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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Let’s be honest, Nth level entities get bored! They just kind of throw weird, useful stuff in places where it could be found, nd then just sit around to watch the fireworks!
Beats the heck out of another episode of “The Conners”!
Some even make a individual of the less developed races their personal plaything. The eons pass faster when you can troll a bald spaceship captain. Someone may have guided Sydney to the space curry restaurant just to see what happened.
Or…you guide them, without them realizing that’s what you’re doing, through little antagonistic challenges.You become a trickster-teacher, like Coyote. You gradually push them along so that eventually, they will be able to operate on your level, and you do it in ways that make them want to be different from you. You uplift them, because your culture is dying of stagnation, and you need someone with a new perspective to give life meaning again.
I knew someone would make a Q reference.
Option B: Set up Shmuck Baits across the multiverse, enjoy as spectator sport.
Ah yes the great trickster-teacher Wile E. Coyote super genius.
Or earnestly help out a different starship captain, with fabulous hair.
or get punched by an african-american Space Station Commander, and never show up again.
“Well I’m not Jean Luc.”
Based on comic #186 /archive #1189, no one wants to start an interstellar war. Therefore I think no on knows that Sydney’s orbs might be Nth-level tech.
Never start an interstellar war,
It serves no helpful purpose.
When people ask you what it’s for,
You’ll only make excuses.
If thirty-trillion souls get hurt,
You’ll go to bed with no desert.
Don’t star an interstellar war.
Newer set a star on fire…
A somewhat misquoted version of “Never Set the Cat on Fire” by Frank Hayes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvZfGyXa1Ic
Nobody wants to start an interstellar war… unless there is a good chance that they will get something very good in return. Hypertech like the orbs is where such options suddenly look more attractive to the… more
opportunisticpiratical civilizations out there. It’s definitely a good idea to be cautious!“Beats another episode of ‘The Conners'”
You’re sort of setting a low bar there, dear. :)
Also all of this interstellar war stuff depends on people actually knowing that Sydney’s orbs can create interstellar aetherium causeways. If they can just create like…. normal wormholes like what the ship makes, or warp speed or something, there are probably a lot more technology which can do something similar even if bigger. Plus Sydney only RECENTLY gained that power, and the orbs don’t seem to be easily scannable to begin with (although the Squids maaaay have had some idea of what they do, or just freaked out at technology the could not scan). But Dabbler couldn’t. Unless Sydney starts yelling out what she can do with the aetherium causeways, most of what she can do with the orbs don’t seem beyond what other Supers can do to one degree or another. Just not…. all of the same variety in one person.
She just recently opened the aetherium causeways … and IT WAS NOT HIGHEST POINT. It is entirely possible some of the orbs updates is even MORE overpowered.
I have decided that ‘The Conners’ is a fine example of absurdist television. It’s like ‘Garfield without Garfield’ where someone edits Garfield out of the three panel comic and you have the rest of the cast acting and reacting to nothing. Absurdist.
Although the difference is Garfield without Garfield is actually very funny :)
Rhulan:
*cough*…I deny any accusation that I threw the sorcery stones, spirit orbs, Mystic Monster summoning card systems, random magical treasure chest manufacturing devices. And subsequent world changing items inside them like all purpose antidotes; the keys of the apocalypse, the penguin of power, and…I’m sure I have a list here…I mean…I deny any accusation that I just make these things and then drop them on various worlds with various degrees of magical knowledge…including none…just to see what happens…
-shifty glowing sun sphere eyes-
…
…hmmm…
…
…
…
Yep. Seems legit.
‘GREETINGS STARFIGHTER’ ?
Secondary idea: They guide the lesser species specifically to create more episodes of “The Conners.”
So what you’re saying is these higher species are evil….
So…the Nth are basically the Q collective?
Not exactly the Kardashev Scale.
Russian physicist. Basically how much energy control you have. WE are at Type 0.
But I have a correlation to it. A Type civilization can create disaster in the next Type up. Such as humans causing Global Warming which is a Type I level occurrence. Only it is chaotic and accidental as all such accidents are. One of the drawbacks of having intelligence at this level. Now imagine some unknown sugar daddy gave away FTL so that anyone could build it and use it?
