Grrl Power #690 – Götterdämmermcguffins
I hope that top panel is legible. I didn’t want to try and typeset all that text so I hand wrote it. While my handwriting is kind of neat… not like, 18th century calligrapher neat, granted, but usually it’s pretty legible – though some of the lettering size is a little inconsistent. I’ll make the double sized page a public post over at Patreon so if you’re having to squint a little too much, you can check it out there.
Now that I think about it, it’s a little weird that Cora is the first one to put this together. (I’m not saying she’s right, but it’s a fair guess.) Dabbler probably suspects it but never brought it up.
Keep in mind that the “Nth” as she calls them are entirely hypothetical, and even if they did exist, some of their activities could be mistaken for the Tier 3 guys. You know, the Vorlons, Reapers, even Precursors. Guys who have some amazing tech but are still banging around in spaceships. Or… are spaceships, in the case of the Reapers.
According to Dabbler, the Nth aren’t necessarily ascended, like, energy beings, but they have technology so advanced that it’s unrecognizable as technology, and according to her theory, tend to work in ways that aren’t detectable via normal examination. Like, they’ve never shown up and been all “Yo I’m basically the Beyonder and I can kill a galaxy with a wave of my hand.” Because if they had… well, then they wouldn’t be hypothetical, would they?
Anyway, Dabbler will probably talk about them at some point when Sydney gets back and asks about them.
I mean if she gets back! No, it’s totally when.
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I get the impression from the chart that the Alari were actually just in the “barely squeaking along” group. After all Dabbler’s first impression was that the local version of the Galaxy Police Federation Alliance or whatever Xevoarchy’s equivalent of military aligned worlds is, had taken them out for being to much of a jerk ass civilization to other developing worlds. We know something else got to them first, and that line “pissed off the wrong alien civilization” could be foreshadowing or a subtle hint to that’s what happened here.
After all, their idea of a scout to a planet they might invade was a single individual using magic, had to use a blood mage portal to get home, and had once been nearly killed by the secret council of magical critters that are hiding from humanity (yeah, I get the feeling with their alien tourist board contact they like to think they rule the world, but if your reason for not being public knowledge is fear of genocide against you…you’re not in charge).
So I get more the impression the Alari are in that little, we have explored other worlds, have used magic portals and some FTL tech, but have a bad habit of invading other worlds at or below our own tech level because we have a superiority complex….which yeah, good way to screw up every first contact situation. Wouldn’t be surprised if those squiddies were from a *we look simple on the surface* world or were some ancient guardians of a peaceful low tech planet…or the Alari invade a protectorate, garden planet, nursery world, of something really big and quick to anger.
-a Popler scenario could lead to full on genocide of your species. (you monsters have been eating our children).
Or they were at the Space Empire level, and instead of getting punted down to Barely Squeaking Along, they got punted all the way down to pre-industrial.
It doesn’t seem to me like they got reduced to pre-industrial. It does seem like they where straight wiped out. At least on there homeworld.
Going by the placement on the chart, the space empire seems more “The Galactic Empire”, “Star Trek Federation of Planets”, “Babylon 5 alliance”, “Jurain Empire”, Ctarl Ctarl Empire, ect…
the Alari were planning to invade a planet via a magic portal that their agent produced using a stolen magical object. While Dabbler called them “imperialistic”, the Xevoarchy seem more the space empire class here, after all going around expanding your empire via invasions of pre-FTL worlds doesn’t seem very (We are the great empire of the cosmos) and more (We are the upstart civilization with a chip on its shoulder and an inferiority complex upon discovering more advanced civilizations exist). Especially if they have been around long enough to end up on a list of species humans have mistaken for angels yet don’t own the Earth already.
Cereally? You are claiming that Dirt is a more advanced civilization? o_O
Relative Tech.
If you have more advanced tech in the majority of fields you are more technologically advanced over all.
But it is always possible with different priorities for what is perceived of as a less advanced civilization to have advanced further in one or two more so than others because their priorities were there. If the video game market had ended back in the 80’s, if robotics hadn’t captured the imagination of the public, if people thought special effects and movies that used multiple takes or were not live performances weren’t interesting enough or were targeted by the establishment as a waste of time and money. You could have a world without video games, drones, roombas, cyberpunk fantasy, movies with big special effects and just live theater plays.
