Schlock Mercenary

Petey, that humility looks nice on you, but you do have something they didn't: if anybody else has turned galaxy's core into a power generator, you would've noticed.

True, though all of that things output is going agsint the Pa'anuri. Though if they are the reason for the extictions, that could be enough,

Plus, "Where are all the immortals"? Well you have the Bradicor still around, who have been around since before the last galactic purge.

Paanuri drove the Oafans to seclusion. Bradicor had done themselves in by screwing up the immortality (they also didn't get up to the stars, staying secluded on their planet, so they don't know anything about any other extinctions). Fshnerlganni managed to resist the Paanuri enough to cease open hostilities and they were set to last forever (if not for the Paanuri bomb subterfuge).

Core generator is very, very definitely deviating from History Repeats.

edited 5th Feb '16 7:04:01 AM by Adannor

Well, we don't know if the Gatekeepers actually reached the "Immortal" stage, or are simply extremely long lived. But yes, it will also depend on just what caused the extinctions. Pa'Anuri wiping out any race developed enough to create the Terraport. Or something else.

Also, still need to find out what the deal is with Osri, why and how someone would build a device that MAKES Pa'anuri.. still a lot of information we don't have.

Also, looking up the archives, Gatekeepers have been at it for six millions. They already broke Oafan timetable. There they are, the adults. The other adults are in Andromeda and you're trying to kill them.
(They may not be personally totally immortal like Bradicor are, but their civilization certainly is, unlike Bradicor.)

Also their history files mention previous Teraport Wars. Given how destructive the weaponry we see here, it may be well possible that every other civilisation in the past had invented Long Gun technology and went down to dark seclusion Kevyn expected from LG going public, and silently died out in habitats floating in the endless void - like the Oafan stations.

Yeah, Oisri is another mystery. Maybe it's THE origin of Paanuri, some race doing Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence with it.

edited 5th Feb '16 7:11:55 AM by Adannor

That was my thought too, that maybe some really really ancient civilization created the Pa'anuri somehow, for some reason. Doubt the whole Ascend thing, but maybe just a "Hey what would happen if we did this?" "Oh it wipes out our entire race.. oops." type deal. Not that Osri is THE way to create them, simply one that kind of got lost.

But yes the fact the Gatekeepers have been keeping things so different then they normally have gone, plus the still rather cryptic and ominous authors note near the start of the Dom Atlantis arc about how maybe there was a reason the Terraport was abandoned several times before.. that could be another reason if it's not simply "It makes the Pa'anuri kill everyone."

Really, we are down to two major theories as to what causes the cycles. it's either external, the Pa'anuri wiping out any life that is able to create the Terraport. Or internal, Every time galactic civilization reaches a certain point in development, they end up wiping themselves out somehow.

So.. Petey's biggest fear about the whole mass extinction cycle, is that somehow he'll be responsible for it.

That is.. actually rather touching in a way.

Him, or someone like him. Petey doesn't have a monopoly on self-expanding AI.

I never got the impression that the gatekeepers were immortal, just heavily bio-engineered (of the "augmented themselves" type, not the "created by someone else" type). As a society they're grownups, but as individuals probably not.

Anyways, as long as we're talking about open mysteries, we never found out the purpose of the Zoojack place. A space station created to imprison (for unknown reasons) a race of sapients for enough generations to forget the outside universe, which was directly monitored by the Pa'anuri so they could stamp out even the slightest trace of sophisticated technology. Possibly manually. And it wasn't just their sensitivity to such technology in a really important area or something, I believe there were actual transmissions that Kevyn was able to spoof.

(Speaking of, transmissions? To dark matter entities who can only interact with us through gravity? How?)

edited 5th Feb '16 9:39:51 PM by Brickman

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

As to the Gatekeeers, I agree almost fully with that idea and is pretty much my own. They are extremly long lived, but not immortal.

The other two... how do we know that they imprisoned Sophants there, and it's not a case of the places being SO old that sophants actually evolved inside of it from what was originally placed there? The bigger question, is how they were able to speak Galstandard. But yes what the deal is with them is a big one. And that was only one of many many MANY such stations. Remnants of the races the Pa'anuri wiped out in the past?

As to the last question the transmitters were using gravitc waves to communicate, Kevyn outright says that before saying that, well, they used to.