“Seed galaxy with life so aliens all look similar.”
I see what you did there. Nice
Well we can say the sowers of life for this universe are more creative than the Ancients from Star Gate (who just made a bunch of clone worlds of Earth, and used a powered down version of themselves)…the show used to blame the Goa’uld for spreading human everywhere…but the fact the planets themselves were so similar, and the handful of (been there longer than 5000 years) made the writers have to point fingers at an even older race of god like beings.
Its funny when a universe has more than ONE race trying to pull this sower of life bit.
Marvel universe has:
The Celestials, Kree, Promial Gods, and some new race they introduced a few years ago trying to make the same claim.
Star Trek even did it. Thing is, it doesn’t really make much sense if you’re seeding with microorganisms that will accumulate billions of years worth of mutations before actually producing multicellular life.
Even if you seed stuff later in development, you might be able to account for general structure (like how tetrapods never have more than four limbs in normal development and almost never have more than 5 digits per limb), but ending up with virtually the exact same body, limb and face shapes for your technological species isn’t really plausible by that method.
Not that I’d ever complain about Twilek, Asari and the like, but I think an implausible explanation brings up more problems than none at all. Joking about it is great, though. :)
Been a while since I watched Stargate, but I don’t really remember the Ancients going the sower of life route and mostly just colonizing planets for themselves (possibly with terraforming involved).
What’s a bit more irritating is that of the three other civilizations they considered somewhat equals (before their ascension that is), two look(ed) very human and live in compatible environments, while the third is not really revealed properly.
The Ancients weren’t very good at it. They mostly terraformed planets, put humans on them, but they were also responsible for the creation of the replicators *or at least the androids that could make them, but they did make the Pegasus galaxy replicators directly*, the Wraith, and possibly even the Goa’uld (not confirmed). As well as leaving tons of stuff behind that screwed up the natural development of two galaxies…and then just left a ship wandering off that had as a function depositing short range star gates on every other planet it could find.
yeah the Asgard, the Nox, and the Furling, we never did meet the Furling, only some second hand stuff, one non-canon ewok thing that was just a character imagining what they could look like. Funny thing is they were never meant to be part of the show and were added to the script last second as the writers thought the fifth great race for humans as described by the Asgard sounded cooler than the 4th, so just added the Furling with a quickie name last second like that. But the truth is despite so many fan theories they were never seen on the show.
but yeah, with the Asgard (especially the ancient Asgard), the Nox, the giant aliens, the Oona, and every other reptilian looking alien being so humanoid with only the occasional non-humanoid; I half expected they’d one day have introduced a super-ascended, precursor race predating the Alterans (Ancients) that made all this humanoid life exist in a universe that otherwise has various bugs, living crystals, and the like.
Anyone would want to get their hands on it…yes. Start an interstellar war? Most certainly. If they recognize them.. Like the ‘squidies’ she just fought? Who scanned them? Who also probably also traced the aetherium causeway opening she made and should already be on their way to this quaint little space port. And while our lovely artifact collector at the port who she has by chance not yet met but by plot is kinda likely to is still wandering around… AND she is currently an interstellar internet viral video eating spicy food that anyone who has ever seen the orbs before, like on the prior owner…
Warning: Multiple Plot Devices detected. It’s Party Time!
DaveB has already mentioned that Aetherium Causeway’s can not be tracked once thy are closed (and can only even be detected while they are open), and that SmugD will not be busted… this time
SmugD? Who’s that? (I am missing something here, I just know it!)
Fan name for Deus.
Guesticus is just jealous of how awesome Deus is. He gets away with everything because he’s just that great. A hero for the ages! Three cheers for Deus!
:)
Pander likes SmugD because she’s a lawyer :P
And lawyers are always looking for rich clients :D
It is merely one of his many, many wonderful attributes. :) Good one though!
Rowr.
Rich and constantly in need of a good lawyer? o_O
She is standing there talking to someone who scanned before it closed and followed her. Now while the squiddies were on the other side of the planet. With the obviously high level of tech they possess, they very well may have seen the opening and traced it. Even if at the point Sydney was at when she opened it she was pretty effectively invisible, the opening of the causeway would have been like a floodlight hitting any sensors that were running. And they certainly would have their sensors on high trying to find the little one who just smashed their front line warriors into scrap.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: We don’t actually have any idea what the results of that scan were. The red text from the scan *could* be information, but it could just as easily be error messages. They clearly didn’t know enough about the orbs to be at all prepared for someone using them.