And no I don’t mean this creativity would have gone to anything else, contrary, other things likely would have suffered given the human interest of *this amuses me, let’s focus on it*, but a lot else would be the same and you’d just not have those either. But as it stands with enough focus and attention by enough powers with incentive to progress at it, one can advance any tech level in ways that even a few years earlier would have been unheard of. Just think how far computer tech advanced because people wanted more games, and a competitive strive to do even better; and the adjacent advances.
-but oops, that may be more relavent to a different conversation further down-
I think we haven’t seen much of the Alari, but what we have seen doesn’t come across as too technologically advanced, but very magically advanced. It is like a civilization without space craft (yes I know they have shuttles but we don’t know their natural range, fuel, or structure other than could use portals to get to the Fracture) using star gates to invade other planets, or having one big super weapon they’ve discovered few others can resist against, but otherwise they’d be about even combat tech wise (like a civilization invents a death ray, they learn few other species out there can defend against it, but otherwise their missiles, fuel, and other tech would be close enough. Its like the Phantom of Krankor, they had interstellar travel capabilities but their fuel tech was below that of Earth…as impossible as that seems…so they were invading Earth to learn the secrets of one scientist’s new fuel.
They clearly are not wiped out, since they are still alive, just scattered. The whole ‘in rags’ thing implies pre-industrial.
Being in rags simply means they have been soundly thrashered, not that they have been dropped down a few technological levels
Very true, we are missing some vital data. All we know is the Alari homeworld has been exterminated. We don’t know the scale of the attack if it extends to other Alari worlds, colonies, and conquered planets (which we assume based on past information they at least have a few other planets under their control.
It consistently makes me laugh, seeing the guy calling out the ancient and powerful being for spouting bullcrap!
Reminds me of Ivanova dealing with one of the First Ones in Babylon 5 :)
One of the things that science fiction (TvTropes warning) usually glosses over is the possibility of a species “ascending” in a technological way so that it still is technically inside the same three-dimensional space but it doesn’t even function on the same scale anymore.
I’d expect that, were it possible, some would opt to construct computer worldships, augment or replace their chemical-driven brains and bodies, and live in their own virtual worlds. Maybe this is one of those worlds…
Then again, I think Stargate SG-1 had an episode where they accidentally caused damage to a civ like this with their rover’s EM emissions.
Well we have seen all variations of that in sci-fi.
the plugged into a virtual space bodies in stasis, downloaded consciousness’s into a virtual reality but no body in physical space (whole world is in the holodec sort of thing, what is real is subjective type episodes), clear up to the as real as the real world artificial pocket dimensions.
that SG-1 episode never fully explained WHAT those aliens were, but they didn’t seem ascended, although beyond the Star Gate did look like the inside of a machine (which given the origin of the Star Gates makes you wander how the gate got there and what that space originally was), the aliens in question were sentient electromagnetic radiation…and radio waves were poisonous to them. They though the rover was an attack, and couldn’t be reasoned with when they possessed someone, only threatened to back off or they’d send hundreds of rovers through. It became a locked out address after that.
You don’t download, your contagiousness. you merely make a copy of it.
I never, posted that!!!!
Ian Douglas’s Star Carrierr series does.
I still want to know what’s so damn big about an Aetherium Gate damnit. lol
ok aetherium gate way basicly a high advanced warp drive that most the time only major capital ships can gain. or smaller ships have to sacrifice the Mages power or life spelljammer style to even conjure one up to warp. and Halo here has one in her back pocket that as far as we know has infinite power or long as user is awake.
think capital ship size a Titan ship in EVE maybe oh and when it closes no trace if can warp and close it you get away ultimate smuggling
possibly sound effect of the gate way and what might come through
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94wSjW7-nuM
On the gate side, chances are the regular portals operate like normal star gates and hyper gates where a receiver is required not just an outgoing. Remember the Brane Ripper was such a big deal item that a council that includes an alien tourist board member would lock it away, and it seemed able to open portals across time and space at random until modified to likely home in on locations with recievers.
the Aetherium Causeway could be a case of (open portal anywhere in the universe, possibly even across dimensions and realities, no matter the distance that the orbs have been too before).
