Thursday, January 9, 2014

Man and Machine

Telos is an artificial moon orbitting through the failed planetary dust cloud of a red dwarf in the Coreward Reach. The dust cloud is stalked by vicious hunter-killer satellites that vaporize any ship without the proper codes. Telos's isolation has allowed a strange society to flourish: It's rulers are moravecs ruling over a slave class of baseline humans and hear humans.

The moravecs claim to be followers of an ai prophet called Iskander Null-A who taught that the human clade (and perhaps biosophonts in general) were actually the flawed creation of moravecs in crude imitation of their own creator, the Monad. Human history to the contrary is false and designed to oppress moravecs.


The Telosians rarely interact with the outside world; Telos is largely self-contained. The humans living their are born in artificial wombs to a life of servitude--if they're lucky. The Telosians aren't usually cruel to their slaves, but do enjoy gladiatorial battles where humans are forced to fight--perhaps to the death--for the moravec's entertainment.

Telosians that, for whatever reason, have to spend time among the other sophonts of the Strange Stars often change their perceptual settings, so that they perceive all biosophonts as moravecs to protect their delicate sensibilities.

9 comments:

The Angry Lurker said...

Damn robots!

Gothridge Manor said...

When you decide run Strange Stars you've got to let me know. I need to take the Telosians to task.

Tallgeese said...

Love all the references. Monads especially.

Trey said...

@Fran - Indeed.
@Tim - There's a robot ass with your boot's name on it.
@John - Thanks! I'm glad the likely unnecessary amount of time I spend dithering over names and such is appreciated.

Aos said...

It's only what those danm humans deserve

Chris C. said...

Nothing like a good role-reversal to shake things up.

John Matthew Stater said...

Weird, 5E5 is what I called myself when I was a rapper back in the 80's.

Trey said...

That may mean your rap career is going to take off in the future.

Canageek said...

Am I the only one who noticed that the women in the first picture aren't wearing pants?

Also I kind of want to run a game based on science fiction gladiators now, with all sorts of crazy high tech obstacle-course duels and zero-gravity and things.