Honestly, I’m not entirely convinced that the orbs were what set the scanning drone off. After all, it was placed on the annihilated Alari Homeworld, which was supposed to be totally devoid of life, and it detected a life form which was fairly similar to an Alari. (Compared to the kaiju, at least.) They could have been there to finish off what they thought was a survivor.
Well in all fairness they were curb stomped by a rookie who still dosnt realy know how her orbs work and was just basically winging it.
It is perfectly legible.
I mean look at Q from star Trek. Id think they are on that Nth level.
Q is just a space pansy who wants you to believe he is the 4th Level, when he’s just a middling 3rd (at best) who stumbled upon some 4th Level tech
I hope you’re being sarcastic. His entire race produce their own power and are effectively omnipotent to anyone outside their own race. The tech they build to use on each other can supernova STARS each time they are used, at the very least, and probably can take out entire galaxies in one shot themselves if they really worked at it. They can freaking CHANGE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS with their own internal power. They don’t even have BODIES in their natural form, it’s just incomprehensible to us lower beings, so we interpret them as something familiar when we see them inside the Continuum.
I think literal GOD would be the only more advanced being than the Q!
…And a bunch of them got held up at gunpoint when some humanoids stole some guns from them.
….. Voyager kind of had some bad writing.
Some of us “crazier” Trekkie’s barely consider Voyager a Star Trek series. I hated all but a small few of that series. (oddly, the first Voyager Q episode, “Death Wish” was pretty good. Interesting dilemma, decent writing for once, and a decent conclusion)
I know, DS9 was on the air at the same time as Voy, but their writing was on point most of the time. I loved how they focused on the Characters instead of the poor excuse of a “crisis of the week”.
Well, they WERE Q guns, and it was kinda implied that the human interaction was sort of integrated into the Q Continuum for the purposes of allowing them to reside in it in the first place, but using their powers to kick them out might have set off the gun (depending on what kind of laws govern the mechanics of such a gun in the first place, if it’s even an actual gun and not just being perceived as one by humans), so they were being a bit cautious. A human waving around a weapon they have no idea how to use that is designed to damage the Q is a LOT scarier than an actual Q waving around the weapon that DOES know what they’re doing!
It’s still some pretty crazy advancement when they still come across as omnipotent outside of their own race.
this moment comes to mind reading that:
https://i.imgur.com/u6gF7.jpg
Galactus was going to eat their world (and presumably kill everything on it), he just didn’t want them ‘ending life as they know it for light years around’, because that would mean he couldn’t have dessert
Hey, if you are going to die anyway, might as well make it so the bastard who killed you goes hungry for awhile
Yeah, nah, they may be higher than Hyu-mons, butt it’s all a bluff
Actually, they are all just masters of mass hypnosis/illusion. that explains everything. Occoms razor don’t’ you know
Q&A, TNG novel from Keith R.A. DeCandido. No, Q are NOT the most powerful beings around.
Well, technically, neither are the M. And the being more powerful than them is implied to be the Goddess of that universe/multiverse/whatever.
Not counting Creator entities, the Q and the M are BOTH the most powerful and advanced beings of that reality.
I am not familiar with, nor can I seem to find via google any alien race in Star Trek called “M”
nor of an identified “goddess” other than a few high level aliens, the Olympians, and religious figures that may just be regular mythical figures of those cultures and not seen directly.
As far as I am aware, ‘M’ was only mentioned in the absolutely fantastic novel “I, Q”.
I highly recommend the audio book, as John De Lanci reprises his role as ‘Q’ for most of the book. (The entire story is told by Q, except the first chapter and near the end where “God” is narrating what she is doing)
I must have listened to that book a dozen times.
Thank you,
I only ever saw the shows, movies, and the animated series. Never read any of the novels or comics.
Guess the online wikis don’t update based on extended universe information either, strange usually wikis do, they just note (this medium only) on the info.
Whoops, mixed my books up…
And I totally forgot if I actually read Q&A or was just intending to and never got around to it.