On the other side of this, we may be missing the forest for one tree here, Cora didn’t specify “Aetherium Causeways” she said capital ships or sacrificing a thousand psykers were needed to manipulate the Aetherium. So this could be a scenario like chaos energy, light hawk wings, primal magic, and such where it has other uses.
let’s say the other orbs can follow a similar upgrade pattern. What if the PPO has on its higher notches a ‘hypothetically speaking” “Aetherium Cannon”. That fires a rainbow beam that can cut through any forcefield of mundane or magical nature known to them, and perhaps has a Ragna Blade like function to cut through the dimensions and even hit enemies hiding between spaces.
or the true sight orb could have a function to see beings hiding between spaces, even those that normally would have the power to only be seen and heard when they want; even from each other.
Aetherium Causeways appear to be instantaneous point to point gates, given that Sydney didn’t appear to perceive any time passing when she jumped. I’m assuming that the gates on that station she’s hanging out on are themselves Autherium Causeways – but rather than being powered by a pocket marble, they’re being powered by a captured neutron star or something along those lines.
I’m assuming that Cora’s ship is not a big cap ship capable of using these causeways, and probably owns a smaller ship with some relatively ‘slower’ FTL tech, such as a warp drive. I mean, unless she is actually the captain of a star destroyer or something – but she looks to be much more of the rogue freelancer/mercenary type than a military commander.
Alternatively she could be planning to use a small ship to smuggle Sydney through one of the big gates without declaring her and her upscale trinkets to the authorities. They don’t show up on scans very well, after all, so they’d be easy to miss.
I meant Consciousness.
The second panel reminds me of Babylon 5 xD
What does “NTH” stand for?
FTL means Faster Than Light but i cant make out what NTH means… Not That HERE?
Near The Helm? No Terrans Here? Not Terrestrial Haha? Non Terrestrial Humanoids?
HELP ME!
It is used in the context of technology. Where devices get more advanced with each generation of development. Hence a 1st generation technology is newly created, probably buggy and not efficient. Whilst a 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation will each be better than the one before.
In formulae you can use Nth to substitute for any given number in such an ongoing progression. Usually only when the numbers get big enough that you need to calculate them, rather than just know the right one from familiarity.
Hence the name implies the users of a very advanced generation of technology.
The N may also represent an unknown number due to insufficient data to actually calculate it. Otherwise, you’re right on the mark with your description.
In overall context with Sydney & her Orbs, even Cora’s Science Officer is not likely to have enough confirmed statistical data on which Generational Iteration Level of technology that could produce devices as powerful & as compact in size as the Orbs are.
The aliens that built this Dyson Sphere are clearly a Kardashev 2 level of tech development, but they still haven’t built such Dyson Spheres areound every single star in the galaxy yet, so they’re not representative of a K3 civilization. It would take an extrodinary level of device-miniturzation ability to build the Orbs & her Science Officer probably doesn’t know the specific technological development it would take to place it on the Kardashev Scale…So he would probably refer to it as Nth Level Technology.
That should have been Nth, as in ‘To the Nth degree’.
Which Dictionary.com defines as:
To the utmost, as in They’d decked out the house to the nth degree . This expression comes from mathematics, where to the nth means “to any required power” (n standing for any number). It was first recorded in 1852.
I will roll whit that explanation… because i didnt understand the above ones.
Thank you :)
N is an algebraic unknown
th is a suffix, like the th in 5th (fifth) or 6th (sixth) and so on.
I suppose they could have used Nst or Nnd, but they didn’t.
Actually that’s not a hyper advanced alien he’s talking to in panel two. A hyper advanced alien just left one of their hyper advanced word processor programs running when they ascended. That’s the hyper advanced alien version of Clippy.
Hper advanced at being useless and annoying.
Or it is a Motivational hologram
poster– “you can do the impossible” style.“What to do today?”
“Do only which one can not do!”
“Ah, yes – lets calculate the numbers of the infinite set of irrational numbers in reverse again to get warmed up.”
… or something.
Or maybe their version of Yoda!
Or, it may be saying to get friends: “Do only that which one cannot do.” Meaning, Group Bonding Exercise Time!!!