Or both. We already have examples of both self-destruction and paanuri-killing plus theories of a third way. (although the usual way Paanuri fight wars, supernovaing the closest star, doesn't leave much for archeologists to find)

...Come to think of it, it's kinda catch-22. Do not invent teraport and you are stuck in one planet system to stew. Invent it, and Paanuri eat you.

Mindripped guy was 4000 years old and considered himself barely starting. Sure, not immortal, they may not get up to millions, but they have a LOT of years to go.

Main problem with age was shown to be running out of memory. Bradicor replaced their brains with amorph matrix that selectively suppresses and forgets vast swathes of it. Gatekeepers dump it into the horns and forget (million year olds would become reeeally unwieldy). Oafans have foils and grow huge to support the space. Petey probably plans for the solution to run on RED-type nanobots - they already keep an index and a backup of memory spread throughout the body.

The 'radio' was gravitic in nature. Kevyn maybe could've spoofed it with the annieplants, but he actually didn't. He just shot the generator.

Galstandard was probably the language perpetuated by the Gatekeepers (given that it's their network of gates was the foundation of any galactic society at all). So they taught it to zoojack inhabitants.

And yes, could be preserves of scant survivors of the Paanuri wars.

edited 5th Feb '16 11:11:58 PM by Adannor

I'm really surprised that Petey thinks of himself as the most likely culprit, considering he is currently at war with an entire galaxy of ancient giant artificial ghosts with a history of attempted xenocide.

There are certainly other possible explanations, but "actually the Pa'anuri wiped everyone out" would be the second most unsurprising development in the entire comic (after "Schlock shot something and ate it").

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Oh, I didn't notice that the guy was 4000 years old. Guess I was wrong.

Zoojack was definitely the result of them working together with someone made of normal matter, since they couldn't make it themselves. Gatekeepers are the most likely answer. So here's my theory:

Zoojack was the result of a deal between the Gatekeepers and the Pa'anuri. The people that live there had invented teraports, and lost a teraport war. Out of some sense of altruism (they were evil, but not mustache twirling supervillains) the Gatekeepers convinced them that they didn't need to wipe out that species, just trap them in an environment where it'd be impossible for them to ever develop the technology again. Hell, we'll even build it for you!

So automated systems on this side detect technology well before it can hit teraport levels and automated systems on that side blow it up. Problem solved!

This repeated many times, and the Pa'anuri put up with it because as easy as it is to seem invincible from there position, it's actually hard to control territory and enforce rules when you can't put boots on the ground. They needed the Gatekeepers and the gate network. But eventually it repeated too many times the Pa'anuri decided they'd rather just make the whole galaxy unsuitable for life.

edited 6th Feb '16 5:34:11 AM by Brickman

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

Hmm...Insufficient information. After all, Jack Chalker postulated a universe where galactic civilization evolved to be Godlike and having nothing else to do, decided to devolve themselves and do it all over again. In the Star Trek universe, we have evolved beings like "Q" who found a different dimension to live in. The author can go in all sorts of directions. Be interesting finding out where he goes with this. And it's important to realize that while people are now immortal, they're not invulnerable. They're just harder to kill, either intentionally or by accident.

Place your bets whether it's a crazy AI or crazy meatbag.

I'm not sure I understand what's going on in this one, really. Someone's trying to use something as a weapon and Tagon's countering it, that's all I understand.

Your funny quote here! (Maybe)

It's the chunk of solar sail that was attached to the habitat. The Toughs said before it could be turned into a weapon; that's why they severed the attaching cables, hoping that would shut it down. It didn't work. Although they and we don't know why Whoever controls it is targeting the habitat.

edited 7th Feb '16 9:46:03 PM by Geoduck

They're doing the same thing as Dom Atlantis sunshine nuking in the previous arc.

edited 7th Feb '16 9:57:11 PM by Adannor

Is this the right place to put wiki page updates? Anyway the length of Schlock's page was bugging me so I put the tropes in folders.

i have just finished binging this entire, gigantic archive

i regret nothing

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

Impressive. I did my archive binge...a while ago. Right at the start of the Credomar Arc... eight years ago now.

Half way through the run relative to now (or near enough)

I can do nought but salute your perseverance.

it wasn't the worst the get through because I'm also making my way through Season 10 of Writing Excuses and Howard keeps alluding to crazy things that would be upcoming for me.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Twitter

My binge was during the "Force Multiplication" arc.

Mine was during The Body Politic.

... I binge about once every six months.

It's really good.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

My binge was during the aftermath of the pirate fight in Big Dumb Objects.