Who’s more powerful than the Q that ISN’T that goddess being? And HOW?!? The Q can ALREADY mess with reality, so can these guys just mess harder or something?
The summary jacket is absolutely useless, though, so please give me a better one.
I’d still consider the Q Tier 4, though, being able to manipulate reality and all… These new beings would just be stronger beings on the same tier. Unless they’re basically God, which doesn’t count.
You know what, forget it. I’m not sitting here refreshing anymore. And I don’t want to sift through comments anymore.
I really wish this was on Disqus so I could actually see who replies to ME and not get a notification for every single new post since I set the alert. And it just tells me there is a new message, not what it is.
So don’t reply anymore, ’cause I won’t see it. You wanna reply, send it to trekomega@hotmail.com.
Don’t set that alert then, no one is replying to you specifically right here as you see. Yeah a reply to your post specifically notification would be nice.
But just for anyone reading this, if you think there was a reply to your comment, use the search window tab
(Edit)
(Find on Page)
then enter your screen name. it will be locate all the posts you specifically made, and you can click “next” to go to the next one and then on from there.
‘M’ for ‘Mxytplk’?
^_^
Nooooo…Earth is doomed. DOOMED I say. The Destructors of Sciona’s world seemed to ping on the Orbs and went full out on them. Now Sydney is on an interspecies portal station where she has had her and her orbs images broadcast all over alien space. We are fucked. It’s not going to be hard for even an second rate alien Inspector Clouseau to figure out her species and home world. Not going to be long before an Interstellar Empire Armada blinks into Earth orbit demanding the surrender of the “Nth Orbs”. Even if there are several or many Earth type planets inhabited by humans (hey, one of the aliens at the Cosmic Food Court identified her as ‘human’ so how rare could we be?) it’s only a matter of time until they find us after leaving a bunch of shattered worlds in the wake of their Orb hunt. Worse yet, if Sydney is off world when they show up. This has all the earmarks of the “Zod demanding the surrender of Kal-El” scenario.
Best Earth can hope for would be that they all show up at the same time and end up fighting each other. Of course, that would mean Earth would then have to take on the strongest of them all… I can’t wait to hear Maxima’s reaction when she hears the news.
Dirt is a Galactic (sex) Tourist hotspot, so hyo-mons are widely known (even if they never got as far as their orbiting second planet)
If the Squids do show up, they will find that Sydney is not the only one with powers (and look at how much damage she did alone!)
“This is a protected planet, leave now and you will not be harmed”
The theory that the reason the orbs were on the ocean floor, also the presence of supers, and other genetically altered humans from various points in time. Something BIG has been hanging out on Earth and experimenting on humans.
-in Marvel comics, (at one time), all the mutants, vampires, werewolves, atlanteons, even the eternals and deviants (Thanos race), were all the result of the Celestials messing around with humans genomes.
-Earth in that setting is also monitored by the Kree, Skrulls, Badoon, and Shi’ar; all of which have messed around with the human genome at some point *most famous being the Kree who created the Inhumans*.
So wouldn’t be all surprised to see some ancient entity hanging around Earth that even the Twilight Council isn’t aware of who only gets involved if things are outside the desired parameters…like an invasion by a high end imperial race on the still developing world.
“This is a protected planet, leave now and you will not be harmed”
Or to paraphrase the Justice League:
“…This world is protected. Whatever comes will face us. Consider yourself warned. We stand guard here. We are Archon. Run.”
Or imagine Maxima paraphrasing Superman’s “World of Cardboard” speach to Darkseid: “I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard, always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can’t you, Squidley? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am.”
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WorldOfCardboardSpeech
This place needs an upvote button.
I’ve been thinking the same thing, Majesty.
If they show up at Earth and demand to see Sydney, all she needs to do with her seven orbs is to paint them orange and draw from 1 to 7 stars on each. When asked she can say “No sir. No mystical orbs here. Just ordinary everyday dragonballs.” At which point some other race will say “You have DRAGONBALLS? Gimme!”
SFCGator,
Part of the problem that supports you theory is she was being videoed by another alien as Cora said “Sydney Scoville, Jr?” so now they know exactly who Sydney is. Knowing the true name of your enemy is always problematic.