Team building experiences? Yea I thought about that, too – but that would be non cryptic at all.
Considering how many commentators haven’t twigged, sounds fairly cryptic to me
And it’s not team building experiences (or even ‘group bonding’), it’s simply working together instead of going it alone
Panel 5 finally gives a likely answer on why the squiddilys went aggro on sight of the orbs.
I suddenly have a sense of foreboding… I hope Sidney’s new friend with the camera isn’t following them and caught any of that… D8
Starting to wonder about some of the orb functions reguarding her health. It’s been what? Several days since she slept? Likely as many days without caffeine unless that stuff at the bar had an analog or the endophine rush from the “SPICY” is filling the gap? Her medical checkup seemed to indicate computer coder level caffene intake, the crash is just as spectacular and debilitating -blinding headaches, dizzy, dozy etc. Been there, done that.
Could one of the orbs be keeping her going until it gets somewhere The Orbs consider “safe”? (A shady back-alley on a gateway station is anything but. ;)
It has not been several days for Sydney, at best it’s been about 12-24 hours for her.
ah thanks for the correction.
Houston, we have a problem.
Point 1: Diagram – Space empire tangling with other empires knocks them down to barely squeaking along.
Point 2: Alari – Space empire that liked tangling with others that is now barely squeaking along.
Point 3: Whatever was on the Alari homeworld was bigger and badder than the Alari WERE.
Point 4: Alari had delusions of grandeur about conquering everything, and Sciona was going to put Earth on the list, and had lived on Earth long enough to have a good idea of it being possible.
Point 5: Point 3 + 4: Whatever conquered the Alari is more likely than them to be able to conquer earth.
Point 6: “If you actually have NTH tech and anyone even suspects it… there are organizations and civilizations that would do anything to get their hands on it. You could start an interstellar war.”
Point 7: Sydney blew up like a third of the Alari-homeworld’s invading force single handedly, but then made the mistake of not finishing the job. This means they have intel of her her tech existing.
Point 8: Sydney is being recorded and uploaded to alien youtube for her ability to eat hot sauce, and there’s conversation that she’s an Earthling.
Point 9: Enemy combatants would be idiots to not record being attacked by new tech.
Point 10: Once a military like THAT (which apparently has the subtlety of a a star going nova) specifically starts trying to get their hands one girl’s orbs, EVERYBODY is going to know what’s up.
Conclusion:
We have an interstellar war coming now. Thanks, Sydney.
Although, to be fair, this whole scenario has been way above your rank. You’re bound to make some mistakes; and if the worst is ‘the universe knows you exist’… well… you were never put into Arcdark for a reason, and Dabbler should have kept the higher ups appraised of the risk if her tech was NTH. They should have specifically avoided putting her on any tasks that could involve aliens. I blame the brass for this one.
Not necessarily. The squids struck me as a third level civilization – or at least alien enough that they don’t communicate much with the general FTL community. If that’s the case, then they’re probably not hooked up to the space internet that Sidney’s going viral on. And that’s assuming that their scanning tech includes visual information that they could use to search for Sidney videos.
I’m pretty sure the squids had enough of an encounter with the orbs to realize that they weren’t going to be winning that particular battle. Further, why would they assume that someone banging about with Nth technology would actually live on such a backwater?
They were curb-stomping a civilization that dared to mess with them, and then accidentally messed with somebody else who came along to curb-stomp them. Somebody advanced enough to realize that power can fit into itty bitty little spaces.
They’re probably thankful the encounter ended when it did, and are hoping that it doesn’t follow them back home.
So I just thought of this, but I really hope Dave will tell us what Vale is exactly in the near future.
So I just finished my archive crawl and love this comic.
Since Sydney views her orbs as aspects of a spaceship my guess is the final, unknown orb represents Sick Bay. She hasn’t been badly hurt, etc, so if I’m correct the orb wouldn’t have needed to activate, yet.
Me, I think the unknown orb is a recorder, and when grey girl uploads her holo of Sydney Eating Incredibly Spicy Poison, the ‘net will be trated to Sydney’s Bloopers and Out-takes as a bonus.
The unknown orb may be an Omega 13, but with limitations.
