in sufficient quantities for this would indeed be possible because a) there are sources of uranium ores that don't require non-desert environments and b) of the sources that do require water, at least some of them are possible with groundwater; I think it's reasonable to assume Ausaril has groundwater as real-life deserts also have it.
After this, the main problems would be figuring out how to 1. refine U-235, Pu-239 and/or Pu-241 from the ores and 2. extract energy from them i.e. make nuclear reactors, both using only pre-Industrial-equivalent tech, then 3. getting enough water for the reactors to work. IMO, 3. is actually the least of these hurdles as Ausaril still has water, and the reactors are a closed system in that regard and thus don't require a constant supply of the stuff. I'm not sure how possible 1. and 2. are, though.
Third is that with how stable the environment is over geological timespans, mass extinction events (which are often related to massive climate changes) would be quite rare if they happen at all.