Sydney IS an interstellar portal station. I’ve been assuming that the station keepers saw the aetherium waygate (? I hate only remembering the gist.) open, assumed “battleship”, saw Halo, and freaked. They’ve been keeping the station quiet as they wait for this extreme threat to leave. (And they’ll probably pay for what Sydney ate without batting an eye or tentacle.)
Single individual using aetherium gate means either said individual is well-connected or said individual is a problem. The station masters are acting how smart mob bosses act when Superman or Magneto arrive to ask a few questions.
Yeah it is very unlikely they didn’t notice the extremely rare and advanced portal open up just above their station and the one being that came out of it fly down there.
Just monitoring her from a distance would make sense.
It is very unlikely they didn’t notice the extremely rare and advanced portal open up just above their station. The single being that came out of it? They MIGHT overlook her …
Or just assume the Causeway was opened from the other side by a huge ship or something, and Sydney just went through it.
Or was tossed through it
“Here! She’s your problem now!!”
That would be more alarming, think of how often the solution to an unstoppable cosmic threat was to open a high powered portal to another dimension or deep space. Like…here you deal with the goddess of chaos, devourer of worlds, consumer of souls, destroyer of sanities.
+1
Considering how easily Cora found Sydney once she drew the attention of people who started talking about her on the Inter(stellar)net, I can only hope nobody happens to overhear this conversation. If there are aliens monitoring the net for mentions of ‘Nth tech’, one person who overhears them talking and blogs about it might be the spark that ignites Earth’s first interstellar war.
But who’s gonna believe an alien ‘UFO conspiracy evangelist’ ?
“no, man I mean a _real_ alien alien.”
One minor detail, Cora kind of acts like Nth level is kind of a myth at best,
Well at least until Sydney’s comment.
BAH! How would dabbler know? Aside from being unable to scan them they havent displayed any absurd powers until now. Im pretty sure she could cobble together tech that could do pretty much everything she has personally seen sydney do. The hyperspace aetherum causeway blah blah blah is the first time they have surpassed “regular” sci fi tech.
Plus Dabbles isn’t an expert, she bluffs most of the time
I think for Dabbler it is more the lack of a clear energy source, defying being scanned by magic, their seemingly random on what can see what aspect of them *machines can see them and their light but not the skill tree, while magic can’t detect anything at all*, other more subtle aspects.
I honestly think it could be a lot more common to come across artifacts from such advanced races but never identify them as such due to their very nature *coming across as magic items as no one opens up the incredibly rare magic item to find the reality defying core inside*, or the ancient precursor race follows a form to function rule and well..
sometimes a spoon is just a spoon.
Sure they could make an Omni-Spoon that defies physics and can instantly open portals across the multiverse to scoop up the desired food and feed it to the user…but what you find in their kitchen is a regular looking spoon. Because they think the Omni-spoon idea you mention is silly, childish, and lazy. Just a regular spoon will do…
and you don’t realize the spoon is Ultra tech until you discover that the spoon can pass through a sun, survive a supernova, and even pass unharmed through a black hole, because durability was the most important thing to the celestial class being that made it.
i think your Omni-Spoon idea could still have merit in a lab environment, like, i want to know what this alien life form likes best so i will use this summoning spoon to feed it stuff it might have encountered
Well less dignified we have the “Fae Feed Bag”. You strap this feed bag to your face, and it summons based on a scan of your body, and the pleasure-food associations parts of your mind, and summons into the feed bag your favorite, nutritious for you, or desired food items; depending on its programming at the time.
Nth: Like… set evolution in motion on multiple planets and tweak certain events so they develop in ways that hate each other, and make them interact not by force, but by event orchestration, because time means nothing to you and also you’re bored so you wanna watch an action movie.
I don’t know, I feel like space wizards would make a shield ball that would just shrug off that big thing’s face laser like nothing happened. I mean, those big things presumably fall in the space empire stage of level 2, right? I think the orbs are just level 3, not level 4.
No, SYDNEY is just at level 3. She hasn’t yet leveled up to the full capabilities of the spheres.