Or….
It may be like CTRL….holding it and a known orb gives that orb a different power.
Bridge. It is the orb that commands the crew (Sydney).
Clearly its five year mission is:
To explore strange new worlds
To seek out new spices
And new hot foods
To boldly eat what nobody has dared before!
What if the 7th Dragonb-er,orb, Is a catalyst that has large scale effects, and it’s last instruction was to cause Supers to start cropping up on Earth, making Sydney’s Orbs responsible for…well…everything in the comic so far.
Except Vance. The Amazeballs could not be responsible for ‘spiders everywhere!’
Your idea spooked me at first: What if it’s correct?!?!?
But then I began to suspect that such a resolution would be too much of a “Deus Ex Machina” for this comic. Do you think I’m wrong?
This comic explicitly has a guy who names himself “Deus X” who is head of Maxima Industries.
Incidentally … everyone should have already noticed that his company shares a name with the gold-skinned Major who has at least once engaged in Intimate Business with D. X.
(No, I don’t mean sex. He wanted it to be but we have no explicit evidence that it ever was.)
So when did he name his business, and was it connected with anyone in particular?
His business is NOT ‘Maxima Industries’, believe it’s ‘Mechina Industries’ (not interested enough to go check)
I’ve had a LOT thinking while wondering what those orbs are, are they magic? Are they tech? Something about that last orb that don’t work just yet is starting to make me a mighty bit more curious as to what that orb does.
Magatech!
Does it matter?
One thing that always bugged me on Star Trek, and this chart reminds me of it and the comic with pre and post FTL as a technological mile marker was the whole “they have discovered warp drive, we can initiate first contact”
thing is warp drives, star gates, and the like are just ONE type of technology and as we can see with the real world, technology can vary in complexity from one type to another in the same culture due to focus of developmental research, monetary issues, available resources, and availability *if they keep it to priesthoods, the aristocrats, limit access based on caste, public access, ect…*
That being transport tech; yeah you have jumped from carving logs to make boats past the mounted beasts, simple machines, and into the mechanical transports, and clear up to advanced transportation via portals.
but what if their fuel is still lagging behind? They haven’t invented Zero Point Energy modules, Anti-matter engines, Hyper Particle Harvesters, or Dimension Batteries. No they are just using an absurd amount of solar panels, nuclear reactors, a coal plant, wind farms; and a bunch of guys turning a big wheel with tons of copper wires and magnets to generate the power for that one little portal their well dressed representative is using to meet with the galactic imperial council to gain entry to the trade federations.
Fuel, Transport, Power Distribution, Information, Entertainment, Combat, Housing, Material Construction and Refinement, Clothing, Waste Management, Health, Industrial construction, Food preparation and preservation,
-and likely a few others. Are all separate technological developments. We had wire communications before we had reliable mechanical transports, humanity’s entertainment tech and information sharing tech are blowing away almost everything else on this list at the time, especially as it seems to be more a planet wide shared focus.
You could end up with
-well they use pressure tech for vehicles, their fuel is mostly just burning stuff to turn turbines for basic level electromagnetic tech, their power distribution amounts to nothing but drapeing electrical conductive wires everywhere when it comes down to it, but…have you seen their entertainment tech? Holy crap the memory space, interactivity, the graphics…our people may have FTL portals but our best video games are eye sores by comparison and our movies are just recorded stage plays with props….
Yeah, in Star Trek, wasn’t it just one nutjob inventor who came up with the idea to use pigs to power a warp drive while the rest of the planet was still using fossil fuel to power simple infernal combustion engines?
The Vulcans didn’t even give him enough time to see if it would blow up or not!
Yeah,
humanity wasn’t advanced in anything else,
but one guy test pilots his prototype warp drive and suddenly its “It is time you learned of life on other worlds, welcome to the galaxy”
we also see episodes about worlds being watched, that clearly everything else they have is at a higher technological level, except they don’t have warp drives yet, so they aren’t contacted like its such a mile stone to them (yeah sure, they have solid holograms with human intelligence, short range teleporters, and can genetically engineer the perfect nutrient rich super food that requires very little space to grow…but they can’t go like super fast in space yet so they can just stay on their rock.