Unless they are just toys, and the skill tree is part of the game. Nothing would pose a real threat to the actual entity, just to the player avatar using the orbs as their power set, or has a laser tag like vest on to indicate they actually got hit or something.
The fact they have to earn points and be leveled up is why some feel these orbs aren’t meant to be serious weapons by the ones who made them. Which given what they can do should make you never want to encounter such beings when they are being serious.
i dunno, i’ve encountered games where they handwave RPG elements by having the weapon/gear get more powerful as you use it in combat, it motivates the user to fight
Yeah, but that is the game justifying its game mechanics in-story for the game.
Not really a practical thing for something not intended as entertainment unless its an “evolver” type living weapon; but those don’t have a limit or pre-set options on their powers.
So… Tier 1: Pre-warp. Tier 2: starts where the United Federation of Planets makes contact, all the way up to the First Federation. (Even a Fesarius-class mining vessel would curb-stomp a Sovereign in a straight fight. You think the Borg are advanced? The First Federation, if they got involved, would have annihilated the Borg *and* 8472 with no effort.) Tier 3: The Organians. Tier 4: The Preservers, the Q.
Hmm, yeah, that is about what I was thinking seeing the chart. Thank Star Trek for being around long enough to have something at each level.
But I think like power classes (F,D,C,B,A,S,Omega); some of these tiers may have more room inside them than others with blurred boundaries between some.
Lemme see if I have this about right. Tier 1: Pre-warp. Prime Directive applies. Tier 2: Have discovered warp drive. Starts where the United Federation of Planets makes contact, goes all the way up past the Borg to the First Federation. (You think the Borg are advanced? Had the First Federation felt threatened, they would have annihilated the Borg with less effort than batting an eyelash.) Tier 3: The Organians. Tier 4: The Preservers, the Q.
Oops. Sorry for the double post. I never saw the first one show up, so I thought it hadn’t gone through.
It can take anywhere from 5 seconds to 5 minutes for a post to go through the comment section with Dave’s current web provider. I think the hamster in the wheel running their generator has been getting tired lately.
I guess Sydney really does have to worry about being probed and dissected now…
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, here is an anime that has something similar to NTH:
https://www.crunchyroll.com/kado-the-right-answer
Latter we find out that they were made on a drunken bet. Then lost by the movers. Even the Space Wizards lose stuff when moving.
M: Hey, Q, where did you put those party costume balls, you know, the ones that float around your head and have the low power adventuring tool abilities? I want to see what a primitive would do with em.
Q: I think…hmn…now where DID I leave those things? I could swear they were in this tesseract box. Oh well, I suppose they’ll turn up eventually.
If leveling/the center upgrade is a matter of changing Sydney, not the orbs, doesn’t this imply that Sydney was originally somewhat compatible with the orbs?
Nth level are comic writers aren’t they
It all gets rediculously meta at that point however
Meta getting meta about meta in a discution that is meta is still just meta.
Cue the moustache-twirling villain hiding behind a pillar.
“I will have this Nth tech ! Igor! Prepare the Nerve Weasel!”
*Gets clocked out by Deus*
“Nth tech? Hmmm…yes, that will do nicely.”
I new it! Sydney IS the most desirable person in the galaxy!
It’s OK, Yorp. We know you saw her first.
*wags tail contentedly*
Nice Stargate (ascension) and Star Trek: TNG (galaxy seeding) references at the top tier.
So basically, Sydney is carrying around the incomprehensible space-god shit that HP Lovecraft tried to warn us about.
Headline: Earthling Sparks Interstellar War!
“What? How did this happen?”
“It was Sydney.”
….”I find myself totally unsurprised by that.”
Meh, Nth tech ain’t that great, the birdpeople of DC use Nth-metal to make their codpieces (well, they do have other uses for it as well)
Doesn’t seem like the orbs would need something past the ‘third’ tier, since that’s already a ‘group’ that includes groups completely beyond the FTL level civilizations. Like, the Pre-FTL group includes pr-industrial civilizations to civilizations more advanced then us.
this is getting dark and apocalitic..
we need space marines!
BATTLE BROTHAHS! SPEHSS MAHREENS!
THE CODEX ASTARTES CALLS THIS MANEUVER STEEL REHN!
WE ARE THE SPEHSS MAHREENS! WE ARE THE EMPRAH’S FUREH!
*sends in the Sulaco*
In today’s space news, entire Space Marine squad annihilated after refusing to fall back, and re-strategize upon discovery of new intel involving the explosive nature of their surrounding; and instead having all their effective ammo confiscated and moving forward anyway into an unknown hostile’s choke point.
If you’re using Pre and Post-FTL, you could also break it down on the speed and range of the FTL.
Interstellar FTL, Intergalactic FTL, Intercluster FTL (specifically between Galactic Clusters), then Interdimensional travel, followed by Inter-Multiversal Travel.
Of course, most would have ascended some time around the Intergalactic FTL level, or unlock interdimensional prior to that.
An alternate route is discovering alternate reality portals during the process first and finding that alternate reality versions of your own planet are easier to colonize *no need for environmental stations and terraforming machines* you stick with this long before developing interstellar travel; becoming a multiversal power long before any of the races of those universes ever meet you.
That strategy doesn’t work in most realities because the tech is invented by a drunk old guy in a lab coat who doesn’t want to share his tech with the government.
No, it still works.
But the governments of the original planet are unaware that they have become a tiny part of an interdimensional accordion tangentially connected worlds heavily populated by cigar smoking ballet instructors and lithe, double jointed organic farmers.
Well, that addresses my earlier question about who made The Orbs. At the very least they are third tier technology. They are probably fourth tier technology assuming, despite Cora’s apparent skepticism, that actually exists.
Once upon a time there was a board wargame that gave us a war between galaxies.
The battlecruisers could have takenthis space station and its pulsar on board in a freight airlock.
Being four light years long lets you do that.
@Zero Well, if the compatible with Sydney, and changing her to be more compatible model is correct, there is the question of what hyper weirdo was using them last? It comes to mind that the Florida Keys aren’t /that/ far from Mexico City, and that Left Handed Hummingbird could be understood to mean hyper weirdo. And the lady from Boston could have been foreshadowing. (Aztec was a political term, ethnically they were Mexica.) I don’t have the impression that Lovecraft worked much with that pantheon’s imagery.
Looking at the chart closely at the lines where screw ups send them back to earlier civilization types.
intra-planet portal tech causes nether beast invasion. Heh, I wrote one like that once.
“We are the Shoggoths”: an alien race called the Croon were trying to create a portal to other realities and accidently summoned a “Hell Walker” to their planet that proceeded to open a portal to hell and summon swarms of demons to devour the residents of the planet…The Croon didn’t go back to pre-industrial as they had many planets colonized. But the experience caused them to regard ALL humanoid life as abominations. A neighboring race simply called “Barnacles”…as they have no verbal language also found their home world decimated by humanoid celestials who wanted the real-estate for their own projects. The Croon Alliance being formed collecting the wayward races that had unfortunate run-ins with humanoids.
of course this doesn’t justify the Croon Alliance going all genocidal on every humanoid world they come across.
*admittedly I was inspired by a combination of Babylon 5’s Fifth Space movie, and Event Horizon for the idea.
My theory? Sydney’s orbs are basically how the Nth play games like Path of Exile. Except the universe is their game setting.
Dave plays Stellaris, if that top chart is anything to judge by.
I whant the NSFW panel where she rocks that truesight on Cora’s ship.
I know people are concerned about this conversation taking place in a public area…but from what we can see in the panels, the corridor is currently empty of anyone save the two of them.
Additionally, we know from Cora going into this situation armed that she’s savy about survival…and if anyone thinks that she, Cora, knows about Nth-tech, she’s smart enough to know they’d want to capture & interrogate her for information. So she would not have even brought up what Dabbler says without being fairly sure they were out of eavesdropping range of anyone.
Additionally, her hard light suit could also have a built-in sonic projector that can create a sort of soundscreen effect to give them privacy from surveillance devices–if it can project both light and forcefields to follow every move of her body, it can project sound with pinpoint accuracy at a distance, focusing it into a perimeter shield to mask sound going out or coming in for short periods of time..
…Exactly as I’m sure DaveB intended, but just doesn’t have enough panels or time to spare in the pacing of the comic to explain in depth to everyone.