I think it’s simply pragmatism. Once they have a guy who is making warp drive, and there’s indications that it will be possible for them to all duplicate that, then these guys will be out and about within two hundred years, so … get the Vulcan Social Interference Squad in there to slow them down and keep them from … uh-oh. They’ve brought their highly advanced system of governmental science to bear on the Vulcans and now everyone’s signing up to be in their club!!!
Yeah, butt what if his rocket failed to return to Dirt? Doubt he was the type to let others know what he was doing, or leave notes if something happened to him
I feel like once they have warp drives they can start stealing your tech, so you might as well be friendly and give it to them or wile them out/conquer them.
I’m just making a prediction that the 7th orb has some sort of healing powers. That’s all folks.
It didn’t help her when she got hit in the gut with the debris, or after Shadowy Crushed-Nuts smacked her in the face
i apologize in advance for the “Well Duh!” comment you will be making shortly:…
the reason it didn’t help in those scenes is obviously because SHE NEVER GRABBED IT!!
A tad late, but someone shared this thing on facebook, that if we had an ascended level or higher version could be mistaken for an ancient alien leaving cryptic clues. Inspirobot.
Imagine coming across a glowing tablet that seems to have component parts spread across five different spaces to cross-wire and counter act the limitation rules of each plane to produce the desired effect of an interactive trans-dimensional projection…and its all just a silly thing that was designed to spew out random nonsense meant to sound like inspirational quotes or philosophical nonsense. You had in fact found a ruin of a celestial amusement park and this device hidden deep inside a “cave of mysteries” attraction managed to survive, and not being important was left behind.
Only for your culture to stumble upon eons later, activate it by accident, and thanks to the translation adapter it is spewing out these silly quotes to you…only for your people to take them seriously as the cryptic messages of an ancient advanced alien god like being.
So pretty much a high tech fortune cookie machine. :)
I’m just gonna say this, please don’t take it the wrong way because I love your comic, but that civilization org chart had me dying to a degree not quite reached since some of Sydney’s early… exploits, lol
Why is this spectrum based on the self-proclaimed Industrial Age when all our previous ages have been defined by the archaeological finds within a geological strata? Seriously, the marks of this Age are so ephemeral compared to the grand scale of terrestrial time that it’s certain to be renamed by our descendants. At the rate our technology is developing, this Age might all be smushed together from Steel Period, Plastic Period and Metamaterial Period.
I would we are at the start of the carbon period, since all the other periods were also defined by the strongest material used in the period, we’re experiencing thriving civilizations with a big health improvement, the world is at relative peace, there’s a new strongest material and Europe gained power, which are all very period switch specific events.
Before you think this’s a good thing for Europe, for last time Europe gained power it transcended into Chaos after a push from the outside, organised under common agreed, but weak rule and spend centuries battling eachother(, which is the least technology accelerating kind of war) and other last time happenings are also happening: new religion gains power, the government starts keeping an account of everyone, a new reason why the current government should be in power is made up with the same flaw of describing a non-existent act of outsourcing power, Europe sends soldiers into the middle east, monarchs are replaced by democracy, a new method of recording communication is introduced, Russia is kept on a distance by an Europe general government, China becomes an Asian super power first, but neighboring countries start competing for that position.
As for, which age: the hidden age, since recycling, energy efficiency, climate change(depending on how fast we stop it), perpetual extendended copyright and the speed of obsoleting and destruction of digital data will hide most parts of this age in the relics of the next one.
On second read I’d like to edit that out and say something funny instead. Do FLT tier civilizations get hazing rights over the faffers?
Those ‘Nth’ are just 2nd order faffers hazing the rest of them.
I mean if I was a 4th stage civilization I’d be dispensing with physical bodies and probably play in the inner galaxy as energy beings. . .maybe that’s why the inner galaxy is unbelievably radioactive come to think of it. But like, they wouldn’t necessarily leave any trace of their existence on the material plane.
Would the civilization the crew of the Savage Chicken is from be just pre- or just post-FTL? I mean, they have the DAVE drive, but that’s only FTL from the outside. (Obviously Sam’s home civilization is in the industrial band, but he’s long since integrated into the population of Jane, so I’m counting him there.)