(Before anyone argues that light projections couldn’t possibly deal with sound, check & recheck your physics. Everything is based on movement, and if it moves, it has a frequency of movement, and that frequency of movement is sound. It simply may not be moving at a frequency we can hear…but then again, you can’t hear radio waves directly, yet they’re clearly out there, broadcasting favorite tunes…)
This is a way station for a multitude of races from all over the universe. I will guarantee you that every public place is under electronic/televisual/mystic/psionic/etc. surveillance at ALL TIMES, by whoever is running the joint, at the very least. Those “free” translators? Listening in and recording every conversation, waiting for tag words to be used like “war”, “invasion”, “bomb”, and “Nth”. Cora should know this. They need to leave this place, ASAP.
Precursors as in Star Control, or some other Precursors?
Its a common term in sci-fi.
along with, The Ancients, Ancient Ones, First Ones, Old Ones, Great Old Ones, the Elder Races, Forerunners, ect…
usually its some race long gone, or ascended, or moved beyond the current range of the galaxy or galaxies the younger empires are involved in; and also had a bad habit of leaving stuff just lying around with some seriously long shelf lives that are also capable of altering the entire developments of worlds via, power sources, hyper gates, weapon tech, vehicles, the occasional time machine left sitting in the middle of a field, or some underground high tech station that is really controlling the otherwise low tech or even fantasy planet’s environment, ect… (not all precursors are equal in this sense, going by the charts some series’ use of the term would just be near FTL or just into it that due to tangling with space angels or civil war or a planet blowing up ended up having their worlds go all fantasy setting with underlying sci-fi stuff that by comparison looks like impossible tech and magic).
Well he did capitalize the name, so DaveB might mean a specific Precursors. I know of at least three from manga and video games.
What about the Pacific rim Precursors?
They have interdimensional portals, an ARMY of Kaiju, andeach one can fight (and sometimes beat) a 280 ft mechs.
Unfortunately, it’s not THAT mainstream.
https://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Science-Magic_Ascendancy
That has the list of Nth Tech user’s in current fiction / multimedia under the known user’s scale. At least if we’re going under the assumption of actual “Space Wizards” that laugh in the face of both science and magic, to the point it’s one and the same, yet beyond both.
I disagree with the MCU Asgardians being on this, Thor was describing how his people consider the two things the same…which was softly retconned in the MCU/brushed aside anyway. The first Thor movie was from the era of (everything must be sci-fi) in the MCU before they decided to bring in actual magic and the possibility of supernatural gods rather than just aliens pretending to be gods.
the Asgardians have never displayed anything beyond like what say you’d see an Eternian from He-man to be capable of with the mix of science and magic.
Also their list of beings on such a list is lacking. Even putting aside the omnipotent beings like the Lord of Nightmares and eldritch abominations that by their definition break the rules of their universe; you have a ton of other races and individuals with science so advanced that the show can’t explain it, but handwaves that its not simply “supernatural power”; heck the Ancients from Star Gate should be listed not just the Nox, the wormhole aliens from Farscape, the ancient ships from Lost Universe, the Galactic Leyline from Outlaw Star, the Q, Washu uses science but is still a chousin, ect…
there are actually a lot of these come to think of it. We have evolved beyond the limitations of this universe and now exist in a state outside of time and space; sort of thing.
Most reported cases of Nth contact turn out to have been Umgah faffing about on a hyperwave caster.
This is getting dark and apocaliptic..
We need space marines!
so is it going to turn out that dabbler has been with the nth all along in a advent rising Esq twist where the ancestors of modern day humanity are the nth that had enough of essentially being gods.
I’d be more suspicious of Sydney. I mean how often have ultra tech class super ascended Omni beings put limitations on their own powers, blocked their own memories, and lived ordinary lives or at the very least (not omnipotent lives) as the norm for them is ALL POWERFUL, so escapism could be spending some time as a more mundane life form. Only to set some stuff aside for fun or emergencies. Washu from Tenchi Muyo for instance despite blocking her vast power and memory so she could relearn everything about the universe from scratch also gave herself the three orbs of power as a fail safe (which she also placed in her daughter as a power source).
Would explain why the General and (forget who) doubted Sydney’s origin story of just “finding” them while scuba diving off the Florida Keys